Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) asked a great question: Sure, it would be better for Afghan farmers to grow wheat instead of poppies, a crop that heavily funds the insurgency. But how much can Afghan farmers really make?
Ambassador Karl Eikenberry did not provide a clear answer. “It changes from year More…
I had no luck getting members of Congress to talk yesterday about the relationship between Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of the Afghan president, and the CIA. But Jeff Stein, I belatedly see, got Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) to talk about the connection last week. Here’s how More…
As I’ve been writing since last night, the tale of the CIA’s payments to Ahmed Wali Karzai seems less like a story about corruption than it does a story about the insurgency. Gretchen Peters, author of a recent book about the drug trade in Afghanistan and its effects on More…
It seems like only yesterday that members of Congress bitterly determined that the CIA didn’t sufficiently or accurately brief them about various important secret activities. That’s because it was! But today is a new day, and no one on the Hill wants to talk about whether they’ve More…
Andrew Exum of the Center for a New American Security, one of the advisers for Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s Afghanistan strategy review, doesn’t know if Ahmed Wali Karzai is indeed a CIA asset. But he blogs that the perception of his interlocutors on the Afghan president’s brother is rather severe: More…
Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, has long been accused of dealing drugs. Charges, and accusations, have never quite stuck. Nor has American pressure ever been brought to bear in earnest. The New York Times, in an explosive story, provides something of an explanation:
Jim Risen broke the story in yesterday’s New York Times, but now you can read the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s full report about the narcotics problem in Afghanistan here. (PDF, sigh.) In a statement accompanying the release, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the committee’s chairman, comments:
“Just this
So, according to Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the strategic goal of the Helmand river valley campaign is to disrupt and deny opium revenue to the insurgency. There’s a first principle problem here, though, and one that raises a separate question about whether Helmand is, indeed, a “sideshow,” as an anonymous More…
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