Afghan president’s drug kingpin brother murdered

This video is called Ahmed Wali Karzai, Warlord Drug Smuggler And CIA Asset Since 2001, ‘Killed By Bodyguard’.

From RTÉ News in Ireland:

Brother of Afghan president killed

Updated: 10:56, Tuesday, 12 July 2011

The brother of Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai has been killed.

The death of Ahmad Wali Karzai, who was one of the most powerful men in southern Afghanistan, has been confirmed by an official and a family member.

‘I confirm that Ahmad Wali was killed inside his house,’ said Zalmay Ayoubi, spokesman for the governor of Kandahar province, where Ahmad Wali Karzai lived and was head of the provincial council.

A cousin of Mr Wali Karzai, who asked not to be named, also confirmed to Reuters that he had been killed.

Initial details are sketchy, with a family friend telling AFP on condition of anonymity that he was killed by a bodyguard while entertaining guests at home. An Afghan intelligence official said he was shot dead by a guest.

A health official, also speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, said Mr Wali Karzai had been shot dead.

‘He was shot dead at his house by one of the visiting guests not by a body guard, at around 11.30am (8am Irish time),’ said an official at Afghanistan‘s intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security.

The official said the gunman had himself been killed by other bodyguards.

The family friend said a number of Mr Wali Karzai’s guests were also killed in the gunfire, but there was no immediate confirmation of who or how many.

The assassination came just before Hamid Karzai received French President Nicolas Sarkozy on a surprise visit to Afghanistan where he announced that Paris would recall 1,000 soldiers by the end of next year.

Mr Wali Karzai, head of Kandahar’s provincial council, was a deeply controversial figure, dogged by allegations of links to Afghanistan’s lucrative opium trade and private security firms.

US documents leaked by internet whistleblower WikiLeaks late last year painted him as a corrupt drugs baron, lifting the lid on Western thoughts long kept private on the president’s younger half brother’s tainted record.

See also here. And here.

The killing of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the Afghan president’s half brother, represents a serious blow to US strategy in the key southern province of Kandahar: here.

The Lies That Sold Obama’s Escalation in Afghanistan. Gareth Porter, Truthout: “A few days after Barack Obama’s December 2009 announcement of 33,000 more troops being sent to Afghanistan, in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Defense Secretary Robert Gates advanced the official justification for escalation: the Afghan Taliban would not abandon its ties with al-Qaeda unless forced to do so by US military force and the realization that ‘they’re likely to lose.’ Even in comparison with the usual lies that justify wars, this one was a whopper”: here.

America’s wars continue to account for many of the world’s refugees: 4.7m originate from Iraq and Afghanistan, almost half the world’s total, according to the UNHCR’s annual report: here.

A new report issued by Brown University says the cost of America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – and operations in Pakistan – will cost the country nearly $4 trillion. The report’s total is more than three times higher than U.S. President Barack Obama’s estimate in a recent speech: here.