Ramanisblog

New York Times has just broken a story that the CIA has been paying

‘wads of American dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags have been dropped off every month or so at the offices of Afghanistan’s president — courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency.

All told, tens of millions of dollars have flowed from the C.I.A. to the office of President Hamid Karzai, according to current and former advisers to the Afghan leader.

“We called it ‘ghost money,’ ” said Khalil Roman, who served as Mr. Karzai’s deputy chief of staff from 2002 until 2005. “It came in secret, and it left in secret.”

The C.I.A., which declined to comment for this article, has long been known to support some relatives and close aidesof Mr. Karzai. But the new accounts of off-the-books cash delivered directly to his office show payments on a vaster scale, and with a far greater impact on everyday governing.

Moreover, there is little evidence that the payments bought the influence the C.I.A. sought. Instead, some American officials said, the cash has fueled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington’s exit strategy from Afghanistan.

“The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan,” one American official said, “was the United States.”

One should be shocked, but nobody is.

The US has been known to pump in Millions of Dollars to Foreign Politicians to those who are in power and Opposition, the latter as an insurance.

The list is big, starting from Ayub Khan,Yahya Khan.Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Perevez Musharraf  of Pakistan, their opposition Leaders like Nawaz Sharief.leading  Politicians from India ,Sri Lanka,all the countries from the Third World have been the recipients of the US’s largesse, not to forget the African, Latin American Countries.

Nothing needs to be said of Central America.

This,in addition to funds dispersed to Insurgents, natural or CIA inspired.

The irony is all these efforts misfired.

Had the US been doing nothing, The US would have saved money and those who received money would not turned against the US.

I envisage hand wringing, passing the buck,a Senate Hearing,Voluminous Reports,all to ‘Nothing”

“The United States was not alone in delivering cash to the president. Mr. Karzai acknowledged a few years ago that Iran regularly gave bags of cash to one of his top aides.

At the time, in 2010, American officials jumped on the payments as evidence of an aggressive Iranian campaignto buy influence and poison Afghanistan’s relations with the United States. What they did not say was that the C.I.A. was also plying the presidential palace with cash — and unlike the Iranians, it still is.

American and Afghan officials familiar with the payments said the agency’s main goal in providing the cash has been to maintain access to Mr. Karzai and his inner circle and to guarantee the agency’s influence at the presidential palace, which wields tremendous power in Afghanistan’s highly centralized government. The officials spoke about the money only on the condition of anonymity.”

“

We learn in the New York Times that the US is the latest to put Dostum on its payroll. With bags of cash channeled through Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the Central Intelligence Agency pays up to $100,000 a month to Dostum.

Next year–a quarter century after the Soviet pullout–it is US forces who will withdraw from Afghanistan. The question is how long Karzai can hang on in the likely case that the CIA halts or lowers the millions of dollars in cash in all that has been dropped off at his office every month.

The money goes to buy off the loyalty of Karzai’s retinue, and the local strongmen around the country who at least nominally are on his side. This is the way that Afghanistan has been governed since the Raj—the folks in Kabul keep a flow of patronage to the regions, and the regions stay on their side.

After the NATO troops go, a foreign presence will remain in the form of oil and mining concerns in the north of the country, mainly from China, such as the China Metallurgical Group Corporation and the China National Petroleum Corporation.”

Source:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/29/world/asia/cia-delivers-cash-to-afghan-leaders-office.html?hp

http://qz.com/79222/afghan-president-hamid-karzai-and-abdul-rashid-dostum/