Ahmed Wali Khan Karzai - Brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai

hmed Wali Khan Karzai (Pashto: احمد ولی کرزی, Aḥmad Walī Karzay; 1961 - 12 July, 2011) was the younger paternal half-brother[2] of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and son of Abdul Ahad Karzai. As an elder of the Popalzai Pashtun tribe, he was elected to the Kandahar Provincial Council in 2005 and served as its chairman.[3][4] Karzai formerly lived in the U.S. city of Chicago, Illinois, where he worked in a restaurant owned by his family.[5] He returned to Afghanistan following the removal of the Taliban government in late 2001. He was shot and killed by one of his bodyguards on July 12, 2011.[6]

Contents [hide]

1 Political career

2 Allegations of corruption

3 CIA connections

4 Assassination and failed attempts

4.1 Death

5 References

6 External links

Political career

Karzai was born in 1961 in the village of Karz, located in the Dand district of Kandahar Province in Afghanistan. He came to political prominence in Afghanistan following the US occupation of the country in 2001, where he was a key ally of the US military in the country's south.[7] He was elected to the Kandahar Provincial Council in 2005 and exercised influence in the province to the extent that he was described as "effectively the governor".[8] At the time of his death, he was the Council's chairman.[9]

A few days before his death, Ahmed Wali Karzai had appeared on British television, in a programme presented by Lyse Doucet, at his home in Kandahar, talking about public perceptions of him.[10] Doucet said: "Like most strong men, he depended on family and fellow tribesmen to protect him."

Allegations of corruption

A June 2009 U.S. embassy cable alleged that much of the actual business of running the Afghan city of Kandahar "takes place out of public sight, where Ahmed Wali Karzai operates, parallel to formal government structures, through a network of political clans that use state institutions to protect and enable licit and illicit enterprises." [11] In addition, James Risen of the New York Times and others[12] stated that Ahmed Wali Karzai may have been involved in the Afghan drug trade, which was denied by Karzai, who called the charges political propaganda and stated, "I am not a drug dealer, I never was and I never will be, ... I am a victim of vicious politics."[13]

In meetings with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, including a 2006 session with former US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Ronald E. Neumann, the CIA's station chief and their British counterparts, American officials talked about the rumors in hopes that the president might move his brother out of the country, said several people who took part in or were briefed on the talks. "We thought the concern expressed to Karzai might be enough to get him out of there," one official said. President Karzai has resisted, however, demanding clear-cut evidence of wrongdoing, several officials said. "We don't have the kind of hard, direct evidence that you could take to get a criminal indictment," a White House official said.[13] Ahmed Wali Karzai dismissed the allegations as politically motivated attacks by longtime rival groups in his country.

Before the 2009 Afghan presidential election, Wali Karzai and Sher Mohammad Akhundzada, former governor of the Helmand Province and a member of the Upper House of the Afghan parliament, were accused of vote rigging.[14] After the election, reports mentioned that all those running in the election were involved in electoral fraud.

CIA connections

In October 2009 the New York Times reported that Ahmed Wali Karzai received payments from the CIA for "a variety of services", including the recruitment of the Kandahar Strike Force, an Afghan paramilitary force run by the CIA in the Kandahar region. It also stated that he was paid for allowing the CIA and U.S. special forces to rent the former residence of Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar.[15] However, Karzai has denied taking any payment from the CIA.[16] U.S. Senator John Kerry and former Afghan Ambassador