:salam2:
KABUL: Afghan President Hamid Karzai said yesterday that his national security team has been receiving payments from the US government for the past 10 years.
Karzai confirmed the payments when he was asked about a story published in The New York Times saying the CIA had given the Afghan National Security Council tens of millions of dollars in monthly payments.
During a news conference in Helsinki, Finland, where he was on an official visit, Karzai said the welcome monthly payments were not a “big amount” although he did not disclose the sums.
He said they were used to assist the wounded and sick, to pay rent for housing and for other “operational” purposes.
The newspaper quotes Khalil Roman, who served as Karzai’s deputy chief of staff from 2002 until 2005, as calling the vast CIA payments “ghost money” that “came in secret, and it left in secret.”
It also quotes unidentified American officials as saying that “the cash has fuelled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington’s exit strategy from Afghanistan.”
White House spokesman Jay Carney declined to comment, referring questions to the CIA, which also declined comment.
In 2010, Iran acknowledged that it had been sending funds to neighboring Afghanistan for years, but said the money was to aid reconstruction. US officials asserted then that the money flowing from Tehran was proof that Iran was playing a double game in Afghanistan - wooing the government while helping Taliban insurgents. Iran denied that.