Why
Ahmad Wali Karzai was so
controversial By RFE/RL
In the murky world of Afghan politics,
there were few figures murkier - yet more
important - than Ahmad Wali Karzai.
The
younger, half-brother of Afghan President Hamid
Karzai, the 49-year-old Ahmad was universally
considered to be the most powerful politician in
Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-biggest city and
the birthplace of the Taliban.
But the
source of his power extended far beyond his
official position as the head of Kandahar's
elected provincial council.
And it was
exactly questions over where his immense power and
wealth came from that made
him both so controversial and difficult to define.
That he was powerful, there is no doubt.
Just last month, a delegation of tribal elders
from Kandahar went to Kabul to lobby President
Karzai to make Ahmad Wali the governor of Kandahar
- a step that would have given him virtually
monopoly rule over the province.
One of
Ahmad Wali Karzai's supporters, Agha Lalai
Dastgiri, told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan:
"About 20 days ago a delegation representing all
the tribes, more than 100 people, went to Kabul.
They visited the president and asked him to
appoint Ahmad Wali Karzai as Kandahar's governor,
because the people think that would decrease and
solve their problems."
Dastgiri is a
member of the Kandahar provincial council and the
head of the Kandahar Peace Commission.
One
source of Ahmad Wali Karzai's power was
undoubtedly his close family ties to his brother.
Like the president, Ahmad Wali Karzai was an elder
of the powerful Popalzai Pashtun tribe in southern
Afghanistan and, with his brother, rose to power
with United States support in the wake of
Washington's 2001 invasion to topple the Taliban.
But while those important familial and
regional ties may have helped him be elected to
the Kandahar provincial council in 2005, he soon
proved highly adept at amassing power and money on
his own account.
When Ahmad Wali Karzai
died on July 12 by an assassin's hand in his own
heavily guarded home in the southern city, he was
widely considered to be among Afghanistan's 10
richest men.
And the very fact that he had
so much money immediately made it difficult to
know even what might have motivated his killer -
Sardar Mohammad, a senior bodyguard trusted by the
family - to fatally shoot him in the head and
chest before being immediately shot dead himself
by other guards.
Accusations of
corruption ... Among the most persistent
charges leveled against Ahmad Wali Karzai - both
by critics and some allies - were corruption and
links to the drug trade.
In Western media,
and Western capitals, he was so often portrayed as
a symbol of cronyism that he became a lightening
rod for criticism of all that is wrong with
President Karzai's administration.
The New
York Times reported last year that senior US
officials spent months weighing allegations
against Ahmad Wali Karzai, including that he paid
off Taliban insurgents, that he laundered money,
that he seized government land, that he reaped
enormous profits by facilitating the shipment of
opium through his region.
The top-level US
review of Ahmad Wali Karzai included a classified
briefing presided over by General Stanley
McChrystal on March 8, 2010, at NATO headquarters
in Kabul.
But, the paper reported, the US
review ultimately concluded that the evidence,
some compelling, some circumstantial, was not
clear enough to persuade President Karzai to
dismiss his brother. And it was considered
advisable to leave things in place in Kandahar as
the United States itself prepared to launch a
major operation to increase security in Kandahar,
which began late last year and continues today.
Ahmad Wali Karzai consistently denied all
allegations against him, saying they were
politically motivated.
After The New York
Times published an article in October 2008
headlined "Reports Link Karzai's Brother to
Afghanistan Heroin Trade", he told reporters at a
press conference that the accusation was "just a
rumor".
He continued: "Up to this minute,
nobody is able to prove it. So it is like a ghost.
People say there is a ghost but you cannot see it,
you cannot touch it, you cannot hear it, and
[still] it is [supposedly] there. So all the
accusations The New York Times is saying in its
report, I am ready to answer one by one."
Ahmad Wali Karzai told Britain's Financial
Times last year: "It's very difficult to be the
president's brother, believe me."
..
and CIA ties But the now-deceased Kandahar
kingpin's relations with Washington may have been
still more complicated than the consistent
criticism of him might suggest.
Just how
complicated they could be was hinted at two years
ago by a spate of media investigations into
persistent rumors he had received regular payments
from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for
much of the past eight years.
The New York
Times reported in September 2009 that the US
intelligence agency paid him for a variety of
services, including helping to recruit an Afghan
paramilitary force - the Kandahar Strike Force -
that conducts raids against suspected insurgents
at the CIA's direction in and around Kandahar.
Similarly, the paper reported, Washington
paid Karzai for allowing CIA and US commandos to
rent a large compound outside the city.
Ahmad Wali Karzai subsequently called the
newspaper's report "ridiculous" and White House
spokesman Robert Gibbs refused to comment on any
relationship between Karzai and the CIA, as did
CIA spokesman George Little.
Power
vacuum In Kandahar Now, with Ahmad Wali
Karzai's assassination in Kandahar, Washington has
lost someone who - depending upon which reports
one finds credible - was simultaneously both a
partner and a liability for the West.
Just
how much of each may be become clearer as more
details of his death - and the motives of his
assassin - become known. But for now the bizarre
circumstances of his shooting by a trusted
associate only shrouds his life in greater mystery
than ever.
More immediately, Ahmad Wali
Karzai's death plunges Kandahar into a power
vacuum at a critical time for US hopes to increase
security in Kandahar as Washington prepares for an
initial withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan next
year.
Despite the steady criticism of
Ahmad Wali Karzai as a polarizing figure in
Kandahar who could complicate efforts to win over
the population and supplant the Taliban, many US
and foreign officials have also at times
recognized his huge reach within the city. He was
seen as someone with the contacts to get things
done, even if one had misgivings about his
methods.
"The death is a huge loss, as it
happened at a time that the power transition and
national reconciliation is in progress," Khalid
Pashtoon, a member of parliament from Kandahar and
the first deputy of the lower house in the Afghan
parliament, told RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal. "In
addition, the area is plagued by daily fighting
and insecurity. Ahmad Karzai was an influential
person in the whole area."
Ahmad Wali
Karzai had been targeted before, with at least two
attacks against the provincial-council office in
Kandahar that Karzai claimed were directed at him.
One was in November 2008, another in April 2009.
The attack in 2009, by four suicide bombers,
killed 13 people.
Ahmad Wali Karzai, who
was married and had five children, was born in
Kandahar city in 1961 and moved to the United
States in 1982, where he lived in Maryland and
Virginia before moving to Chicago to run an Afghan
restaurant. He returned to Afghanistan in 1992.
Asked about the secret of his power in
Kandahar, he told The Washington Post last year
that decades of experience in Afghanistan was his
only key: "I know how to talk to the people,"
Ahmad Wali Karzai said. "I know how to deal with
these tribes. I know what their needs are. I know
how to address their needs. This is the skill I
have learned."
Radio Free Afghanistan's
correspondent Salih Mohammad Salih and Radio
Mashaal's correspondent Hassiba Shaheed
contributed to this report.
Copyright (c) 2011, RFE/RL Inc.
Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free
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Washington DC 20036
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