5 October 2008, NYT: Reports Link Karzai's Brother to Afghanistan Heroin Trade
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/07/world/asia/07afghan.html
October 7, 2008
Brother of Karzai Denies Links to Heroin
By ABDUL WAHEED WAFA
KABUL, Afghanistan -- The brother of Afghanistan's president denied any involvement in the heroin trade at a news conference on Monday, saying accusations linking him to heroin shipments were "baseless" and represented political pressure on the president after his criticism of a recent American airstrike that Afghanistan maintains killed scores of civilians.
The brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, was challenging an article in The New York Times on Sunday, which examined the concerns of top American officials that he might be involved in heroin shipments, and that in any case, widespread perceptions that President Hamid Karzai might be protecting him were damaging the government's credibility and undermining efforts by the United States to buttress it.
In the article, President Karzai and Ahmed Wali Karzai, now the chief of the Kandahar Provincial Council, dismissed the allegations as politically motivated attacks by longtime foes.
In a telephone interview after the news conference on Monday, Ahmed Wali Karzai addressed a 2004 episode described in the article, in which Afghan security forces found a cache of heroin in a tractor-trailer in Kandahar but, according to notes taken by American investigators, were told by a presidential aide to release the drugs and the vehicle. Ahmed Wali Karzai said that some of the security forces, including the Kandahar police commander, Habibullah Jan, were political opponents of President Karzai's and that they were disgruntled over programs that cost them arms and influence.
Habibullah Jan was shot dead by gunmen in July in Kandahar.
President Karzai has increased his criticism of foreign forces in Afghanistan as civilian casualties have mounted in operations meant to strike at insurgents.
The United States military is investigating an assertion by villagers in western Afghanistan that about 90 people, most of them children, died in a missile attack on Aug. 22. The Afghan government and a United Nations investigation have backed that assertion, but American officers have said that fewer than 10 civilians were killed in the strike.
"Whenever anything happens between the international community and President Karzai, there has been an article about me," Ahmed Wali Karzai said at the news conference, "as if I am a boxing bag for their training."