Leak on CIA, Karzai's Brother Changes Everything
(AP Photo/File)
The leak of information about Afghan President Hamid Karzai's brother and his alleged connection to the CIA and tribal drug lords is curious. Leaks always are. But in this case, the release of this sensitive information is troublesome and potentially game-changing in a dangerous war.
Ahmed Wali Karzai (at left) admitted to giving the agency information, but has denied receiving any money from the CIA, or being part of the lucrative Afghanistan opium trade – making him, at least in Washington-talk, that much more guilty.
The information, published in the New York Times, first stated that the president's brother was, in effect, the southern sector's political boss, running the election, communicating with the Taliban for the U.S. government, informing the U.S. government of possible attacks, and overseeing several bridges vital to opium traffickers.
The U.N.'s report on the drug trade in Afghanistan, "Afghan Opium Survey 2009," released in Kabul by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) last month, said the drug lords and the government in Afghanistan had a "marriage of convenience," that the traffickers had built a stand-alone empire similar to South America's Colombian cartels, and that both the Taliban and the Afghan government extracted tariffs on their trade.
Read: Afghanistan Now Has Drug Cartels
Watch Pam Falk Discuss Recent Developments in Afghanistan and Pakistan
The analysis of the New York Times' information took it to new levels: Wali Karzai was reported, in other news, to be a major drug lord and a CIA operative. But regardless of the exaggeration, the fact remains that the president's brother has some connection to drug lords – even if it is personally-enriching political expediency – and that relationship is unacceptable by any American foreign policy standards.
Senate hearings have been called for — in the day since the information surfaced.
The report itself will change the political and military landscape in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The insurgents will use it as proof of the U.S. meddling at the highest level of the Afghan government. In Pakistan, where the use of drones is already being questioned by the U.N. envoy for extrajudicial killings — and the Pakistani Parliament questions the strings on the $7.5 billion U.S. aid package — the equation of the U.S. government to the CIA is devastating.
So, the obvious, unanswered question is: who leaked the information?
Speculation has begun, but the most curious aspect of the most recent Washington leak is the fact that there is not a major outcry from the administration, from the U.S. military or from the public, for that matter, about the security breach itself.
Leaks are to Washington as milk is to a baby. International politics has always run on the politically unsavory use of them.
In early October, staffers inside the usually airtight International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) leaked a report that is in draft form, of questionable intelligence, and still unpublished, that Iran has sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device, in order to imply that IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, cautious and with only one month to go in his unblemished tenure, was not allowing the report to be published.
More infamous leaks were the Pentagon Papers in the Vietnam era and the Valerie Plame saga, where she was exposed as a CIA agent married to former Bush Administration official, Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
The Karzai story may not help the Afghan President's principal opponent in the November 7 election, Abdullah Abdullah, that much, but it will certainly damage Hamid Karzai's credibility and ability to govern. It will also take Ahmed Wali Karzai out of the information trade.
The impact could be enormous and, more to the point, it brings to the surface a cavernously deep division between U.S. military intelligence – cited several times in the report – and the administration on Afghan strategy. The speculation is that the request by U.S. and NATO General Stanley A. McChrystal is strengthened by the need to combat the drug lords directly and because the drug trafficking has truly corrupted the Afghan government, implying as well that the Taliban has deeper stakes in the running of the country.
The alternative to the political theater of leaks in Washington, are whistleblowers: someone who is willing to commit personal and professional self-destruction by releasing the information with fingerprints. Peter Gabriel, the deputy of the U.N. Mission in Afghanistan, did that a few weeks ago on the extent of the fraud in the Afghan election, and was summarily fired.
To a certain extent, General McChrystal already has spoken out publicly for the need for more troops, and has been less outspoken in recent days.
Thus, the leak. Somewhere is Washington; someone has an interest in getting the information out, regardless of the possible danger to U.S. strategy and perception of the U.S. role in the war. That is not amazing. The only remarkable thing is that the Obama Administration is not outraged by it. In Washington tealeaf reading terms, that means the administration has the key motive for the leak.
With no fingerprints on the information, the speculation will continue. Meanwhile, U.S. war room deliberations on Afghanistan strategy just got a whole lot more complicated.
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is it true or not
one thing that will be forgotten in blaming for the leak is
"is it true"?
or not?
will be forgotten and it will turn into castigate the leaker.
well i say if it's true----give the leaker a commendation and not punishment
this country is ever investing in corrupt and evil people when will exert power over other countries. why? because wil can buy them. we don't interfere in their drug trade....(killing our own citizens and funding tour enemies)
the untied states is not a righteous nation. that should be shown by our history.
current and past,.
doesn't anyone watch the movies?
they play out the same themes in the movies as we see in real life. the president's brother is a drug dealer and he is corrupt to his ears along with him.
anybody surprised?
LOL
Society becomes incited about and reviles the funding of illicit drugs by our government, thus providing euphoric mental refuge for the homeless, prostitutes, college student, working man and even children. The consequences are endless, (to name a few): children or even adults are promptly expelled from school or work and (sometimes) prosecuted, if found to be 1. Indulging or 2. Trafficking in such illegal drugs. There is zero, zero, zero tolerance by the police and society for these drugs. Mere mention of taking ?cocaine? would be an endless stigma. If an accident occurred while under the influence, it wouldn?t take long to come to know the brutal penalties for such indulgence! There is even less leniency if these same drugs are being sanctioned by parents, companies or even the government. Without a doubt, this is a serious matter! If such drugs (chemicals) weren?t harmful and highly addictive, they probably wouldn?t be illegal.
Is there equivalent scrutiny, or lack thereof, for these similar, but extra potent, drugs (certified by the FDA and in addition funded by world governments) repackaged by big Pharma and doled out to 27 million children (not counting adults) internationally by Psychiatry and Medical doctors? For heaven?s sake, most of these drugs are factually derivatives from the same plants as the illegal drugs. Big Pharma certainly didn?t and wouldn?t tolerate being left out from making a ?legal? buck, along with the accompanied ?medical kick backs? provided to certain unholy and unethical doctors. This engineered flagrant and utter dismissive complacency by Society for these high powered, mind altering, narcotics has engendered a myriad of severe and deep seeded problems in our society that the common folk dismiss as ?Human Behavior? ? e.g. school shootings, suicide, illiteracy, nervousness, anxiety, etc.
Where is this coming from? Where is the reproof? How did Society become so deeply educated and convinced illicit drugs are bad? ?but on the other hand, how did we become so programmed into believing these same (repacked) Class II narcotics doled out by doctors/Psychs/Big Pharma are perfectly ok? ? How did this come about? Is it just because a doctor said it was so? Was this perhaps due to MASS marketing campaigns on TV? Perhaps it is the euphoric and addictive experience of the user wanting more. Maybe word of mouth or all of the above, and then some?
Society takes a stand against justifiably to what is morally bad or deemed illegal (e.g. murder, steeling, drugs, etc). But if made legal by a certain medical song and dance (i.e. charlatans) in some evasive, complicated and inextricable way, people are unable to relate the two and unquestionably accept it.
http://www.cchr.org/#/museum/intro
he and the cheney cabal conspired to invade iraq to build condoleeza rice's conoco oil pipeline.
everything stemmed from that. every mess we're in in iraq and afghanistan still belongs to bush. if obama commits to further troops he shares the outcome. bush is still to blame.
the same applies with the economy. the mess belongs to bush still. what obama does----successful or not does not change that fact. not for the economy nor for our war difficuties. neither would have happened without bush and cheney's doings.
you are right about not being able to defeat islam. it will endure to the end. who are the saints you're talking about?
american soldiers?
bush and cheney?
who are the saints?
they don't involve themselves in the world's wars. remember the one who cut off the ear and what jesus said. sound like he meant we should fight....did it?
not----he was pointing out that the saint fight in a totally different arena and for a totally different goal than stealing other countries oil.
very saintly of bush and cheney wasn't it?
:(
We know that the Bush administration approached Congress about rigging the Iraq election. Congress flat out said no, so Bush and his cronies went behind their backs and tried to rig the election anyway. It didn't happen, but the attempt was made... by the same administration that got into office through a disputed election. Not very smart.
Now we learn that millions of fraudulent votes were counted in favor of Bush buddy and Unical Oil executive, Hamid Karzai. If that wouldn't be bad enough, it turns out the CIA is bankrolling his brother, who happens to be the Opium king.
Are you Republicans OK with this?
In other words it's politics as usual.
When did the CIA not run drugs, employ dictators, gangsters and the politically connected?