During his recent visit to Kandahar on April 4th, tribal elders told president Karzai that his government was as much a problem as the Taliban. According to the elders, the government officials from top to the lower rank police were totally corrupt and involved in drug trafficking and hateful crimes.
This they said publicly. Some local sources say that the elders privately told President Karzai that his own warlord and drug mafia brother, Ahmad Wali Karzai, was the main cause of all problems. This brother of President Karzai has been a drug king in the whole southern zone, has permanent contacts with the insurgents and criminals and use them as his own private murderers against whoever tries to meddle in his affairs. He runs Kandahar and provinces under its influence as his own very corrupt, brutal and unpopular medieval kingdom.
Unfortunately, President Karzai presents his beloved brother as an ‘innocent target’ of Western media and defends his activities because he had played a crucial role in getting him elected in the August 2009 fraudulent election.
The situation in Kandahar and the adjacent southern provinces is so bad and hopeless that many people think it is not a part of the same country which has Nangrahar in the east and Mazar-e-Sharif in the north. Local people say that every official from top (governor) to the lowest rank (policemen) is given free hand loot people, commit crimes, rape women and boys, kidnap foreigners, sell and smuggle drugs, and whatever they like as long as they serve their king, Ahmad Wali Karzai, and men from his tribe.
People whom we talked to in the province of Kandahar demanded that before launching any operation against the Taliban in the province, the international community needs to consider an equally aggressive operation against the Karzais, otherwise the situation will never get better.
