Karzai's Brother a Bad Investment for CIA

Ahmed Wali Karzai has been linked to Afghanistan drug trade

(NEWSER) - The brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been on the CIA’s payroll for much of the past 8 years, a time during which he’s boosted his personal power in a large area of southern Afghanistan—and been linked to the opium trade. Ahmed Wali Karzai denies the claim, made by current and former US officials to the New York Times. More»

Afghan president again calls for more care in avoiding civilian casualties

(NEWSER) - NATO forces accidentally shot and killed a member of the Karzai family during a botched night raid, Ahmed Wali Karzai told reporters today. He described the victim only as "our father's cousin," the Telegraph reports. "The forces conducted an operation, he was at his home, he came out and was shot," said Karzai, the younger brother of the Afghan president. "It was a mistake. What can you do about it?" More»

Cases will be worked behind closed doors to appease Karzai

(NEWSER) - The Obama administration intends to dial back its attempts to clean up Hamid Karzai’s government, sources tell the Washington Post . Senior administration officials say they’ve generally agreed that instead of prosecuting allegedly corrupt Afghan officials, they should work out backroom compromises that won’t embarrass Karzai. “The current approach is not tenable,” says one administration official. “What will we get out of it? We'll arrest a few mid-level Afghans, but we'll lose our ability to operate there.” More»

Official at center of corruption probe has fingers in many pies

(NEWSER) - The aide who Hamid Karzai intervened to free after his arrest on corruption charges has been on the CIA payroll for years, according to Afghan and US officials. It's not clear what exactly Mohammed Zia Salehi does to earn CIA cash, or whether the Afghan president knew he was an informant, but the episode highlights the difficulty—some say impossibility—of the Obama administration's plan to stamp out Afghan corruption, the New York Times notes. More»

Biggest military leak in history underscores grim realities

(NEWSER) - Wikileaks has unveiled 92,000 secret documents about the Afghan war, which, in the New York Times ' words, "illustrate in mosaic detail why ... the Taliban are stronger than at any time since 2001." Don't have time to scan through 92,000 documents? Here are what appear to be the top revelations:

1. The Army Delta Force runs a top-secret group of commandos called Task Force 373, charged with assassinating Taliban leaders. Some of their raids have resulted in civilian casualties; in one case, seven children were killed by a rocket.
2. The Taliban has employed heat-seeking anti-aircraft rockets, of the same kind the US gave the mujahedeen during the Soviet occupation.
3. The US covered up one attack made with one of those rockets, saying it had been downed by conventional weaponry.