NASH BASH: As we reported earlier on this page, Heroin Hamid's brother "Wally" is a drug lord whose big brother has been assisting in the business and, since the Bush administration, has been on the CIA payroll as an informant. This explains why he has be "bulletproof" and "off limits" for arrest by law enforcement.
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"The only way to clean up Chicago is to get rid of Capone,"
(Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the senior American military intelligence official in Afghanistan)
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.
[...]
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.
"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.
While there is no proof that Karzai is engaged in drug trafficking, and he has denied it, military and political officials in the Obama administration say the circumstantial evidence strongly implies that the Afghan president's brother has enriched himself in the illegal poppy trade.
Other Western officials pointed to evidence that Ahmed Wali Karzai orchestrated the manufacture of hundreds of thousands of phony ballots for his brother’s re-election effort in August. He is also believed to have been responsible for setting up dozens of so-called ghost polling stations — existing only on paper — that were used to manufacture tens of thousands of phony ballots.
"The only way to clean up Chicago is to get rid of Capone," General Flynn said.
The Times cited officials as saying that U.S. efforts against other Afghan drug lords may have strengthened Karzai's influence over the drug trade.
by Meteor Blades http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/10/28/797945/-NY-Times:-CIA-Put-President-Karzais-Drug-Smuggling-Brother-on-Its-Tab
"For the past eight years, the brother of Afghan president Hamid Karzai has reportedly been on the CIA payroll. The brother has also long been accused of being one of Afghanistan's biggest narcotics dealers (he has vehemently denied both claims). According to the New York Times, the brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, is a CIA source, provides bases for the CIA, as well as our military, and serves as a go-between with parts of the Taliban. If it sounds a lot like Vietnam when Vietnam started to really come apart, it is — President Diem's grotesquely corrupt brother was a CIA source and a noxious agent of influence." http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1932967,00.html
Brother of Afghan Leader Is Said to Be on C.I.A. Payroll
By DEXTER FILKINS, MARK MAZZETTI and JAMES RISEN
Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of President Hamid Karzai and a suspected player in the opium trade, has gotten payments from the C.I.A. for eight years, American officials said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/world/asia/28intel.html?th&emc=th
