Afghanistan Follow-Up: US Government v. Karzai (and the CIA) on "Corruption" (Miller/Partlow)

Yesterday we posted an article from The New York Times on the battle between the US and Kabul over whether an aide to Afghan President Hamid Karzai should face trial for corruption. We suggested it pointed "to how difficult and vicious the politics may become".

Guess what? Less than 24 hours later, we have our proof. And here's the twist: Obama Administration officials are not only sniping at Karzai. They're also ready to take down the CIA. Greg Miller and Joshua Partlow report for The Washington Post:

Afghanistan: Latest US v. Karzai Fight over Corruption (Filkins/Mazzetti)

The CIA is making secret payments to multiple members of President Hamid Karzai's administration, in part to maintain sources of information in a government in which the Afghan leader is often seen as having a limited grasp of developments, according to current and former U.S. officials.

The payments are long-standing in many cases and designed to help the agency maintain a deep roster of allies within the presidential palace. Some aides function as CIA informants, but others collect stipends under more informal arrangements meant to ensure their accessibility, a U.S. official said.

The CIA has continued the payments despite concerns that it is backing corrupt officials and undermining efforts to wean Afghans' dependence on secret sources of income and graft.

The U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a significant number of officials in Karzai's administration are on the payroll. Paul Gimigliano, a CIA spokesman, disputed that characterization, saying, "This anonymous source appears driven by ignorance, malice or both."

A former agency official said the payments were necessary because "the head of state is not going to tell you everything" and because Karzai often seems unaware of moves that members of his own government make.

The disclosure comes as a corruption investigation into one of Karzai's senior national security advisers - and an alleged agency informant - puts new strain on the already fraying relationship between Washington and Kabul.

Read full article....

Afghanistan: Latest US v. Karzai Fight over Corruption (Filkins/Mazzetti)

Dexter Filkins and Mark Mazzetti offer a tale, in The New York Times, of the fight between US officials and Afghan President Hamid Karzai over alleged corruption, pointing to how difficult and vicious the politics may become.

Indeed, in a story centred on Karzai's aide, Mohammad Zia Salehi, arrested for taking a bribe but soon released after the President's intervention, Filkins and Mazzetti are too polite to spell out the tactics in the battle. Some officials in the US Government, frustrated that the charges against Salehi have been blocked, is trying to bring him down by sticking the label of "CIA agent" on him:

The aide to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan at the center of a politically sensitive corruption investigation is being paid by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to Afghan and American officials.

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Pakistan in Afghanistan? (Mull Responds to Ackerman)

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 spy agency, advancing American views inside the presidential palace, or both.

Mr. Salehi’s relationship with the C.I.A. 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 subsidizing 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 C.I.A. 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 anticorruption drive, though strongly backed by the United States, is still vigorously debated inside the administration. Some argue it should be a centerpiece of American strategy, and others say that attacking corrupt officials who are crucial to the war effort could destabilize 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 American officials have said were on the C.I.A.’s payroll include the president’s half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, suspected by investigators of playing a role in Afghanistan’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. Mr. Karzai denies any monetary relationship with the C.I.A. and any links to the drug trade.

Mr. Salehi was arrested by the Afghan police after, investigators say, they wiretapped him soliciting a bribe — in the form of a car for his son — in exchange for impeding an American-backed investigation into a company suspected of shipping billions of dollars out of the country for Afghan officials, drug smugglers and insurgents.

Mr. Salehi was released seven hours later, after telephoning Mr. Karzai from his jail cell to demand help, officials said, and after Mr. Karzai forcefully intervened on his behalf.

The president sent aides to get him and has since threatened to limit the power of the anticorruption unit that carried out the arrest. Mr. Salehi could not be reached for comment on Wednesday. A spokesman for President Karzai did not respond to a list of questions sent to his office, including whether Mr. Karzai knew that Mr. Salehi was a C.I.A. informant.

A spokesman for the C.I.A. declined to comment on any relationship with Mr. Salehi.

Read full article....

Afghanistan Tangled: How Pakistan Used the US & an Arrest to Block Peace Talks with Taliban (Filkins)

Dexter Filkins writes for The New York Times:

When American and Pakistani agents captured Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s operational commander, in the chaotic port city of Karachi last January, both countries hailed the arrest as a breakthrough in their often difficult partnership in fighting terrorism.

But the arrest of Mr. Baradar, the second-ranking Taliban leader after Mullah Muhammad Omar, came with a beguiling twist: both American and Pakistani officials claimed that Mr. Baradar’s capture had been a lucky break. It was only days later, the officials said, that they finally figured out who they had.

Now, seven months later, Pakistani officials are telling a very different story. They say they set out to capture Mr. Baradar, and used the C.I.A. to help them do it, because they wanted to shut down secret peace talks that Mr. Baradar had been conducting with the Afghan government that excluded Pakistan, the Taliban’s longtime backer.

In the weeks after Mr. Baradar’s capture, Pakistani security officials detained as many as 23 Taliban leaders, many of whom had been enjoying the protection of the Pakistani government for years. The talks came to an end.

The events surrounding Mr. Baradar’s arrest have been the subject of debate inside military and intelligence circles for months. Some details are still murky — and others vigorously denied by some American intelligence officials in Washington. But the account offered in Islamabad highlights Pakistan’s policy in Afghanistan: retaining decisive influence over the Taliban, thwarting archenemy India, and putting Pakistan in a position to shape Afghanistan’s postwar political order.

“We picked up Baradar and the others because they were trying to make a deal without us,” said a Pakistani security official, who, like numerous people interviewed about the operation, spoke anonymously because of the delicacy of relations between Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States. “We protect the Taliban. They are dependent on us. We are not going to allow them to make a deal with Karzai and the Indians.”

Some American officials still insist that Pakistan-American cooperation is improving, and deny a central Pakistani role in Mr. Baradar’s arrest. They say the Pakistanis may now be trying to rewrite history to make themselves appear more influential.

“These are self-serving fairy tales,” an American official said. “The people involved in the operation on the ground didn’t know exactly who would be there when they themselves arrived. But it certainly became clear, to Pakistanis and Americans alike, who we’d gotten.”

Other American officials suspect the C.I.A. may have been unwittingly used by the Pakistanis for the larger aims of slowing the pace of any peace talks.

At a minimum, the arrest of Mr. Baradar offers a glimpse of the multilayered challenges the United States faces as it tries to prevail in Afghanistan. It is battling a resilient insurgency, supporting a weak central government and trying to manage Pakistan’s leaders, who simultaneously support the Taliban and accept billions in American aid.

A senior NATO officer in Kabul said that in arresting Mr. Baradar and the other Taliban leaders, the Pakistanis may have been trying to buy time to see if President Obama’s strategy begins to prevail. If it does, the Pakistanis may eventually decide to let the Taliban make a deal. But if the Americans fail — and if they begin to pull out — then the Pakistanis may decide to retain the Taliban as their allies.

“We have been played before,” a senior NATO official said. “That the Pakistanis picked up Baradar to control the tempo of the negotiations is absolutely plausible.”

As for Mr. Baradar, he is now living comfortably in a safe house of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the Pakistani official said. “He’s relaxing,” the official said.

Read full article....

Rewriting Iran's History: The 1953 Coup, the CIA, the Clerics, and "Democracy" (Emery)

On Wednesday, The Washington Post published a re-presentation of the 19 August 1953 coup in Iran by Ray Takeyh, fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations and former State Department Official, "Clerics Responsible for Iran's Failed Attempts at Democracy". (The opening paragraphs of the article are at the bottom of this entry.)

Much has been written about the US involvement, notably through the Central Intelligence Agency in the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and the support for renewed power of the Shah, but Takeyh writes, "The CIA's role in Mossadeq's demise was largely inconsequential. The institution most responsible for aborting Iran's democratic interlude was the clerical estate, and the Islamic Republic should not be able to whitewash the clerics' culpability."

Iran Cartoon of the Day: 1953 Speaks to 2010

EA's Chris Emery, a specialist on US-Iran relations, is not so sure that Takeyh's revision is accurate. Indeed, he is not even convinced that the primary aim is historical accuracy:

1. This opinion piece seems needlessly insensitive at a time when many ordinary Iranians would take heart from a note of contrition from US-based observers --- which is reasonable, even according to the version of events presented by Takeyh. In timing and in tone, this is an extremely provocative (but not intellectually rigourous) attempt to re-frame a genuine area for historical debate. I would expect it from a professional polemicist, but not one with an academic pedigree. It reads like scholarly sabre rattling, which in my mind compliments much of the other kind we have seen recently.

2. Are ordinary Americans being told they shouldn't apologise for trying to remove democratically elected leaders as long as their removal is reliant on other factors as well? Is intent irrelevant?

3. Is Takeyh consciously trying to establish a wider historical context for the belief that Iran's suffering is entirely self-inflicted by the "Mullahs"? Clearly this will resonate well with many opposed to engagement between the US and Iran.

4. Considering the provocative headline, would it not have been better to devote more space to actually proving the allegation? Takeyh does not even direct the reader to recent scholarship that might support his conclusion. Instead we get precisely one sentence outlining how "the clerics" ousted Mossadegh: "Through their connections with the bazaar and their ability to galvanize the populace, they were instrumental in orchestrating the demonstrations that engulfed Tehran." He then seems to suggest that further proof lies in the hyperbole of Kermit Roosevelt, the CIA officer overseeing US covert operations, written more than 25 years after the events.

In other words Takeyh cannot find a US source acknowledging the pivotal role supposedly played by the clergy. He does not even acknowledge that the CIA possibly bribed Ayatollah Kashani, the former Speaker of the Majlis, with a large sum of money.

5. The final sentence of the piece --- "Responsibility for the suffocation of the Iranian peoples' democratic aspirations in the summer of 1953 lies primarily with those who went on to squash another democratic movement in the summer of 2009: the mullahs" --- is deliberately disingenuous, suggesting a link between the clerical elite then and now that Takeyh knows is false or at least far more complex (politically, doctrinally, and historically) than presented here.

Has Takeyh really failed to notice "mullahs" such as Mohammad Khatami, Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, Grand Ayatollah Sane'i, Mohammad Ali Abtahi, and Ayatollah Dastgheib who have protested the suppression of rights and denial of justice since June 2009?

Clerics Responsible for Iran's Failed Attempts at Democracy
Ray Takeyh

Thursday marks the anniversary of one of the most mythologized events in history, the 1953 coup in Iran that ousted Prime Minister Muhammad Mossadeq. CIA complicity in that event has long provoked apologies from American politicians and denunciations from the theocratic regime. The problem with the prevailing narrative? The CIA's role in Mossadeq's demise was largely inconsequential. The institution most responsible for aborting Iran's democratic interlude was the clerical estate, and the Islamic Republic should not be able to whitewash the clerics' culpability.

The dramatic tale of malevolent Americans plotting a coup against Mossadeq, the famed Operation Ajax, has been breathlessly told so much that it has become a verity. To be fair, the cast of characters is bewildering: Kermit Roosevelt, the scion of America's foremost political family, paying thugs to agitate against the hapless Mossadeq; American operatives shoring up an indecisive monarch to return from exile and reclaim his throne; Communist firebrands and nationalist agitators participating in demonstrations financed by the United States. As Iran veered from crisis to crisis, the story goes, Roosevelt pressed a reluctant officer corps to end Mossadeq's brief but momentous democratic tenure.

Yet this fable conceals much about the actual course of events. In 1953 Iran was in the midst of an economic crisis. An oil embargo had been imposed after Tehran nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., and by that summer, the situation had fractured Mossadeq's ruling coalition. Middle-class Iranians concerned about their finances gradually began to abandon Mossadeq. The merchant class was similarly anguished about the financial consequences of Mossadeq's stubborn unwillingness to resolve the stalemate with the British. The intelligentsia and the professional classes were wary of the prime minister's increasingly autocratic tendencies. Rumors of military coups began circulating as members of the armed forces grew vocal in their frustrations with the prime minister and began participating in political intrigues.

Not just the stars but an array of Iranian society was aligning against Mossadeq.

Now, the CIA was indeed actively seeking to topple Mossadeq. It had made contact that spring with the perennially indecisive shah and Iranian officers, including Gen. Fazollah Zahedi, an opportunistic officer who sought the premiership himself. Roosevelt had laid out a plan in which the shah would issue a monarchical decree dismissing Mossadeq; it was to be served to him on Aug. 15. But the commander who was to deliver the message was arrested, and the plot quickly unraveled.

This is where the story takes a twist. As word of the attempted coup spread, the shah fled Iran and Zahedi went into hiding. Amazingly, U.S. records declassified over the past decade indicate, the United States had no backup plan. Washington was largely prepared to concede. State Department and CIA cables acknowledge the collapse of their subversive efforts.

But while crestfallen Americans may have been prepared to forfeit their mission, the Iranian armed forces and the clergy went on to unseat Mossadeq....

Read rest of article....

War on Terror: How the US Avoided the Law and Hid Its Detainees (Apuzzo/Goldman)

Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman report for the Associated Press:

Four of the nation's most highly valued terrorist prisoners were secretly moved to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2003, years earlier than has been disclosed, then whisked back into overseas prisons before the Supreme Court could give them access to lawyers, The Associated Press has learned.

The transfer allowed the U.S. to interrogate the detainees in CIA "black sites" for two more years without allowing them to speak with attorneys or human rights observers or challenge their detention in U.S. courts. Had they remained at the Guantanamo Bay prison for just three more months, they would have been afforded those rights.

"This was all just a shell game to hide detainees from the courts," said Jonathan Hafetz, a Seton Hall University law professor who has represented several detainees.

Removing them from Guantanamo Bay underscores how worried President George W. Bush's administration was that the Supreme Court might lift the veil of secrecy on the detention program. It also shows how insistent the Bush administration was that terrorists must be held outside the U.S. court system.

Years later, the program's legacy continues to complicate President Barack Obama's efforts to prosecute the terrorists behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The arrival and speedy departure from Guantanamo were pieced together by the AP using flight records and interviews with current and former U.S. officials and others familiar with the CIA's detention program. All spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the program.

Top officials at the White House, Justice Department, Pentagon and CIA consulted on the prisoner transfer, which was so secretive that even many people close to the CIA detention program were kept in the dark.

Read rest of article....