By
MATTHEW ROSENBERG - Published: April 29, 2013
KABUL, Afghanistan – President Hamid Karzai acknowledged on Monday that
the Central Intelligence Agency has been dropping off bags of cash at
his office for a decade, saying the money was used for “various
purposes” and expressing gratitude to the United States for making the
payments.
Mr. Karzai described the sums delivered by the C.I.A. as a “small
amount,” though he offered few other details. But former and current
advisers of the Afghan leader have said the C.I.A. cash deliveries have totaled tens of millions of dollars
over the past decade and have been used to pay off warlords, lawmakers
and others whose support the Afghan leader depends upon.
The payments are not universally supported in the United States
government. American diplomats and soldiers expressed dismay on Monday
about the C.I.A.'s cash deliveries, which some said fueled corruption.
They spoke privately because the C.I.A. effort is classified.
Others were not so restrained. “We’ve all suspected it,” said
Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah and a critic of the
war effort in Afghanistan. “But for President Karzai to admit it out
loud brings us into a bizarro world.”
Mr. Karzai’s comments, made at a news conference in Helsinki, Finland,
where he is traveling, were not without precedent. When it emerged in
2010 that one of his top aides was taking bags of cash from Iran,
Mr. Karzai readily confirmed those reports and expressed gratitude for
the money. Iran cut off its payments last year after Afghanistan signed a strategic partnership deal with the United States over Tehran’s objections.
The C.I.A. money continues to flow, Mr. Karzai said on Monday. “Yes, the
office of national security has been receiving support from the United
States for the past 10 years,” he told reporters in response to a
question. “Not a big amount. A small amount, which has been used for
various purposes.” He said the money was paid monthly.
Afghan officials who described the payments before Monday’s comments
from Mr. Karzai said the cash from the C.I.A. was basically used as a
slush fund, similarly to the way the Iranian money was. Some went to pay
supporters; some went to cover other expenses that officials would
prefer to keep off the books, like sensitive diplomatic trips, officials
have said.
After Mr. Karzai’s statement on Monday, the presidential palace in Kabul
said in a statement that the C.I.A. cash “has been used for different
purposes, such as in operations, assisting wounded Afghan soldiers and
paying rent.” The statement continued, “The assistance has been very
useful, and we are thankful to them for it.”
The C.I.A. payments open a window to an element of the war that has
often gone unnoticed: the agency’s use of cash to clandestinely buy the
loyalty of Afghans. The agency paid powerful warlords to fight against
the Taliban during the 2001 invasion. It then continued paying Afghans
to keep battling the Taliban and help track down the remnants of Al
Qaeda. Mr. Karzai’s late brother, Ahmed Wali, was among those paid by the agency, for instance.
But the cash deliveries to Mr. Karzai’s office are of a different
magnitude with a far wider impact, helping the palace finance the vast
patronage networks that Mr. Karzai has used to build his power base. The
payments appear to run directly counter to American efforts to clean up
endemic corruption and encourage the Afghan government to be more
responsive to the needs of its constituents.
“I thought we were trying to clean up waste, fraud and abuse in
Afghanistan,” said Mr. Chaffetz, whose House subcommittee has
investigated corruption in the country. “We have no credibility on this
issue when we’re complicit ourselves. I’m sure it was more than a few
hundreds dollars.”
In Afghanistan, reaction to reports of the payments ranged from
conspiratorial to bemused. A former adviser to Mr. Karzai said the
palace was rife with speculation that the details of the payments had
been leaked to settle a bureaucratic or diplomatic score, either by
Afghans or by American officials.
Outside official circles, some Afghans offered a lighter take. “They
make it sound as if it was a charity money dashed by a spy agency,”
wrote Sayed Salahuddin, an Afghan journalist, on Twitter,
referring to the palace statement that money had been used to help
wounded soldiers. “They must have ‘treated’ many people.”
