Ahmed Wali Karzai, the governor of Afghanistan’s Kandahar province and the brother of Afghan president Hamid Karzai, has been paid by the CIA for the past eight years, The New York Times reported this week.
The newspaper claims he provides bases for the agency and acts as a Taliban contact. The newspaper also states Ahmed Karzai is deeply involved in the Afghan drug trade.
The Afghan President's brother has denied the allegations in The New York Times.
This leak is politically timed, argues American investigative journalist Gerald Posner, noting that intelligent agencies leaking information to a major newspaper right before the presidential run-off is suspect.
The CIA always pay for the information but it never comes with a check marked “CIA, Langley, Virginia,” Posner said. It comes from a foreign company, so Ahmed Wali Karzai could probably swear under oath that he never got any financial support from the CIA and everybody would confirm it – with a wink of an eye.
Ahmed Wali Karzai is the brother of Hamid Karzai, who won the recent elections amid numerous accusations of fraud, and this creates a political problem for President Barack Obama. Afghanistan produces 93% of the world’s opium. Ahmed Wali Karzai is accused of being involved in the opium trade and working for the CIA simultaneously, making him a perfect political bomb.
Ahmed Wali Karzai has defenders at the highest levels of American politics, said Posner.
“Just the other day Senator John Kerry happened to be visiting Afghanistan and being asked what he thought about the evidence on Ahmed Wali Karza being a dope dealer,” he said. He answered that “he said he asked intelligence [about Karzai] and they have not produced one [piece of evidence].”