An Afghan rogues' gallery
Remember in 2003, during the invasion of Iraq, when the military released playing cards featuring Iraqi President Saddam Hussein as the ace of spades, his sons Uday and Qusay as the ace of hearts and clubs, respectively, and a host of other Baath party apparatchiks filling out the rest of the deck?
Well here's a version that the Obama administration would probably prefer not to see - a slideshow, put together by Foreign Policy, of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's cronies.
The whole gang's here, from brother Ahmed Wali Karzai, a reputed opium kingpin, to Karim Khalili, one of Hamid Karzai's two vice presidents and a former anti-Taliban militia leader whose soldiers, according to Human Rights Watch in 2003, continued to "rape, kidnap, and forcibly recruit."
Some names you might not be familiar with:
Haji Mohammad Muhaqiq, a former Karzai official and member of the country's Hazara minority, whose troops, again according to Human Rights Watch, raped, looted and murdered civilians after the fall of the Taliban.
Mohammad Ibrahim Adel, Afghanistan's minister of mines, who according to a Washington Post account accepted a $30 million bribe "to award a massive copper extraction project to the Chinese state-run Metallurgical Group Corp."
Asadullah Khalid, governor of the Kandahar province from 2005 to 2008, who according to the Canadian government and press ran a network of secret prisons and was personally involved in the torture and abuse of detainees.
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Categories: Afghanistan, Human Rights, Obama Administration, Politics, Regional News, War and Terrorism, War in Afghanistan
Tags: Afghanistan, Ahmed Wali Karzai, Asadullah Khalid, Foreign Policy, Haji Mohammad Muhaqiq, Hamid Karzai, Iraq War, Iraq war playing cards, Karim Khalili, Mohammad Ibrahim Adel, Obama administration
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