Karzai’s Little Brother

A former CIA Islamabad station chief says the U.S. should strengthen its ties with the Afghan president’s little brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who leads Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar province. “Given the apparent intention of the Americans to begin drawing down in Afghanistan from the summer of 2011, it is becoming increasingly likely that the comprehensive counter-insurgency effort in the Pashtun-dominated regions of the south and east will not succeed,” says former station chief Robert Grenier. “The US, therefore, could quickly find itself in a situation where it will have to rely on ‘local strongmen’ to pursue not a counter-insurgency, but an insurgency strategy against Taliban domination in substantial areas of Afghanistan…In such a scenario, the presence of an Ahmed Wali Karzai, if in fact he can persevere, will be most welcome to the Americans.”