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Summary
The United States is exasperated at the pervasiveness of corruption in Afghanistan and President Hamid Karzais paranoid view of the world, leaked cables said. The latest batch of US diplomatic correspondence obtained by the WikiLeaks website also said that the United States worried about Irans involvement in Afghanistan, including accounts Tehran is supporting Taliban insurgents. One secret US cable said that more than 190 million dollars left Kabuls airport for Dubai between July and September, the time of Karzais re-election that triggered an international outcry over allegations of fraud. While much of the cash may come from Afghans worried about stability, one cable said that Ahmad Zia Massoud a first vice president until last year and brother of slain anti-Taliban commander Ahmad Shah Massoud was caught entering the United Arab Emirates carrying 52 million dollars. The New York Times, which reprinted the cable, said Massoud denied any wrongdoing in an interview with the newspaper, which reported however that a Rolls-Royce was recently spotted outside his luxury house in Dubai. US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry is quoted in cables as voicing concern at the extent of corruption in Afghanistan and the mindset of Karzai, who would ask conspiracy theories about the United States weakening him or dividing Pakistan. Two contrasting portraits emerge. The first is of a paranoid and weak individual unfamiliar with the basics of nation building and overly self-conscious that his time in the spotlight of glowing reviews from the international community has passed, Eikenberry said in a cable shortly before the election. The other is that of an ever-shrewd politician who sees himself as a nationalist hero who can save the country from being divided by the United States and rivals agenda, Eikenberry said. In another cable, Eikenberry rued how difficult it was to fight corruption and connect the people to their government, when the key government officials are themselves corrupt. He made the remark after meeting with the presidents brother Ahmad Wali Karzai, a power broker in the southern city of Kandahar who was portrayed in other leaked cables as a corrupt drugs baron. President Barack Obamas administration has made no secret of its frustrations with corruption in Afghanistan, where some 100,000 US troops are stationed to battle Taliban insurgents. The cables also raised accounts by Afghans that Iran which like the United States had opposed the Taliban before the US invasion was now working with the insurgents.In a memo from February, Karzais chief of staff Omar Daudzai, who served as ambassador to Tehran, is quoted as saying that the Iranians two years earlier would deny support for the Afghan Taliban.Over the past half year, the Iranians, including their Ambassador in Kabul, no longer deny this assertion now they remain silent, the cable said.But Daudzai also said that ordinary Iranians generally liked the United States and said that Afghanistan may be able to broker reconciliation once Irans firebrand leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad leaves.The Obama administration took office offering talks with Iran to end three decades of sour relations since the Islamic revolution.A 2007 cable showed that Eric Edelman a top Pentagon official under then president George W. Bush voiced alarm that Iranian meddling is getting increasingly lethal.Edelman appreciated this was a complicated issue and that Afghanistan wants to avoid a two-front war, but Iranian actions, if not checked, will result in a two-front war in any event, a cable quoted him as saying. We need to work together to put the Iranians back on their heels, it said. The other front is Pakistan. Cables showed Afghan and US officials repeatedly voicing concern about militants safe haven in border areas.
