Afghan leader's brother on CIA payroll: report

by **Farhan** Sun Nov 15, 2009 11:07 am

WASHINGTON:
Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the embattled Afghan president and a
suspected drug trafficker, has been on the CIA payroll for most of the
past eight years, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

The US spy agency pays Karzai for a variety of services, the newspaper
said, such as fielding recruits for an Afghan paramilitary force
operating at the CIA's direction in and around his home city of
Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold. He also helps the CIA contact and
sometimes meet Taliban followers.

Karzai, who is said to have ties to Afghanistan's lucrative illegal
opium trade, has a "wide-ranging" relationship with the CIA, the Times
said, citing US officials.