NY Times - Doug
Ollivant, who worked in the National Security Council for Mr. Obama and
President George W. Bush, said Mr. Ghani is a “Western-oriented” leader
who would be comfortable rubbing shoulders with intellectuals at the
World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, or the Aspen Ideas Forum in
Colorado. “He’s a creature of Washington, a creature of Aspen and Davos,” he said. “He’s extremely comfortable moving in these circles.”
Matthew Rosenberg, NY Times, Aprl 2013 - For more than a decade, wads of American dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags have been dropped off every month or so at the offices of Afghanistan’s president — courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency.
All told, tens of millions of dollars have flowed from the C.I.A. to the office of President Hamid Karzai, according to current and former advisers to the Afghan leader.
“We called it ‘ghost money,’ ” said Khalil Roman, who served as Mr. Karzai’s deputy chief of staff from 2002 until 2005. “It came in secret, and it left in secret.”
…American and Afghan officials familiar with the payments said the agency’s main goal in providing the cash has been to maintain access to Mr. Karzai and his inner circle and to guarantee the agency’s influence at the presidential palace, which wields tremendous power in Afghanistan’s highly centralized government.
… Afghan officials said the practice grew out of the unique circumstances in Afghanistan, where the United States built the government that Mr. Karzai runs. To accomplish that task, it had to bring to heel many of the warlords the C.I.A. had paid during and after the 2001 invasion.
By late 2002, Mr. Karzai and his aides were pressing for the payments to be routed through the president’s office, allowing him to buy the warlords’ loyalty, a former adviser to Mr. Karzai said.
Then, in December 2002, Iranians showed up at the palace in a sport utility vehicle packed with cash, the former adviser said.
The C.I.A. began dropping off cash at the palace the following month, and the sums grew from there, Afghan officials said.
Payments ordinarily range from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, the officials said, though none could provide exact figures. The money is used to cover a slew of off-the-books expenses, like paying off lawmakers or underwriting delicate diplomatic trips or informal negotiations.
This won’t come as much of surprise to long term Review readers. Beginning in 2001 we began running stories on Karzai and his connections with the CIA, among other things. Here are some of the items we ran:
Eric Margolis, Toronto Sun, 2001 - Last week's much-ballyhooed Afghan "unity" conference in Germany produced precisely what this column predicted: a sham "coalition" government run by the Northern Alliance. One of the CIA's Pashtun "assets," Hamid Karzai, who represents no one but himself, was named prime minister. There was no other real Pashtun representation, though they comprise half the population . . .
Bill Gertz, Geostrategy, 2001 - U.S. officials said Afghanistan's new interim leader, Hamid Karzai, has a long history of contacts with both the CIA and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence service, known as ISI. The connections are said to be the reason Karzai was the candidate most acceptable to the United States and Pakistan. Karzai will head the new government over the next six months. Karzai and several brothers own a chain of restauraunts in Chicago, San Francisco, Boston and Baltimore. They have residences in Quetta, Islamabad and Peshawar . . . Karzai met the late CIA Director Bill Casey when Casey made one of his numerous trips to Pakistan during the U.S. covert operation to back mujahideen rebels against the Soviet Union during the 1980s. His ties to ISI are based on connections to former ISI Director Akhtar Abdur Rahman Khan and date to the early 1980s. Karzai, a moderate Msulim, and his father, Abdul Ahad Karzai, were befriended by ISI in the early 1980s.
Peter Symonds, Bangkok Post, 2002 - A little publicized agreement signed in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad has highlighted once again the real motives behind the US military intervention into Afghanistan - access to and domination of Central Asian oil and gas. The deal between Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Central Asian republic of Turkmenistan establishes the basis for construction of a $1.9 billion pipeline from the Turkmen natural gas fields at Daulatabad through to the south-western Pakistani port of Gawadar. A parallel oil pipeline as well as road and rail connections are also being considered, along with processing facilities at Gawadar to enable the shipment of liquefied gas. All three leaders _ new Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Turkmen President Saparmurad Niyazov _ anticipate substantial benefits from the project.
NY Times, 2009 - 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 financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Mr. Karzai raise significant questions about America’s war strategy, which is currently under review at the White House.
The ties to Mr. Karzai have created deep divisions within the Obama administration. The critics say the ties complicate America’s increasingly tense relationship with President Hamid Karzai, who has struggled to build sustained popularity among Afghans and has long been portrayed by the Taliban as an American puppet. The C.I.A.’s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.
More broadly, some American officials argue that the reliance on Ahmed Wali Karzai, the most powerful figure in a large area of southern Afghanistan where the Taliban insurgency is strongest, undermines the American push to develop an effective central government that can maintain law and order and eventually allow the United States to withdraw.
Tom Lasseter, McClatchy, 2009 - The ride to Kandahar airport was tense. The Afghan president's brother had just yelled a litany of obscenities and said he was about to beat me.
Ahmed Wali Karzai is feared by many in southern Afghanistan, and being threatened by him, in his home, isn't something to be taken lightly.
In a place like Kandahar, I try to take precautions — letting my beard grow and wearing the traditional Afghan outfit of baggy pants and a long tunic — but at the end of the day, there's no protection when the most powerful official in the region orders you to leave.
So after a quick consultation with locals, I decided to do just that.
I was in my third week of tracking down former Afghan officials and asking them about drugs and corruption. Several had mentioned Karzai, President Hamid Karzai's brother and the head of Kandahar's provincial council.
After talking with poppy farmers, a drug dealer and former officials in Kandahar, it was time to see Ahmed Wali Karzai.
Sitting in his home, Karzai said up front that he had nothing to do with drugs. The political enemies of his brother, the president, were spreading rumors: "I am just the victim of their politics, that's all," he said.
I flipped from one page to the next of my notebook, and started with specifics.
Dad Mohammed Khan, a former national intelligence directorate chief of Helmand province, told me that Karzai had sent an intermediary to force him to release a Taliban commander who'd been arrested in a major drug-trafficking area. Khan was killed by a roadside bomb after our interview.
"He died, so I don't know if he told you that," Karzai said, looking unhappy with the question.
He added: "He's dead, so let's leave it there."
I moved on to a second former security official from the region — I had jotted a long list of names — who'd also made allegations about Karzai.
Karzai said that the official "is alive, I can find him and talk to him." He called for one of his men to bring a cell phone.
He began to glare at me and questioned whether I was really a reporter.
"It seems like someone sent you to write these things," he said, scowling.
Karzai glared some more.
"You should leave right now," he said.
I stuck my hand out to shake his; if I learned anything from three years of reporting in Iraq and then trips to Afghanistan during the past couple of years, it's that when things turn bad, you should cling to any remaining shred of hospitality.
Karzai grabbed my hand and used it to give me a bit of a push into the next room. He followed me, and his voice rose until it was a scream of curse words and threats.
I managed to record just one full sentence: "Get the (expletive) out before I kick your (expletive)."
I won't describe the rest, because it involves the Afghans I was working with, none of whom wants to risk revenge in a country where feuds often end in blood.
Once I was at the airport, there were still several hours until the flight and I had only fuzzy ideas of what to do if the plane to Kabul were canceled, a common occurrence.
I was with my Afghan colleague, and neither of us talked much. It's a routine that we've worked out, the silence in which we collect ourselves and let the fear settle.
After several hours of delay — there was speculation about whether there was no fuel, or a government minister was running late — the plane finally took off.
I looked out the window, and there was Kandahar below. A few minutes later, I looked again, and it was gone, leaving only the darkness of the Afghan night. The trip back to Kabul was a quiet one.
And farewell, Karzai
Matthew Rosenberg, NY Times, Aprl 2013 - For more than a decade, wads of American dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags have been dropped off every month or so at the offices of Afghanistan’s president — courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency.
All told, tens of millions of dollars have flowed from the C.I.A. to the office of President Hamid Karzai, according to current and former advisers to the Afghan leader.
“We called it ‘ghost money,’ ” said Khalil Roman, who served as Mr. Karzai’s deputy chief of staff from 2002 until 2005. “It came in secret, and it left in secret.”
…American and Afghan officials familiar with the payments said the agency’s main goal in providing the cash has been to maintain access to Mr. Karzai and his inner circle and to guarantee the agency’s influence at the presidential palace, which wields tremendous power in Afghanistan’s highly centralized government.
… Afghan officials said the practice grew out of the unique circumstances in Afghanistan, where the United States built the government that Mr. Karzai runs. To accomplish that task, it had to bring to heel many of the warlords the C.I.A. had paid during and after the 2001 invasion.
By late 2002, Mr. Karzai and his aides were pressing for the payments to be routed through the president’s office, allowing him to buy the warlords’ loyalty, a former adviser to Mr. Karzai said.
Then, in December 2002, Iranians showed up at the palace in a sport utility vehicle packed with cash, the former adviser said.
The C.I.A. began dropping off cash at the palace the following month, and the sums grew from there, Afghan officials said.
Payments ordinarily range from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, the officials said, though none could provide exact figures. The money is used to cover a slew of off-the-books expenses, like paying off lawmakers or underwriting delicate diplomatic trips or informal negotiations.
This won’t come as much of surprise to long term Review readers. Beginning in 2001 we began running stories on Karzai and his connections with the CIA, among other things. Here are some of the items we ran:
Eric Margolis, Toronto Sun, 2001 - Last week's much-ballyhooed Afghan "unity" conference in Germany produced precisely what this column predicted: a sham "coalition" government run by the Northern Alliance. One of the CIA's Pashtun "assets," Hamid Karzai, who represents no one but himself, was named prime minister. There was no other real Pashtun representation, though they comprise half the population . . .
Bill Gertz, Geostrategy, 2001 - U.S. officials said Afghanistan's new interim leader, Hamid Karzai, has a long history of contacts with both the CIA and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence service, known as ISI. The connections are said to be the reason Karzai was the candidate most acceptable to the United States and Pakistan. Karzai will head the new government over the next six months. Karzai and several brothers own a chain of restauraunts in Chicago, San Francisco, Boston and Baltimore. They have residences in Quetta, Islamabad and Peshawar . . . Karzai met the late CIA Director Bill Casey when Casey made one of his numerous trips to Pakistan during the U.S. covert operation to back mujahideen rebels against the Soviet Union during the 1980s. His ties to ISI are based on connections to former ISI Director Akhtar Abdur Rahman Khan and date to the early 1980s. Karzai, a moderate Msulim, and his father, Abdul Ahad Karzai, were befriended by ISI in the early 1980s.
Peter Symonds, Bangkok Post, 2002 - A little publicized agreement signed in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad has highlighted once again the real motives behind the US military intervention into Afghanistan - access to and domination of Central Asian oil and gas. The deal between Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Central Asian republic of Turkmenistan establishes the basis for construction of a $1.9 billion pipeline from the Turkmen natural gas fields at Daulatabad through to the south-western Pakistani port of Gawadar. A parallel oil pipeline as well as road and rail connections are also being considered, along with processing facilities at Gawadar to enable the shipment of liquefied gas. All three leaders _ new Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Turkmen President Saparmurad Niyazov _ anticipate substantial benefits from the project.
NY Times, 2009 - 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 financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Mr. Karzai raise significant questions about America’s war strategy, which is currently under review at the White House.
The ties to Mr. Karzai have created deep divisions within the Obama administration. The critics say the ties complicate America’s increasingly tense relationship with President Hamid Karzai, who has struggled to build sustained popularity among Afghans and has long been portrayed by the Taliban as an American puppet. The C.I.A.’s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.
More broadly, some American officials argue that the reliance on Ahmed Wali Karzai, the most powerful figure in a large area of southern Afghanistan where the Taliban insurgency is strongest, undermines the American push to develop an effective central government that can maintain law and order and eventually allow the United States to withdraw.
Tom Lasseter, McClatchy, 2009 - The ride to Kandahar airport was tense. The Afghan president's brother had just yelled a litany of obscenities and said he was about to beat me.
Ahmed Wali Karzai is feared by many in southern Afghanistan, and being threatened by him, in his home, isn't something to be taken lightly.
In a place like Kandahar, I try to take precautions — letting my beard grow and wearing the traditional Afghan outfit of baggy pants and a long tunic — but at the end of the day, there's no protection when the most powerful official in the region orders you to leave.
So after a quick consultation with locals, I decided to do just that.
I was in my third week of tracking down former Afghan officials and asking them about drugs and corruption. Several had mentioned Karzai, President Hamid Karzai's brother and the head of Kandahar's provincial council.
After talking with poppy farmers, a drug dealer and former officials in Kandahar, it was time to see Ahmed Wali Karzai.
Sitting in his home, Karzai said up front that he had nothing to do with drugs. The political enemies of his brother, the president, were spreading rumors: "I am just the victim of their politics, that's all," he said.
I flipped from one page to the next of my notebook, and started with specifics.
Dad Mohammed Khan, a former national intelligence directorate chief of Helmand province, told me that Karzai had sent an intermediary to force him to release a Taliban commander who'd been arrested in a major drug-trafficking area. Khan was killed by a roadside bomb after our interview.
"He died, so I don't know if he told you that," Karzai said, looking unhappy with the question.
He added: "He's dead, so let's leave it there."
I moved on to a second former security official from the region — I had jotted a long list of names — who'd also made allegations about Karzai.
Karzai said that the official "is alive, I can find him and talk to him." He called for one of his men to bring a cell phone.
He began to glare at me and questioned whether I was really a reporter.
"It seems like someone sent you to write these things," he said, scowling.
Karzai glared some more.
"You should leave right now," he said.
I stuck my hand out to shake his; if I learned anything from three years of reporting in Iraq and then trips to Afghanistan during the past couple of years, it's that when things turn bad, you should cling to any remaining shred of hospitality.
Karzai grabbed my hand and used it to give me a bit of a push into the next room. He followed me, and his voice rose until it was a scream of curse words and threats.
I managed to record just one full sentence: "Get the (expletive) out before I kick your (expletive)."
I won't describe the rest, because it involves the Afghans I was working with, none of whom wants to risk revenge in a country where feuds often end in blood.
Once I was at the airport, there were still several hours until the flight and I had only fuzzy ideas of what to do if the plane to Kabul were canceled, a common occurrence.
I was with my Afghan colleague, and neither of us talked much. It's a routine that we've worked out, the silence in which we collect ourselves and let the fear settle.
After several hours of delay — there was speculation about whether there was no fuel, or a government minister was running late — the plane finally took off.
I looked out the window, and there was Kandahar below. A few minutes later, I looked again, and it was gone, leaving only the darkness of the Afghan night. The trip back to Kabul was a quiet one.
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