NEW YORK: The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has delivered tens of millions of dollars to the office of Afghan President Hamid Karzai to wields tremendous power in Afghanistan’s highly centralized government, The New York Times reports.
Suitcases, backpacks and on plastic shopping bag full of US dollars have been given every month or on occasions at offices of Afghanistan’s president for more than a decade.
Khalil Roman, chief of staff of Mr. Karzai from 2002 till 2005 said, “we called it ghost money”, added that, “it came in secret, and it left in secret.”
The CIA has long been known to support some relatives and close aides of Karzai but declined to comment on this topic.
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 CIA sought.
Instead, some American officials said, the cash has fueled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington’s exit strategy from Afghanistan.
An American official told the NYT that United States was the biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan.
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, the report added.
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