In a revealing news post by the Associated Press, published in the Texas-based Daily Times, Tuesday October 27, 2009, Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai’s brother Ahmed Ali Karzai was reported working for the CIA. The story tells that Ahmed Karzai has been receiving regular payment from the CIA for his work over the past eight years.

The story’s publication is attributed to the New York Times, according to which, the CIA pays Ahmed Karzai for various job tasks including recruitment of Afghan paramilitary force in and near Kandahar. Since Karzai is suspected of involvement in the illegal opium trade of Afghanistan, there are also reports of division within the white house over CIA’s connection with Karzai. Even President Karzai is finding himself in increasingly tense relations with the US leadership due to his brother’s connection with the opium trade.

But a serious side of the issue is the question of CIA’s own involvement in furthering opium trade through its ties with important people in Afghanistan. In the words of an American high military intelligence official in Afghanistan, this makes the US intelligence ‘backing thug’ in the Afghan crisis. Ahmed Karzai is being used by the CIA even to communicate with locals loyal to Taliban and the fact that CIA spokesman George Little has declined to offer any comment on the news story sounds like a silent confirmation of the messy things carried out by foreign intelligence agencies operating in Afghanistan.