Afghan President Hamid Karzai, here in the photo, has long been considered by his brother Ahmed Wali Karzai to be an American puppet.

Aryn Baker
Time

The claim that Ahmed Wali Karzai has been on the payroll of the CIA for the past eight years, as reported in the New York Times on Tuesday, won't come as a surprise to most Afghans, who have long considered his brother, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, to be an American puppet. The revamped allegations that Karzai frère is deeply involved in Afghanistan's annual $4 billion drug industry isn't much of a shocker either — on the streets of Kabul and Kandahar, the name Wali has long been synonymous with someone who can get away with a crime because he has friends in the right places. Diplomats, counternarcotics officials and commanders from the International Security Assistance Force, NATO's military wing in Afghanistan, have all privately (and not so privately) expressed frustration with President Karzai for not reining in his brother. In fact, the people most likely to be shocked by the revelations are Americans back at home, who are already wondering why they should be sending more soldiers and money to a country whose leadership has rarely proved an adequate partner.

That the CIA might turn a blind eye to the unsavory extracurricular activities of a local asset isn't exactly new. It's emblematic of the often shady compromises that are conducted on a daily basis around the globe in the name of increased American security. (If you think the U.S. is only talking to "good" guys to get information about al-Qaeda, think again — men with clean hands rarely truck with those without.) But if the Times' charges are true, the revelations that Wali Karzai is a major drug trafficker who has been protected not just by his brother, but also by CIA operatives establish a chain of causality between the efforts of U.S. intelligence to obtain information and influence and drug monies that pay for an insurgency that has taken 53 American lives this month — the highest death toll ever for Americans in Afghanistan. Karzai denied both allegations, telling the Associated Press that the paper's report was "ridiculous."

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