Karzai is Pashto for Diem

If you want a preview of coming events for Afghanistan I suggest you look to the past and the murder of South Vietnam’s President, Ngo Dinh Diem, in a U.S. backed coup:

On orders from U.S. President John F. Kennedy, Henry Cabot Lodge, the American ambassador to South Vietnam, refused to meet with Diệm. Upon hearing that a coup d’etat was being designed by ARVN generals led by General Dương Văn Minh, the United States gave secret assurances to the generals that the U.S. would not interfere. Dương Văn Minh and his co-conspirators overthrew the government on November 1, 1963.
The coup was very swift. On November 1, 1963, with only the palace guard remaining to defend President Diệm and his younger brother, Ngô Đình Nhu, the generals called the palace offering Diệm safe exile out of the country if he surrendered. However, that evening, Diệm and his entourage escaped via an underground passage to Cholon, where they were captured the following morning, November 2. The brothers were executed in the back of an armoured personnel carrier by Captain Nguyen Van Nhung while en route to the Vietnamese Joint General Staff headquarters.[60] Diệm was buried in an unmarked grave in a cemetery next to the house of the U.S. ambassador.[61]

The past is prologue. Today’s laughable NY Times story about Karzai’s brother being on “the CIA’s payroll” is a deliberate leak designed to weaken the current Afghan leader.

Here’s is the breathless NY Times piece:

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.

The agency 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 the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.

The financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Mr. Karzai raise significant questions about America’s war strategy, which is currently under review at the White House.

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.

This is misleading bullshit. Ahmed Wali Karzai is a drug trafficker and makes more money from his opium trade than the CIA is funneling into Afghanistan for all operations. The CIA “buying” Karzai? What a fucking joke!! That’s like claiming the CIA can buy Bill Gates by paying him $100,000 a month. Do you think you can buy Bill Gates for $1.2 million? No and hell no. Same applies to Karzai.

If you are surprised by the fact that the CIA is dealing with a drug trafficker who controls a key area of Afghanistan then you understand nothing about what it takes to work overseas in an environment like Afghanistan. I have no doubt that Karzai is using his relationship with the U.S. Government to enrich himself, but that is not what this story is about. Mother Teresa is not operating in Afghanistan. The Better Business Bureau does not have an approved list of Afghan power brokers we can turn to. Grow up America.

This leak to the NY Times is about sabotaging any ability of Karzai’s brother to remain as a functional leader of Afghanistan. The most likely culprit is the White House (Dennis McDonough on the National Security Council or one of his flunkies if I had to guess) and is being done explicitly to make it impossible for any politician to make the case for staying in Afghanistan. You can take that to the bank.

There is a way to deal with the tawdry activities of Ahmed Wali Karzai, but it needs to be done quietly, behind the scenes. But Barack and his team of children at the White House are hell bent on playing the domestic politics of this rather than work the problem in Afghanistan in an intelligent fashion. Today’s leak is bad for the CIA, bad for Afghanistan and bad for America.