Ahmed Wali Karzai is the younger bother of Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan. He is a prominent political figure in the southern region of the country and leads the provincial council of Kandahar Province, the governing body for the region that includes Afghanistan's second largest city. He is also a suspected player in the country's booming illegal opium trade.
Current and former American officials say that the younger Mr. Karzai gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years.In late March 2010, with a huge military operation in the area looming, Afghan and American officials decided that the president's brother will be allowed to stay in place.
President Karzai had turned down repeated requests in the preceding months by both the American ambassador and the top American commander to move his brother out of Kandahar. Many Western and Afghan officials say the president's brother stands in the way of building a just and efficient Afghan government, which they see as essential to dislodging the Taliban and eventually allowing American troops to withdraw.
Senior American officials spent months weighing allegations against Ahmed Wali Karzai: that he pays off Taliban insurgents, that he launders money, that he seizes land, that he reaps enormous profits by facilitating the shipment of opium through the area. And the officials concluded that the evidence, some compelling, some circumstantial, was not clear enough to persuade the president to move his brother out of town, two NATO officials said.
The C.I.A. pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.'s direction in and around Kandahar. On at least one occasion, the strike force has been accused of mounting an unauthorized operation against an official of the Afghan government, the officials said.
The ties to Mr. Karzai have created deep divisions within the Obama administration. The critics say the ties complicate America's increasingly tense relationship with President Hamid Karzai, who has struggled to build sustained popularity among Afghans and has long been portrayed by the Taliban as an American puppet. The C.I.A.'s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.
Allegations that Mr. Karzai has benefited from narcotics trafficking have circulated widely in Afghanistan. United States investigators have discovered links between large drug shipments and Mr. Karzai. Both President Karzai and Ahmed Wali Karzai dismiss the allegations as politically motivated attacks by longtime foes.
More broadly, some American officials argue that the reliance on Mr. Karzai undermines the American push to develop an effective central government that can maintain law and order and eventually allow the United States to withdraw.
Mr. Karzai is also paid for allowing the C.I.A. and American Special Operations troops to rent a large compound outside the city - the former home of Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban's founder. The compound is also the base of the Kandahar Strike Force. "He's our landlord," a senior American official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Mr. Karzai also helps the C.I.A. communicate with and sometimes meet with Afghans loyal to the Taliban. Mr. Karzai's role as a go-between between the Americans and the Taliban is now regarded as valuable by those who support working with Mr. Karzai, as the Obama administration is placing a greater focus on encouraging Taliban leaders to change sides.
Officials from the Bush administration said in 2008 that American officials repeatedly warned President Karzai that his brother was a political liability.
On April 1, 2009, five suicide bombers stormed the offices of the Kandahar provincial council, and at least 13 people, including two provincial officials, were killed. Ahmed Wali Karzai was not in his office at the time. Mr. Karzai said that he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by Taliban attackers laying in wait for his motorcade while traveling from the eastern city of Jalalabad to the capital on May 18, 2009.
