Karzai says CIA will continue cash payoffs
KABUL, Afghanistan—The CIA’s station chief here met with President Hamid Karzai on Saturday, and the Afghan leader said he had been assured the agency would continue dropping off stacks of cash at his office despite a storm of criticism that has erupted since the payments were disclosed.
The CIA money, Karzai told reporters, was “an easy source of petty cash,” and some of it was used to pay off members of the political elite, a group dominated by warlords.
The use of the CIA cash for payoffs has prompted criticism from many Afghans and some US and European officials who complain that the agency, in its quest to maintain access and influence at the presidential palace, financed what is essentially a presidential slush fund. The practice, the officials say, effectively undercut a pillar of the American war strategy: the building of a clean and credible Afghan government to wean popular support from the Taliban.
Instead, corruption at the highest levels seems to have only worsened. The International Monetary Fund recently warned diplomats in Kabul that the Afghan government faced a potentially severe budget shortfall partly because of the increasing theft of customs duties and officially abetted tax evasion.
On Saturday, Karzai sought to dampen the furor over the payments, describing them as one facet of the billions of dollars in aid Afghanistan receives each year. “This is nothing unusual,” he said.
He said the cash helped pay rent for various officials, treat wounded members of his presidential guard and even pay for scholarships. Karzai said that when he met with the CIA station chief, “I told him because of all these rumors in the media, please do not cut all this money because we really need it.”
“It has helped us a lot, it has solved lots of our problems,” he said. “We appreciate it.”
The comments were his first in Kabul since The New York Times reported the payments last week, when he was traveling in Europe, where he briefly addressed the issue.
Yet Karzai, in offering his most detailed accounting to date of how the money had been used, probably raised as many questions as he answered.
Formal aid, for instance, is publicly accounted for and audited. The CIA’s cash is not, though Karzai did say the Americans were given receipts for the money they dropped off at the presidential palace.
Asked why money used for what would appear to be justifiable governing and charitable expenses was handed over secretly by the CIA and not routed through the State Department, Karzai replied: “This is cash. It is the choice of the US government.”
He added: “If tomorrow the State Department decides to give us such cash, I’d welcome that, too.”
Karzai declined to specify how much cash his office receives each month, or to provide a total of how much it has been given by the CIA so far. He had met the agency’s station chief in Kabul a few hours earlier, he said, and it was made clear to him that “we are not allowed to disclose” the amount.
Current and former Afghan officials who spoke before last week said the payments had totaled tens of millions of dollars since they began a decade ago.
The US Embassy in Kabul, which handles queries for the CIA, declined to comment.
But it was Karzai’s acknowledgment that some of the money had been given to “political elites” that was most likely to intensify concerns about the cash and how it is used.
In Afghanistan, the political elite includes many men more commonly described as warlords, numerous people with ties to the opium trade and to organized crime along with lawmakers and other senior officials. Many were the subjects of American-led investigations that yielded reams of intelligence and evidence but almost no significant prosecutions by the Afghan authorities.
Karzai did not address those concerns on Saturday. He instead emphasized that no one group or political faction was given special treatment.