The Wikileaks website has obtained more than 90,000 US military files many classified and made them available to international media networks. The leaks only reveal what had been know by many but went unreported or ignored by the western mainstream media. Media sources in the west have been keen to support their troops and maintain domestic opinion for the war as western casualties increase in an unwinnable war now in its ninth year.

The hidden military files leaked show scores of wanton killings of women and children. Assassinations, murders and contract killings by special forces (Black Ops) of alleged Taliban leaders. This is a horrific picture of killings revealing just how the war is actually being executed on the ground. Numbering in the tens of thousands these are clearly not isolated incidents carried out by individual ‘bad apples’ as is typically maintained by western military, government and media sources.

Some have argued that ‘war is messy’ – shamefully implying that the loss of innocent lives is inevitable and to be expected. Such a vast catalogue of killings of innocent civilians over several years of war however exposes a flagrant abuse of normal accepted rules of engagement without any means of restraint, control or accountability.

It appears the twenty-first century, western video-gaming generations brought up on killing for entertainment have been given a military uniform, a powerful riffle and let loose with a license to kill courtesy of western foreign policy.

The initial reactions of the US and UK Governments – which at every opportunity pronounce the mantra of winning heart and minds in Afghanistan – have been to dispute to the leaks as being irresponsible, and to have endangered the lives of their soldiers. As if the lives of the innocent women and children killed have no value. There are no calls from these liberal leaders to investigate the multitude of reports. These democratic governments, which preach the rule of law and their belief in human rights, are deafly silent about how such systematic abuses of the rules of engagement could take place, on such a large scale, over such a long period of time.

As western governments look for an exit strategy out of Afghanistan, while maintaining a controlling influence over the country, its politics and economy, these leaks are yet another reminder of the brutal occupation, which has destroyed the lives of a generation of Muslims in Afghanistan. The Karzi regime, sponsored and supported by the very western governments indiscriminately killing innocents is complicit in these crimes.

As with Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition, the lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – the list can go on – this catalogue of systemic killings of innocents falsely legitimised behind army garb has forever exposed the fallacy of the freedom and democracy agenda. It has woken a generation of Muslims to scrutinise western propaganda, be more politically aware and seek answers from Islam to the occupation of Muslim lands and to how a Muslim government – the Khalifah – will run the affairs of state independent of foreign governments.