Afghanistan: Karzai's drug-dealing bro has been on CIA payroll for 8 years, says NYT

Thug life, Kabul-style, courtesy of American tax dollars. The New York Times reports that "Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country's booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials."

A related story out in tomorrow's paper covers the push for more US troops in Afghanistan's cities and agricultural areas, where the poppies that support the Taliban are cash crop numero uno.

Boing Boing readers: wonder what kind of cellphone he's using in the photo above? Better yet: your caption, please! A brick of CIA-funded heroin to the winner, but you'll have to fly to Bagram to pick it up. [ via Wired Danger Room on Twitter. ]

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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The Snowden Principle

Anonymous

Caption: “What are you wearing? A burkah? Oooohhhhh … that’s hot!”
demidan

,,,and here’s my Zeppo,,,!
mstoddard

“But Leo… No… But,…

Nooo, I found it on Craigslist Bagram ok?! I’m sorry if the New York Times thinks it looks a little fancy, but it was a good deal and its soooooooooo comfortable…

Ya I’m sitting on it right now!”
Eric Ragle

Caption:

Here’s howsits gonna, see? You’re gonna put extra pepperoni on that pie for free, see? You’re gonna deliver it within 30 minutes, see?
ill lich

Didn’t I first hear rumors about this a few years ago? (Yes, I know, just ‘rumors’, but still, why are we only hearing about this now? It should have been researched back when the rumors first appeared.)

Caption:

“What you mean ‘is toilet running?’. . . we have pit latrine here, I not understand. . . Prince Albert in a Can, what is that? Who IS this?! I.P. Freely? Why you call, Sahib Freely?. . . hello? hello?”
dculberson

I do think he’s got a serious contender for World’s Ugliest Couch right there.
Anonymous

As DarwinSurvivor noted, it’s the CIA. What kind of info would they get from all the “decent” individuals? None. Do I ask my law abiding neighbor about criminal activity? Hell no, you go find the crooks and ask them what’s up.
demidan

Yeah but this couch cost me 5,000,000,000,000 sheckles! It’s on the cover of Modern Persian Magazine for Allah’s sake!
redpiller

The idea that the CIA is just an “information gathering agency” is laughable at best. Maybe in the 40s that’s what they were, but they have long since turned into a paramilitary organization involved in “peacetime operations”, codewords for covert war, whether it is military, economic, or psychological.
Kibble

There’s an article in the Oct. 26 of the New York called “The Predator War.” It’s about our use of drones and missiles to kill people in Afghanistan and Pakistan. One of the problems with this approach (among many) is that, to get permission to use these things, we have to cede a certain amount of “targeting control” to the host governments, which means that Afghanistan and Pakistan get to pick who gets blown up sometimes.

Another problem is that the use of these drones and missiles continues to expand. One of the uses being considered (and if they say they’re considering it, it means they’re already doing it) is to kill people in the Afghan narco-trade. The article wondered, “Will Karzai’s brother be targeted?” I burst out laughing at the feigned naievty. This guy won’t be a TARGET of our missiles; he will DECIDE who is targeted, to eliminate his rivals.

FREEDOM FRIES!
- farkinga
  
  “One of the problems with this approach … is that … we have to cede a certain amount of “targeting control” to the host governments”
  
  That, my friend, is a *feature*. There’s no such thing as a clean assassination unless you’ve established plausible deniability.
  
  Just to remind you, the US – out of principle – doesn’t commit *any* assassinations in these modern times. It’s a detail that is easy to forget.
LeFunk

I’m on a couch, I’m on a couch
Everybody look at me
‘Cause I’m sitting on a couch
I’m on a couch, I’m on a couch
Take a good hard look
At my very comfy couch
octopod

presumably he’s ordering some nice red mercury cakes from the internet bakery.

it might or might not be true.

but tbh, the take home from iraq was that any story in mainstream us media citing unnamed sources, particularly in the cia, and using guilt-by-association quotes (the flynn quote doesn’t mention any names) is that it’s more likely to signal a shift, of the presence of uncertainty in direction, of US foreign policy, but it’s relation to reality is largely irrelevant.
mdh

Pfffft. CIA payroll.

One of his customers was my president for 8 years.
Bill Albertson

Yeah, this reads like the 80′s, where US drug abatement teams were sent out to farmers in Latin America to get them to replant non-drug crops, only to be followed shortly by thugs on the CIA payroll to ensure that anyone foolish enough to work with them was made an example of, thereby sealing the deal for the cartels to continue moving more product.

I am not in the least surprised that the same pattern is being played out in Afghanistan.
Raian

“I can’t believe you could only get Anne Leibovitz to do my portraits… you call yourselves the cia…”
Keith

Funny how almost every horrible international idea comes back to the CIA. Let’s sell guns to the contras! Train al Quida to fight dirty! Overthrow the Shaw of Iran! What could possibly go wrong?
Anonymous

the question becomes: when will americans of good conscience use the tactics of the CIA against the CIA rather than making snarky commentary on BB? They’re reading all this commentary and not caring, because even if we’re right, they don’t have to change anything they do. can we actually affect change through political means? I doubt it. can we affect change by infiltration or whatever other means are available to us? are we willing? No, we aren’t. “wheedling accomplishes nothing” is admonishment for troll commentary on this site, yet trolling the *subject* of the post accounts for the majority of the commentary to this post. can’t we accomplish something more?
Anonymous

this stinks of another iran-contras…
Anonymous

Back in the ’80s I saw a brick of hash with a gold stamp on it that said, “Smoke the Russians out of Afghanistan.” It had an outline of a mountain in the background an fist clinching an AK-47 in the foreground. The more things change, the more they don’t.
DarwinSurvivor

Chances are they are paying him off for information about his brother. What he does with the money is probably of no concern to the CIA, though maybe it should be.

Remember, this is the Central Intelligence Agency, all they want is information. They don’t care how much they pay (as long as marginally reasonable), who they pay it to or what it gets used for, as long as they get that juicy, irresistable information.
Anonymous

Folks who sign up to go fight and die in that country ought to pay better attention.
MythicalMe

For the caption:

Hey, George, remember that deal you and Dick made with me while you were President? You’re still backing me, right?
mneptok

caption: DAY-YUM! No 3G at Langley?!
kmoser

Caption: “More hookah bars in more places”
PFlint

Caption: I don’t know how much I’m paying per month on this phone. My ‘dad’ pays for it.
k1p

Whazuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup!