CIA seal.

Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, the New York Times reports.

The agency pays Ahmed Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the CIA’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, his home, the newspaper says.

The financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Karzai raise significant questions about America’s war strategy, which is currently under review at the White House.

Some American officials argue that the reliance on Ahmed Wali Karzai, the most powerful figure in a large area of southern Afghanistan where the Taliban insurgency is strongest, undermines the American push to develop an effective central government that can maintain law and order and eventually allow the United States to withdraw.

The relationship between Karzai and the CIA is wide ranging, several American officials said. He helps the agency operate a paramilitary group, the Kandahar Strike Force, that is used for raids against suspected insurgents and terrorists. He is also paid for allowing the CIA and American Special Operations troops to rent a large compound outside the city — the former home of Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban’s founder. The same compound is also the base of the Kandahar Strike Force.

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