Ahmed Wali Karzai: profile
Ahmed Wali Karzai was described many ways: opium dealer, CIA agent, tribal leader and the real power behind his maligned brother, President Hamid Karzai.
10:23AM BST 12 Jul 2011
There was strong evidence that Mr Karzai was all of these.
Ahmed Wali Karzai's most important role was to keep Afghanistan's second city, Kandahar under control.
The 50-year old from a family of eight was formally the chief of the Kandahar provincial council. In reality his control over the Nato funded Kandahar Strike Force, a paramilitary outfit, gave him more firepower than any other figure.
Coalition generals would be granted audiences with Mr Karzai like ambassadors to a medieval court. Major Gen Nick Carter, the former Nato commander in Kandahar, boasted that he had won Karzai's friendship by discussing the prospects for Chelsea Football Club. Mr Karzai liked to claim he was a fan of the premier league club.
But two years ago Mr Karzai's role at the heart of President Karzai's regime became a liability.
Senior American officials leaked details of his involvement in the heroin trade, a lucrative multi-billion pound export that underwritten the Taliban insurgency against Nato. His close association with a heroin kingpin, Haji Azizullah has never been properly explained.
The New York Times also reported that he was on the payroll of the CIA since 2001. Mr Karzai hired lawyers and proclaimed that he did not know "anyone" in the CIA.
As minor chieftain in the Popalzai tribe, Ahmed Wali played a significant role in shoring up the family's position in a community sympathetic to the Taliban.
Ahmed Wali proved his use to his brother a year later when President Karzai relied on his connections to provide crucial support in his bid for re-election.
Electoral abuses were rampant in the exercise.
He twice escaped assassination attempts in 2008 and 2009. While exiled in America, Ahmed Wali had ran a restaurant near Chicago's Wrigley field baseball ground.
.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/8631837/Ahmed-Wali-Karzai-profile.html
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