Is the military playing dirty tricks?
Posted by Andrew Adams on February 6, 2009
Filed Under Afghanistan, Human rights, Politics |
It has been widely reported in the last day or so that Colonel Owen McNally, a British army officer serving Afghanistan has been arrested for leaking military secrets concerning civilian deaths in Afghanistan to Rachel Reid, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, to whom Col. McNally was supposedly “close”.
Ms Reid has stated categorically both in a piece at CiF and in a statement issued through her lawyers that the accusations of any kind of relationship between her and Col. McNally are totally false and that she has only met him twice, both authorised meetings at Nato HQ and in the presence of other officials.
She accuses MoD officials of making “a vicious, false slur” and claims that this is motivated by criticisms that HRW has made of the US Military’s reluctance to investigate reports of civilian deaths caused by its troops.
In a letter to US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates on January 15, Human Rights Watch sharply criticised the Pentagon investigation. I don’t know what the McNally case is really about. If I had to guess I would say senior US and UK defence officials are angry about our forensic dissection of the Pentagon’s investigation, which exposed reassurances about US and Nato commitments to avoid further civilian casualties as at least partially hollow.
Certainly the hand of the US military seems to be involved as a number of newspaper reports mention US generals “seething” about the supposed leaks. There is no evidence provided in any of the reports that Col. McNally and Ms Reid are “close” or that he has passed on any classified information, they merely quote MoD “sources” and seemingly take the accusasion at face value.
This is clearly a serious matter - human rights workers such as Rachel Reid are already at risk in places such as Afghanistan and if military sources are going to start spreading smear stories when they point out unfortunate facts about events on the ground then their lives could be placed in serious danger. Then there is the threat to Col. McNally’s career and livelihood - giving briefings on matters such as civilian deaths is part of his responsibility and it seems he is being punished for simply doing his job. If the story proves to be untrue (and on the face of it it appears to have little foundation) then there needs to be a major enquiry and there should be serious consequences for those responsible. And it would be a good idea if our newspapers would adopt a less credulous approach to smear stories coming from anonymous sources of any kind.
In the meantime Rachel Reid and Owen McNally deserve the support of all of us who think it vital that our military operations are subject to proper scrutiny and the toll on civilian populations is properly reported..
More here from Conor Foley
Update (07/02/09): The MoD has, via a letter to the Guardian, denied that they gave Rachel Reid’s name to the media. This is rather odd, as every newspaper report of Col. Mcnally’s arrest mentioned her name. If it didn’t come from the MoD then where did it come from? The Guardian must know, why don’t they say?
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