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
leej, Absolutely! Think about the taxes we pay. Most of it is money we never see, it’s deducted from the hard earned money we make, and simply added to the purchases we make. Now, think of when you make a large purchase, like an auto. When you pay that tax to the state it’s disconcerting because it’s a big chunk. How about property taxes. We get out tax bill along w/ all or Christmas cards, it’s almost sadistic. leej, I was self employed most of my adult life. Every month I had to cut a check for my Fed and state income taxes. I also had to cut a check for my SS and Fica x 2! I had the distinct privelege of paying my personal and employer payroll tax. I had employees and of course paid payrool taxes for them. I didn’t have a big biz. It was bigger than most agencies in Wi., but not big. Those checks I would cut monthly were always 4 figures and sometimes 5. If we want to end this tax hell, we need to simply have us pay taxes like I did. Folks would then see quite clearly it is their money, it’s too damn much, and they would be MUCH more attuned to horseshit like this Karzai fiasco.
If good Americans only knew what’s going on domestically.
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As to Afghanistan, an interesting article in the NY Times this past weekend:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/world/asia/bernard-bajolet-leaving-afghanistan-has-his-say.html?_r=1&
Departing French Envoy Has Frank Words on Afghanistan
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
Published: April 27, 2013
KABUL, Afghanistan — It is always hard to gauge what diplomats really think unless one of their cables ends up on WikiLeaks, but every once in a while, the barriers fall and a bit of truth slips into public view.
In a farewell speech, Bernard Bajolet outlined the challenges facing Afghanistan.
That is especially true in Afghanistan, where diplomats painstakingly weigh every word against political goals back home.
The positive spin from the Americans has been running especially hard the last few weeks, as Congressional committees in Washington focus on spending bills and the Obama administration, trying to secure money for a few more years here, talks up the country’s progress. The same is going on at the European Union, where the tone has been sterner than in the past, but still glosses predictions of Afghanistan’s future with upbeat words like “promise” and “potential.”
Despite that, one of those rare truth-telling moments came at a farewell cocktail party last week hosted by the departing French ambassador to Kabul: Bernard Bajolet, who is leaving to head France’s Direction Génerale de la Sécurité Extérieure, its foreign intelligence service.
After the white-coated staff passed the third round of hors d’oeuvres, Mr. Bajolet took the lectern and laid out a picture of how France — a country plagued by a slow economy, waning public support for the Afghan endeavor and demands from other foreign conflicts, including Syria and North Africa — looked at Afghanistan.
While it is certainly easier for France to be a critic from the sidelines than countries whose troops are still fighting in Afghanistan, the country can claim to have done its part. It lost more troops than all but three other countries before withdrawing its last combat forces in the fall.
The room, filled with diplomats, some senior soldiers and a number of Afghan dignitaries, went deadly quiet. When Mr. Bajolet finished, there was restrained applause — and sober expressions. One diplomat raised his eyebrows and nodded slightly; another said, “No holding back there.”
So what did he say?
That the Afghan project is on thin ice and that, collectively, the West was responsible for a chunk of what went wrong, though much of the rest the Afghans were responsible for. That the West had done a good job of fighting terrorism, but that most of that was done on Pakistani soil, not on the Afghan side of the border. And that without fundamental changes in how Afghanistan did business, the Afghan government, and by extension the West’s investment in it, would come to little.
His tone was neither shrill nor reproachful. It was matter-of-fact.
“I still cannot understand how we, the international community, and the Afghan government have managed to arrive at a situation in which everything is coming together in 2014 — elections, new president, economic transition, military transition and all this — whereas the negotiations for the peace process have not really started,” Mr. Bajolet said in his opening comments.
He was echoing a point shared privately by other diplomats, that 2014 was likely to be “a perfect storm” of political and military upheaval coinciding with the formal close of the NATO combat mission in Afghanistan.
As for the success of the fight on the ground, which American leaders routinely describe now as being “Afghan-led,” Mr. Bajolet sounded dubious. “We do not have enough distance to make an objective assessment,” he said, “but in any case, I think it crucial that the Afghan highest leadership take more visible and obvious ownership for their army.”
His tone — the sober, troubled observations of a diplomat closing a chapter — could hardly have been more different from that taken by the new shift of American officials charged with making it work in Afghanistan: in particular, with that of Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the new American commanding general here. This week, General Dunford sent out a news release cheering on Afghanistan’s progress, noting some positive-leaning statistics and praising the Afghan Army’s abilities.
“Very soon, the A.N.S.F. will be responsible for security nationwide” General Dunford said, referring to the Afghan National Security Forces. “They are steadily gaining in confidence, competence, and commitment.”
At his farewell party, Mr. Bajolet wound up his realpolitik with a brisk analysis of what Afghanistan’s government needed to do: cut corruption, which discourages investment, deal with drugs and become fiscally self-reliant. It must increase its revenues instead of letting politicians divert them, he said.
Several diplomats in the room could be seen nodding as he said that drugs caused “more casualties than terrorism” in Russia, Europe and the Balkans and that Western governments would be hard-put to make the case for continued spending on Afghanistan if it remains the world’s largest heroin supplier.
The biggest contrast with the American and British line was Mr. Bajolet’s riff on sovereignty, which has become the political watchword of the moment. The Americans and the international community are giving sovereignty back to Afghanistan. Afghanistan argues frequently that it is a sovereign nation. President Hamid Karzai, in the debate over taking charge of the Bagram prison, repeatedly said that Afghanistan had a sovereign responsibility to its prisoners.
His implicit question was, what does that really mean?
“We should be lucid: a country that depends almost entirely on the international community for the salaries of its soldiers and policemen, for most of its investments and partly on it for its current civil expenditure, cannot be really independent.”
What are the consequences for this or any illegal acts?
Since the green light was given to torture, anything only slightly less reprehensible is now just perfectly kosher.
What we have is unsustainable. There will be revolution, the severity of which grows with each passing day with this kind of story continuing to unfold.
Nick wrote “However, don’t think this was the CIA’s money. This was OUR money. We are over taxed and incredibly under served.”
I think part of the problem is most people don’t see the government’s money as being from us.
I think there is a great disconnect between the citizens, governing and government.
Sam, you’re solutions are worse, far worse, than the problems. The is not the French Revolution and chopping heads is not the answer. Fighting back against the anti-intellectualism crusade of the pwerful Fringe Right is the first step needed here.
Much of our govt should be arrested and tried for corruption
BarkinDog and his half blind guy Pal are in DC and are flying off to Den Haag to do some law work on human rights. He will report in when they get situated in Amsterdam. Hopefully not situated next door to the Hund Bordello.
Tony Soprano gave bags of money to politicians. But, then he owned them, and they didn’t f@ck w/ him. This is ineptitude and insanity, quite a combo. However, don’t think this was the CIA’s money. This was OUR money. We are over taxed and incredibly under served. But, our prez believes we need to pay more. maybe Karzai is telling his “handlers” he needs more money.
Specially if you have a shaved round head.
It just shows what a shaved head caped crusader can do if he gets in the right place at the right time. He is sure glad those Russians split back in the early 80s. We built up the TalyBahn to take on the Russkies and now he has them to deal with so as to pork off of our cash machine. What comes round goes round.
OT
Speaking of cash, the high court of Iceland has warned that if Wikileaks accounts are not unfrozen, very heavy daily penalties will ensue.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22294108
What Frankly said. It is far past time to leave Afghanistan and take out money with us. That includes the friendly CIA! Karzai was dirty before we installed him into office and we have kept him dirty. Time to set him free.
It’s really crazy.
Back in 2010 the NYT story was that Iran was paying millions to Karzai. The fact that the the CIA were doing the same was not mentioned.
Karzai feeds some of these millions to Taliban warlords so they won’t give him too much of a hard time.
This is not really alarming. US taxpayer’s money going to the Taliban is a traditon.
It was the CIA that financed and trained the Taliban ( including what became AQ ) way back to fight the Russians who were then the occupying force.
Then the Taliban won – which was a success story for the CIA after all the money and resources they poured into them.
No wait!
Invade Afghanistan because the Taliban are the bad guys.
.
For ordinary Afghans, there’s no real difference between the Russians and the Coalition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_in_the_War_in_Afghanistan_%282001%E2%80%93present%29#Afghan_protestation_of_civilian_deaths_caused_by_international_forces
I don’t think they see the civilian casualties caused by ‘ their saviours’ as any improvement. It is probably little comfort that those casualties are ‘only’ 20% to 25% of those caused by insurgents fighting the occupation
I would guess that years of death and destruction leaves Afghans very cynical about outsiders. This is probably very understandable.
Paul 1, April 29, 2013 at 10:16 am
So everyone knows and yet it continues. What does this say about us electing (and reelecting) the idiots that make this happen?
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The elections are rigged with money and more?
So everyone knows and yet it continues. What does this say about us electing (and reelecting) the idiots that make this happen?
How much longer are we going to take this before we force a change because i say its time. Time to remove both parties from our government
Our country is a disaster of corruption. Rome is falling.
The Cold War destroyed us alng with the Soviets. It just took longer for us to fall
My boy did his tour of Afghanistan in close contact with several of this guys relatives. He said it reminded him of stories he read about the mob. You could do anything you wanted as long as it was OK’ed by your capo & that you ensured the capo got to wet his beak. Each under-capo had to wet the beak of his capo.
It didn’t have to be this way. there was a window where we really could have opened the country up and made a real difference that would have crushed the Taliban under a waterfall of improved living conditions for the masses. Instead we hired petty crooks and thugs to run the country and p1ssed away our military advantage by focusing on Iraq
I’m beginng to wonder if our Congress/military leadership are all totally insane. The Congress is cutting the hell out of programs that support teachers, police, health care, child care, infrastructure but pouring truck loads of money to that greedy, corrupt thug they appointed as president of what’s left of the country.
The best enemy money can buy?