CIA officials are said to pay Afghan president’s brother
KABUL, Afghanistan - Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the CIA, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former US officials.
The agency pays Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the CIA’s direction in and around Kandahar, Karzai’s home. The financial ties and close working relationship between the CIA and Karzai raise questions about America’s war strategy, which is under review at the White House.
The ties to Karzai have created divisions within the Obama administration. The critics say the ties complicate America’s tense relationship with President Hamid Karzai. The CIA’s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.
Some US officials argue that the reliance on Ahmed Wali Karzai, the most powerful figure in a large area of southern Afghanistan where the Taliban are strongest, undermines the US push to develop an effective central government.
“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 Major General Mike Flynn, the senior US military intelligence official in Afghanistan.
Ahmed Karzai said he cooperates with American civilian and military officials, but is not in the drug trade and gets no CIA pay.
US officials said that he helps the CIA operate a paramilitary group, the Kandahar Strike Force, that is used for raids against suspected insurgents and terrorists. The force has been accused of mounting an unauthorized operation against an official of the Afghan government.
Ahmed Karzai helps the CIA communicate with and sometimes meet Taliban commanders.
A CIA spokesman declined to comment. Some US officials said allegations of Ahmed Karzai’s role in the drug trade were not conclusive.
