Aug. 26: The aide to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan at the centre of a politically sensitive corruption investigation is being paid by the CIA, according to Afghan and American officials. Mohammed Zia Salehi, the chief of administration for the National Security Council, appears to have been on the payroll for many years, according to officials in Kabul and Washington. It is unclear exactly what Mr Salehi does in exchange for his money, whether providing information to the agency, advancing US views inside the presidential palace, or both.
Mr Salehi’s relationship with the CIA underscores deep contradictions at the heart of the Obama administration’s policy in Afghanistan, with American officials simultaneously demanding that Mr Karzai root out the corruption that pervades his government while sometimes subsidising the very people suspected of perpetrating it. Mr Salehi was arrested in July and released after Mr Karzai intervened. There has been no suggestion that Mr Salehi’s ties to the CIA played a role in his release; rather, officials say, it is the fear that Mr Salehi knows about corrupt dealings inside the Karzai administration. The ties underscore doubts about how seriously the Obama administration intends to fight corruption here. The anti-corruption drive is still vigorously debated inside the administration.
Some argue it should be a centrepiece of American strategy, and others say that attacking corrupt officials who are crucial to the war effort could destabilise the Karzai government.
The Obama administration is also racing to show progress in Afghanistan by December, when the White House will evaluate its mission there. Some administration officials argue that any comprehensive campaign to fight corruption inside Afghanistan is overly ambitious, with less than a year to go before the American military is set to begin withdrawing troops.
“Fighting corruption is the very definition of mission creep,” one Obama administration official said. Others in the administration view public corruption as the single greatest threat to the Afghan government and the American mission; it is the corrupt nature of the Karzai government, these officials say, that drives ordinary Afghans into the arms of the Taliban.
Other prominent Afghans who US officials have said were on the CIA’s payroll include the President’s half brother Ahmed Wali Karzai suspected by investigators of playing a role in Afghan-istan’s booming opium trade. Earlier this year, American officials did not press Mr Karzai to remove his brother from his post as the chairman of the Kandahar provincial council.