Karzai's Narco-Trafficking Brother Is On CIA's Payroll

By Steve Hynd

The New York Times, in what must be a measure of how sure they are of their information, rolled out the big guns today - Filkins, Mazzetti and Risen - to write the story of how Afghan president Hamid Karzai's brother has been on the CIA payroll for years.

Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.

The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.

... The relationship between Mr. Karzai and the C.I.A. is wide ranging, several American officials said. He helps the C.I.A. operate a paramilitary group, the Kandahar Strike Force, that is used for raids against suspected insurgents and terrorists. On at least one occasion, the strike force has been accused of mounting an unauthorized operation against an official of the Afghan government, the officials said.

Mr. Karzai is also paid for allowing the C.I.A. and American Special Operations troops to rent a large compound outside the city — the former home of Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban’s founder. The same compound is also the base of the Kandahar Strike Force. “He’s our landlord,” a senior American official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

I mean, WTF? If there's a more perfect way to undermine any prospect whatsoever of the Karzai government being seen as legitimate, I can't think of it. And as for U.S. policy of preventing heroin trafficking, at least some of the money from which helps fund the Taliban? It's in the crapper.

The best that anonymous officials can say in the CIA's defense is that there's "no proof of Ahmed Wali Karzai’s involvement in drug trafficking, certainly nothing that would stand up in court." Well, not a court in Afghanistan, certainly.

But Andrew Exum has some very forceful things to say about Ahmed Walid Karzai, who he terms "AWK":

numerous military officials in southern Afghanistan with whom I have spoken identify AWK and his activities as the biggest problem they face -- bigger than the lack of government services or even the Taliban. And so if AWK is "the agency's guy", that leads to a huge point of friction between NATO/ISAF and the CIA. Again, I am not currently serving as an advisor to ISAF and cannot speak for Gen. McChrystal's command. But I do not have to:

“If we are going to conduct a population-centric strategy in Afghanistan, and we are perceived as backing thugs, then we are just undermining ourselves,” said Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the senior American military intelligence official in Afghanistan.

“The only way to clean up Chicago is to get rid of Capone,” General Flynn said.

Again, I am not in a position to confirm or deny that the CIA has an enduring relationship with AWK, and I am telling the truth when I tell you that all I "know" about this is what I read in the open source world. But you can be darn sure that if we think that AWK is the CIA's guy, the Afghans most certainly believe that to be the case. [Emphasis Mine - S]

What the CIA has done, and done for most of the last eight years apparently, directly undermines any population-centric counter-insurgency that was ever possible in Afghanistan. The leaking of its ties to Karzai's brother is a disaster of nightmare proportions for any chance of COIN success there, the icing on the cake. Added to all the other factors - the election, the civilians bombed, the abysmal state of the Afghan security forces, the very fact of a foreign occupation - the occupation has passed its tipping point for sure.

Spencer Ackerman wants to know when the Congressional investigation starts.

At this point, everything about the U.S. policy toward the Afghan drug trade — from tolerance to eradication during the Bush administration to an evolving approach to cultivating alternatives — now ought to be questioned. As in questioned in open congressional session. CIA money funds a politically connected drug dealer. Opium funds the Taliban. We are in Afghanistan to fight the Taliban. How much CIA money has indirectly funded the Taliban?

And that’s just scratching the surface of speculation that Congress needs to deal with. What’s the connection, if any, between U.S. counternarcotics policy in southern Afghanistan and the CIA/Ahmed Wali Karzai relationship? The Times notes that a variety of counternarcotics officials have “repeatedly expressed frustration over the unwillingness of senior policy makers in Washington to take action against Mr. Karzai — or even launch a serious investigation of the allegations against him.

...Who’s going to be the first member of Congress to call for hearings into the CIA/Karzai clique relationship?

Although that will be bolting stable doors after the horses have all bolted. It's a pity in many ways that this will land on Obama's doorstep when it was obviously a Bush administration initiative. My advice to the current White House would be to forget about the usual "we don't comment on intelligence operations" bulls**t. We're talking a potential Iran/Contra level mess here - spill the beans.

Comments

[Lex]

Honestly, i don't buy it. I mean, i've believed/known that the CIA was up to these tricks the whole time. But i don't buy that this is a revelation.

Man, this was THE strategy. More importantly, i'd like to know how the Obama administration plans to find someone untainted by the opium trade in Afghanistan. It's been the country's only reliable cash crop for at least 60 years.

What i see is a timed decision to bring this too light. What i don't understand is all the efforts to cut Karzai's legs out from under him without a viable replacement at ready.

If i thought that Obama had the guts to stand up to his generals and say, "We're withdrawing and you're fired," i could see this as setting the stage for the exit. I don't see that happening, so where does this leave the strategy?

[rawdawgbuffalo]

All crooks. will we ever learn AfPak is a Pasthun problem, what can we do differently than russia w 200K troops in 8 years?

[Batocchio]

Come on, Steve, we're there fighting for their freedom to do what we choose for them. The imperialist always knows best. And it worked so splendidly in Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Chile...

[Kathy Kattenburg]

Maybe I'm crazy but wasn't Hamid Karzai himself once on the CIA payroll? I don't understand why this is such a blockbuster revelation.

[Steve Hynd]

Hi Kathy

Hamid Karzai was on the payroll when he was a simple consultant, not the drug-trafficking brother of a national leader who perpetrated massive electoral fraud in a nation in which US troops are fighting and dying for a chimera of "legitimacy".

Regards, Steve