We have previously discussed reports of billions disappearing in Afghanistan and the long record of corruption surrounding the family and friends of President Hamid Karzai. Now a new report details how for more than a decade, the CIA has been dropping off monthly suitcases, backpacks and even shopping bags filled with cash to Karzai at his office. Despite these reports of grotesque corruption, the money continues to flow into Karzai’s pockets even as he attacks the U.S. and Americans as “demons”, and moves to shift alliances to Iran and China.
It appears that the CIA has dropped off “tens of millions” in cash to Karzai personally according to the report below. His former chief staffer, Khalil Roman says that they called it Karzai’s “ghost money” and that it simply disappeared with the president.
Officials are quoted as saying that it was the CIA and the Americans who were “the biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan.”
The cash deliveries to Karzai were viewed as necessary to keep access to him as if the thousands of killed and wounded Americans (and hundreds of billions in aid) was not enough to keep the door open.
Because no one (including Obama) wants to be blamed for the disaster in Afghanistan, we continue to pour billions into the country and sacrifice military personnel to prop up this corrupt government and maintain a country that is increasingly denying basic rights to women and religious minorities. The bags of cash however truly sum out the lunacy of American policy in Afghanistan.
Source: NYTimes
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http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/05/05/the-blame-game-begins-who-will-be-held-responsible-for-creating-the-afghan-vertically-integrated-criminal-government/#more-35095
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http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2013/05/afghanistan_war_the_cia_has_been_giving_hamid_karzai_bags_of_cash_uh_oh.html
Extract:
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Especially in the Obama years, when U.S. troop levels soared and a counterinsurgency strategy was put in place, top officials—including Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, and the two successive commanders, Gens. David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal—said many times, in public and private, that the Karzai regime’s corruption was at least as big a problem, and threatened Afghan stability, at least as much as the Taliban.
McChrystal made the point most starkly in his 66-page memo, written in August 2009, soon after he became commander: “Progress is hindered,” he wrote, by “a crisis of confidence in the [Afghan] government,” owing to “the weakness of state institutions, malign actions of power brokers, widespread corruption and abuse of power by various officials.” All this has “given Afghans little reason to support their government” and has created “fertile ground for the insurgency.” To win the people’s support and thus win the war, U.S. and NATO forces “must protect the people from both of these threats”—the insurgents and their own government.
Now we learn that the CIA was greasing the wheels of these power brokers all along. Or, as the Times story quotes one U.S. official saying, “The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan was the United States.”
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