Ahmed Wali Karzai's CIA Connection Undermines COIN

by: Richard Allen Smith

Wed Oct 28, 2009 at 12:20:27 PM EDT

if this is true, and if the CIA is empowering Ahmed Wali Karzai at the same time in which NATO/ISAF is saying abusive local power-brokers are a threat to mission success, then this is yet another example of NATO/ISAF carrying out one campaign in Afghanistan while the CIA carries out another -- with both campaigns operating at cross purposes to one another. I should say here that I am in no position to confirm or deny this report. I can, however, say that numerous military officials in southern Afghanistan with whom I have spoken identify AWK and his activities as the biggest problem they face -- bigger than the lack of government services or even the Taliban. And so if AWK is "the agency's guy", that leads to a huge point of friction between NATO/ISAF and the CIA.

Additionally, Spencer Ackerman notes the implications of the money cycle at the Washington Independent:

CIA money funds a politically connected drug dealer. Opium funds the Taliban. We are in Afghanistan to fight the Taliban. How much CIA money has indirectly funded the Taliban?

BLUF: This is a clusterfuck.  If this is true, all of our COIN efforts thus far have been done wrong. Exum states, in more eloquent language than I did yesterday "you can be darn sure that if we think that AWK is the CIA's guy, the Afghans most certainly believe that to be the case." That's no way to win the trust of a population you are trying to protect.

We are paying a symbol of the illegitimate national government which hinders our need for a legitimate partner. We are partnering with a symbol of government corruption which undermines any trust we might receive from the population. We are funding the insurgency we are attempting to counter. This is the definition of wheel spinning.

And is this just the tip of the iceberg? Is it really plausible that this is the only place in Afghanistan where we are doing this, where CIA activity is undermining counterinsurgency efforts? If the CIA is willing to do it in one area, I don't really think the agency would have qualms about doing it in any other place in the country.  This raises the legitimate fear that in any AO in the conflict, we are fighting against ourselves, with American military personnel dying as a result.

If COIN, on any scale, is really our answer for Afghanistan we need to figure out (at the very least) who the good guys and the bad guys are so that we aren't aiding both.  That seems like a ridiculous statement, and it is.  But the reports about AWK's partnership with the CIA renders a ridiculous question legitimate, which is more than we can presently say for the ridiculous Karzai government.