Developments
— A civilian cargo aircraft crashed at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan soon after takeoff on Monday, killing all seven people aboard, the U.S.-led military coalition said. The Taliban quickly claimed responsibility for the crash, but the coalition called the Taliban’s claims false. It said the cause of the crash was being investigated. Capt. Luca Carniel, a coalition spokesman, said the aircraft crashed from a low altitude right after takeoff. The coalition did not identify the victims, the type of aircraft involved, or the company that owned it.
— President Hamid Karzai accused U.S. forces of killing four civilians and wounding one in the eastern province of Nangarhar on Sunday after an American convoy was attacked by insurgents. The U.S.-led military coalition said it was still investigating the weekend clash, which left four soldiers with minor injuries. The coalition said the Taliban attacked the patrol with small arms fire and roadside bombs as it moved through a local bazaar in the province where there were civilians.
Associated Press
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Monday that his national security team has been receiving payments from the U.S. 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 delivered in suitcases, backpacks and plastic shopping bags.
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” but were a “small amount,” although he did not disclose the sums. He said they were used to give assistance to the wounded and sick, to pay rent for housing and for other “operational” purposes.
He said the aid has been “very useful, and we are grateful for it.”
The newspaper quotes Khalil Roman, who served as Mr. 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 fueled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington’s exit strategy from Afghanistan.”
In Washington, White House spokesman Jay Carney declined to comment on the report, 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 intended to aid reconstruction, not to buy influence in Karzai’s office. The Afghan president confirmed he was receiving millions of dollars in cash from Iran and that Washington was giving him “bags of money,” too, because his office lacked funds.
At the time, President Barack Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, denied that the U.S. government was in “the big bags of cash business,” but former U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley had said earlier that some of the American aid to Afghanistan was in cash.
U.S. officials also 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 fighting U.S. and NATO forces. Iran denied that.
About the Author
