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The funniest part of this was when the Toronto Star called Qazi Omar and traced the business back to Qayom Karzai. Wonderful how such pathetic failures are given such high hopes to resurrect the country. Its humorous, the typical retort is: The Taliban had 10 years... what did they accomplish? Well, Karzai has had 10 years, trillions of US dollars invested, millions of yen invested, and has accomplished hitherto unbefore seen levels of fabulous corruption and taken new infrastructure and handed it off to idiots to make defunct! So I think that excuse is gone now.
Man fled Afghanistan out of fear of President Karzai’s brothers
WASHINGTON — Nerves frayed from months of mounting threats, Naseem Pashtoon Sharifi admits it wasn’t the most rational of decisions.
There he was, racing through the streets of downtown Kandahar City with a carload of gunmen on his tail. One hand on the wheel, the other trying desperately to load bullets into a pistol. If death was imminent, he would die fighting.
Then, as the gunmen bore down, Sharifi swerved right and stood on the brakes, screaming to a halt. The would-be assassins, unable to react in time, flew past. Suddenly, the hunters were in front, the prey in back.
It was then that Sharifi did “the crazy thing” — role reversal. He decided to chase his tormentors.
“I just floored it. I was so afraid for my family, my children, I wasn’t thinking clearly. But I had to know who these guys were,” Sharifi says from the relative safety of his exile in California, where the father of three has found safe harbour for his family.
“I caught up with them, and we raced for two or three more blocks. And then suddenly the gunmen slowed down and turned. And that’s when I knew.”
His pursuers had been cops. They drove right into Kandahar Police Headquarters.
If the scene harks back more to 1930s Chicago than 21st century Kandahar, Sharifi says they are one and the same — and all under the sway of the Brothers Karzai, the close kin of Afghanistan’s president, who Sharifi is convinced is out to get him.
When he fled Kandahar, Sharifi left behind a burgeoning media empire that at its peak counted 150 employees and ranked as the fourth largest employer in the region. But that, too, Sharifi says, has been plundered by the Karzais.
All but one very important piece — against the odds, Sharifi has managed to keep alive his Kandahar newspaper, Surgar. The feisty weekly continues to tilt against the powers that be, even as its owner has been squeezed out of the country.
These are far from idle accusations. Sharifi festered for months, consulting his extended family for approval — warning them to brace for reprisals — before finally approaching the Toronto Star to take his claims public.
He came because Kandahar is Canada’s patch and the regime that has taken root blossomed under Canada’s nose. Without intervention, he frets it will be the ultimate ruin of the country, ensuring a colossal failure for NATO.
His tale offers a rare glimpse inside the world of the Karzai Brothers — a clan he says he came to know well, and initially had faith in, before everything went pear-shaped.
“I saw how good the Karzais looked from a distance. And then I learned first-hand how badly they stank up close,” Sharifi said.
“I know I’m not the biggest fish. But what happened to me is simply a microcosm of the larger story playing out in Kandahar.”
The Karzais — Ahmed Wali, who is widely regarded as Kandahar’s foremost power broker, together with elder brothers Qayum and Shawali — denied each and every accusation. Lies, all lies, they said.
But further investigation shows Sharifi’s story is far from one man’s grudge. Four other Kandahar sources, speaking to the Star on condition of anonymity, confirmed his account that Karzai muscle-flexing removed him from the city, with Karzai interests promptly taking over the bulk of his business.
Sharifi’s accusations also coincide with recent WikiLeaks revelations showing the extent of U.S. concerns about the Karzais’ hold over Kandahar. One diplomatic cable describes the family’s position as a “semi-modern aristocracy” directed by “unrivalled strongman” Ahmed Wali Karzai, known as AWK.
AWK, the U.S. cable said, “appears not to understand the level of our knowledge of his activities and that the coalition views many of his activities as malign, particularly relating to his influence over the police.”
The U.S. cable singles out Canada’s $50 million Dahla Dam project as a cause for worry, noting that Karzai businesses were positioned for “multiple patronage benefits” after lobbying the Canadians for construction and security contracts.
Naseem Sharifi, now 36, was just starting out in the world back in 2002, when he returned to post-Taliban Kandahar like thousands of others, wanting to be a part of the new Afghanistan.
Born to a respected branch of the prominent Barakzai tribe, Sharifi had been sent away at age 16, another young refugee of war. It was an adoption into exile, with the young Sharifi joining relatives in Seattle who, by marriage, were distant Karzai cousins. After 12 years in exile, he was back with U.S. citizenship, a Western education, a zest to make his mark.
It wasn’t long before he struck upon his unlikely formula for success — billboards. Sharifi had vivid memories of the outdoor advertising billboards that clutter America’s highways, a concept then alien to Afghanistan. And with new banks and new cellphone companies opening daily, he thought the idea might just click.
Click, it did. Sharifi assembled a fledgling team and Arakozia was born.
War-torn Kandahar was then so starved for visual stimulation that when he planted his first outdoor sign Afghans gathered from far and wide just to look at it.
The contracts poured in. Afghan Wireless, Roshan cellular. Even NATO bought in, with a series of poppy-eradication billboards.
“We barely knew what we were doing at first. But we were quick studies. Before I knew it, we were operating in seven provinces. Nobody else was doing it. And the phone just kept ringing.”
With Arakozia running on all cylinders, Sharifi began to indulge his more magnanimous instincts. He pumped profits into expansion with the launch of Surgar, Kandahar’s first-ever independent weekly. And then Kandahar’s first-ever coffee shop.
“The goal for both the newspaper and the coffee shop was the same — to encourage civil society and help create a sense of community,” says Sharifi.
“Until then, all that existed in Kandahar for the past 30 years were places we call somowat — dirty little holes used for smoking marijuana and drinking tea.”
The Kandahar Coffee Shop flourished and so too did Surgar. From chess and snooker tournaments to sports sponsorships, Sharifi’s Arakozia stood ready to embrace any who approached with a positive idea. When a group of Kandahar high school students came looking for help in starting a students’ association, Sharifi ticked off every box, providing office space and computers for a group that quickly swelled to 1,800 members: literate Kandaharis in a land of outrageously high illiteracy, coming together for the greater good.
Sharifi was becoming a player. Doors opened, including the doors of the family Karzai. AWK attended Sharifi’s wedding to a local Kandahari woman in 2004 and furnished introductions to his brothers — Shawali, the eldest; Mahmoud, then based in Kabul but a frequent visitor to Kandahar; and Qayum, the Baltimore restaurateur who, Sharifi and others insist, ranks among the most influential of the siblings in Kandahar politics.
Sharifi’s access to Kandahar’s inner circle included regular visits with then-governor Assadullah Khalid, who later would lose his job amid accusations of personal involvement in the torture of Afghan detainees.
The first hint that something wasn’t quite right came in 2006 when, Sharifi says, he was offered a 20 per cent interest in a construction company, Daman, that he alleges is controlled by the Karzais. Free.
“I accepted the offer. Which now I deeply regret. I was so caught up in all the other business and this circle of power that had opened up, I didn’t give it proper consideration,” Sharifi says.
The other partners in Daman, he says, included Shawali Karzai (20 per cent), local Internet entrepreneur Ramat Qumran (20 per cent) and Qayum Karzai (40 per cent). They met regularly for lunch to discuss ways to latch on to the millions of development dollars flowing into the province.
“Every day, just as lunch would begin, Shawali Karzai would whisper in my ear, ‘Did you find a contract? Why don’t you tell the governor to give you a contract?’ Every single day.
“In hindsight, I realize … they wanted me to get my hands dirty. I was a threat because I was clean. But I was so naïve. There was also a strange dynamic between the Karzai stepbrothers. They are one family, yet they compete with each other. Shawali is the oldest; he was the father’s favourite, but I began to feel that he was using me like a pawn to prove to his brothers he, too, could generate wealth for the family.” For their part, the Karzais say the lunches were only social and they had no direct control over Daman.
Sharifi says he quit the enterprise without ever receiving a penny.
Instead, he threw himself into yet another new venture — the launch of a radio station to better reach the estimated 80 per cent of a provincial population unable to read or write. He assembled a team, began ordering equipment, all underwritten with the profits of the billboard business.
As the radio plans took shape in early 2006, Sharifi was summoned to the Governor’s Mansion, where he was confronted by an uncharacteristically stern Governor Khalid.
“Drop this idea for a radio station,” said the governor, according to Sharifi.
“He said, ‘Don’t ask why. Just know that Qayum and Ahmed Wali Karzai don’t want it.’”
Governor Khalid then placed a call, with the speakerphone amplified so that Sharifi could hear the conversation. Qayum Karzai answered.
“The governor said to Qayum, ‘I just called to assure you that the work is done. Sharifi will not open the radio station.’ And Qayum answered, ‘Good, just make sure. Naseem is the kind of person that gets things done. He will make us look bad. Just make sure we stop this,’” Sharifi says.
“I was stunned. I had such hope up to this point, but my whole perception changed. These mountains we call the Karzais — I began to realize how tiny they were. I was just a small player, but their self-confidence was so low that a little guy like me doing things with enthusiasm made them feel threatened.”
Sharifi acquiesced, dropping his radio plans. But the tension with the Karzais worsened in 2007 with the appointment of Ghulam Hamidi, a lifelong friend of the Karzai brothers, as mayor of Kandahar.
Within days of the new mayor’s arrival a tax dispute erupted, with Mayor Hamidi publicly accusing Arakozia of not paying its share. Sharifi says he was blindsided — but quickly produced what he claims is full accounting of every bill, to the last Afghani.
Mayor Hamidi would not let the matter rest. The final cut, says Sharifi, came in when the mayor arbitrary declared a tenfold increase in municipal taxes against Arakozia’s billboards — from six per cent to 60 per cent.
Sharifi acknowledges he was a small player in the big picture, pursuing small but legitimate business opportunities that paled against the multi-billion-dollar security and narcotics racketeering that is widely believed to permeate Kandahar. Why squeeze out a little guy like me, he wondered?
And on this point, if nothing else, the Karzais agree — Sharifi was a minor figure in town. Each of the three brothers, Ahmed Wali, Qayum and Shawali, played down Sharifi’s place in their lives in statements to the Star. He was an acquaintance, not a friend, they say. There were never any business dealings. The story of Daman and the radio station story are “pure fiction,” said Qayum Karzai.
The brothers also accuse Sharifi of exploiting the Karzai name, and hint darkly that perhaps his adoption to the U.S. as a teenager was never formally legal.
But there is a certain velocity to the Karzai denials — a flurry of emails, phone calls and written statements — that suggests the saga has penetrated the Karzai brothers’ famously thick skins.
Perhaps one explanation is a particularly provocative cartoon published by Surgar in early 2008, which portrayed Mayor Hamidi as a snarling dog on a leash held by Qayum Karzai. Even in a stable democracy, such an image likely would make noise. In Kandahar, it was a thunderclap.
“(Sharifi’s) relationship with me changed for one reason and one reason alone — that cartoon,” Qayum Karzai told the Star in a telephone interview addressing the allegations.
“Mayor Hamidi and I have known each other since we were 6 years old. His father was my father’s friend. We went to the same school, we swam together, we hunted together. We were part of a very tight clique,” said Qayum Karzai.
“Everybody knows the mayor is a friend of mine. So this cartoon of me holding him like a dog, it was … disappointing.”
Mayor Hamidi responded to the Star with an epic four-page letter defending not only his dispute with Arakozia but the entirety of his tenure in office. Hamidi denied any wrongdoing and attributed the entire dispute to a battle over back taxes.
Surgar, however, kept pushing. In 2008, the newspaper became more aggressive about reporting corruption allegations. It also began translating and reprinting in Pashtu the widening array of international media stories drawing attention to the growing power of the house of Karzai.
“The next phase was threats of physical violence,” says Sharifi. “I was getting anonymous phone calls warning, ‘Leave the city or face the consequences.’” The journalists at Surgar were regularly threatened. In at least one case, he says, the threat came directly by phone from AWK — a claim Ahmed Wali Karzai categorically denied in his statement to the Star.
“More than once I was followed by armed men on motorcycles. I had always lived openly. But now my openness was vulnerability. I had a pattern of travel between home and office,” he says.
After the next big scare — the 2008 high-speed chase through Kandahar City that ended at police headquarters — Sharifi knew the end was near. He now saw the Karzai hold over Kandahar as both omnipotent and potentially lethal. And he was in their crosshairs. For their part the Karzais say they had nothing to do with any police chase.
But for Sharifi, the breaking point came two weeks later, when Ahmed Wali Karzai, now the elected head of the Kandahar Provincial Council, summoned local journalists to disclose details of a suicide attack.
At the end of the news conference, as reporters packed their equipment, AWK called on Surgar’s reporter and issued an ominous warning that was heard by all: “Tell Naseem we have information there are four more suicide bombers in Kandahar. He is the next target.”
Sharifi was notified immediately.
“I knew I had to leave immediately. My (pregnant) wife, my two kids, my dad, my brother and my sister — we were on the next plane to Dubai. I had built my dream house in Kandahar. And now the dream was over.”
Ahmed Wali Karzai, in a statement conveyed through his U.S. lawyer, adamantly denied threatening Sharifi. The “intel report” about a Taliban suicide bomber was real, he said, and thus Karzai felt duty-bound to convey the information.
“I’ve had nine attempts on my life,” said Karzai. “I did it to help him, not to scare him. I remember when (Sharifi) left the country, I thought it was a sign of cowardice and it was empowering the Taliban. Those of us who are committed to building a new country cannot flee when the Taliban threaten us.”
In Sharifi’s absence, Arakozia shrunk rapidly, losing two-thirds of its staff as the billboard business collapsed. The final blow, said Sharifi, came by acetylene torch. “Every one of my billboards was cut with a torch, taken and confiscated.”
The next twist of fate, Sharifi says, was the sudden emergence of a new billboard company — Innovative Kandahar Advertising. On paper, the new operation belonged to Kandahar businessman Qazi Omar. But everybody in Kandahar, says Sharifi, knew the real owner was Qayum Karzai, the Baltimore restaurant baron.
Sharifi claims the new firm, with its ties to power, forced out Arakozia and the other three smaller billboard companies in the south, creating a de facto monopoly and raising prices accordingly. To verify the claim, the Star located the owner of one of those firms, Pashtani Advertising, in Quetta, Pakistan. Noman Kaker, speaking in halting English on his cellphone, confirmed, “All of the business has been taken over by Qayum Karzai.
“He destroyed us all and took all the billboard contracts for himself,” said Kakar. “Arakozia was the biggest but I had 14 people working for me. Now we are all unemployed and I have come to Quetta to try and find work to feed my family. It is a mafia. If you want billboards you must go through Qayum. Nobody else can do the work.”
To further test Karzai’s denial of ownership, the Star contacted the new company, Innovative Kandahar Advertising, posing as a prospective client — a fictitious American charity looking to mount a counter-narcotics billboard campaign.
Company manager Qazi Omar quoted a price of $700 per billboard per month — a fourfold increase over what the now-defunct billboard companies in Kandahar, including Arakozia, charged for their services.
The Star then asked whether “Your company’s owner, Qayum Karzai, might agree to a discount for such a large contract?”
Omar responded, “Yes, this is possible. You should contact Qayum Karzai directly to negotiate a discount. You can email him. Do you have his address?” He then proceeded to carefully recite Karzai’s email address, spelling it slowly letter by letter.
In a subsequent telephone interview, Qayum Karzai denied any financial ties to the company, suggesting that Qazi Omar’s poor grasp of English was the reason for the “miscommunication.”
“I have absolutely nothing to do with this company. What kind of a nutty businessman would own or invest in such a thing if he does not even know the employees. It is absolutely, totally wrong,” Qayum Karzai said.
Afghan cell telephone records obtained by the Toronto Star, meanwhile, show very active lines of communication between Qayum Karzai and Qazi Omar. Over the span of six months this year, Qazi Omar’s phone registered nearly 60 calls to Qayum Karzai’s Baltimore cellphone. Karzai, in turn, appears to have placed eight calls to Omar’s phone in Kandahar over the same span.
Arakozia is not quite dead, relying upon its small-scale printing operation — posters, handbills, and the like — that pay some bills. And Surgar, the weekly, is as popular and feisty as ever, even to this day, with a subscription base of 15,000 and popular support throughout the Sharifi belt. But shorn of the billboard income, the paper barely breaks even.
Ahmed Wali Karzai, in a statement to the Star, pointed to the continuing existence of Surgar as part of his defence against Sharifi’s allegations. “His paper is still open, so no one tried to close it,” AWK said through his lawyer. “If it closes, it’s because he is not making any profit, not because anyone is telling him to close.”
Man fled Afghanistan out of fear of President Karzai’s brothers
WASHINGTON — Nerves frayed from months of mounting threats, Naseem Pashtoon Sharifi admits it wasn’t the most rational of decisions.
There he was, racing through the streets of downtown Kandahar City with a carload of gunmen on his tail. One hand on the wheel, the other trying desperately to load bullets into a pistol. If death was imminent, he would die fighting.
Then, as the gunmen bore down, Sharifi swerved right and stood on the brakes, screaming to a halt. The would-be assassins, unable to react in time, flew past. Suddenly, the hunters were in front, the prey in back.
It was then that Sharifi did “the crazy thing” — role reversal. He decided to chase his tormentors.
“I just floored it. I was so afraid for my family, my children, I wasn’t thinking clearly. But I had to know who these guys were,” Sharifi says from the relative safety of his exile in California, where the father of three has found safe harbour for his family.
“I caught up with them, and we raced for two or three more blocks. And then suddenly the gunmen slowed down and turned. And that’s when I knew.”
His pursuers had been cops. They drove right into Kandahar Police Headquarters.
If the scene harks back more to 1930s Chicago than 21st century Kandahar, Sharifi says they are one and the same — and all under the sway of the Brothers Karzai, the close kin of Afghanistan’s president, who Sharifi is convinced is out to get him.
When he fled Kandahar, Sharifi left behind a burgeoning media empire that at its peak counted 150 employees and ranked as the fourth largest employer in the region. But that, too, Sharifi says, has been plundered by the Karzais.
All but one very important piece — against the odds, Sharifi has managed to keep alive his Kandahar newspaper, Surgar. The feisty weekly continues to tilt against the powers that be, even as its owner has been squeezed out of the country.
These are far from idle accusations. Sharifi festered for months, consulting his extended family for approval — warning them to brace for reprisals — before finally approaching the Toronto Star to take his claims public.
He came because Kandahar is Canada’s patch and the regime that has taken root blossomed under Canada’s nose. Without intervention, he frets it will be the ultimate ruin of the country, ensuring a colossal failure for NATO.
His tale offers a rare glimpse inside the world of the Karzai Brothers — a clan he says he came to know well, and initially had faith in, before everything went pear-shaped.
“I saw how good the Karzais looked from a distance. And then I learned first-hand how badly they stank up close,” Sharifi said.
“I know I’m not the biggest fish. But what happened to me is simply a microcosm of the larger story playing out in Kandahar.”
The Karzais — Ahmed Wali, who is widely regarded as Kandahar’s foremost power broker, together with elder brothers Qayum and Shawali — denied each and every accusation. Lies, all lies, they said.
But further investigation shows Sharifi’s story is far from one man’s grudge. Four other Kandahar sources, speaking to the Star on condition of anonymity, confirmed his account that Karzai muscle-flexing removed him from the city, with Karzai interests promptly taking over the bulk of his business.
Sharifi’s accusations also coincide with recent WikiLeaks revelations showing the extent of U.S. concerns about the Karzais’ hold over Kandahar. One diplomatic cable describes the family’s position as a “semi-modern aristocracy” directed by “unrivalled strongman” Ahmed Wali Karzai, known as AWK.
AWK, the U.S. cable said, “appears not to understand the level of our knowledge of his activities and that the coalition views many of his activities as malign, particularly relating to his influence over the police.”
The U.S. cable singles out Canada’s $50 million Dahla Dam project as a cause for worry, noting that Karzai businesses were positioned for “multiple patronage benefits” after lobbying the Canadians for construction and security contracts.
Naseem Sharifi, now 36, was just starting out in the world back in 2002, when he returned to post-Taliban Kandahar like thousands of others, wanting to be a part of the new Afghanistan.
Born to a respected branch of the prominent Barakzai tribe, Sharifi had been sent away at age 16, another young refugee of war. It was an adoption into exile, with the young Sharifi joining relatives in Seattle who, by marriage, were distant Karzai cousins. After 12 years in exile, he was back with U.S. citizenship, a Western education, a zest to make his mark.
It wasn’t long before he struck upon his unlikely formula for success — billboards. Sharifi had vivid memories of the outdoor advertising billboards that clutter America’s highways, a concept then alien to Afghanistan. And with new banks and new cellphone companies opening daily, he thought the idea might just click.
Click, it did. Sharifi assembled a fledgling team and Arakozia was born.
War-torn Kandahar was then so starved for visual stimulation that when he planted his first outdoor sign Afghans gathered from far and wide just to look at it.
The contracts poured in. Afghan Wireless, Roshan cellular. Even NATO bought in, with a series of poppy-eradication billboards.
“We barely knew what we were doing at first. But we were quick studies. Before I knew it, we were operating in seven provinces. Nobody else was doing it. And the phone just kept ringing.”
With Arakozia running on all cylinders, Sharifi began to indulge his more magnanimous instincts. He pumped profits into expansion with the launch of Surgar, Kandahar’s first-ever independent weekly. And then Kandahar’s first-ever coffee shop.
“The goal for both the newspaper and the coffee shop was the same — to encourage civil society and help create a sense of community,” says Sharifi.
“Until then, all that existed in Kandahar for the past 30 years were places we call somowat — dirty little holes used for smoking marijuana and drinking tea.”
The Kandahar Coffee Shop flourished and so too did Surgar. From chess and snooker tournaments to sports sponsorships, Sharifi’s Arakozia stood ready to embrace any who approached with a positive idea. When a group of Kandahar high school students came looking for help in starting a students’ association, Sharifi ticked off every box, providing office space and computers for a group that quickly swelled to 1,800 members: literate Kandaharis in a land of outrageously high illiteracy, coming together for the greater good.
Sharifi was becoming a player. Doors opened, including the doors of the family Karzai. AWK attended Sharifi’s wedding to a local Kandahari woman in 2004 and furnished introductions to his brothers — Shawali, the eldest; Mahmoud, then based in Kabul but a frequent visitor to Kandahar; and Qayum, the Baltimore restaurateur who, Sharifi and others insist, ranks among the most influential of the siblings in Kandahar politics.
Sharifi’s access to Kandahar’s inner circle included regular visits with then-governor Assadullah Khalid, who later would lose his job amid accusations of personal involvement in the torture of Afghan detainees.
The first hint that something wasn’t quite right came in 2006 when, Sharifi says, he was offered a 20 per cent interest in a construction company, Daman, that he alleges is controlled by the Karzais. Free.
“I accepted the offer. Which now I deeply regret. I was so caught up in all the other business and this circle of power that had opened up, I didn’t give it proper consideration,” Sharifi says.
The other partners in Daman, he says, included Shawali Karzai (20 per cent), local Internet entrepreneur Ramat Qumran (20 per cent) and Qayum Karzai (40 per cent). They met regularly for lunch to discuss ways to latch on to the millions of development dollars flowing into the province.
“Every day, just as lunch would begin, Shawali Karzai would whisper in my ear, ‘Did you find a contract? Why don’t you tell the governor to give you a contract?’ Every single day.
“In hindsight, I realize … they wanted me to get my hands dirty. I was a threat because I was clean. But I was so naïve. There was also a strange dynamic between the Karzai stepbrothers. They are one family, yet they compete with each other. Shawali is the oldest; he was the father’s favourite, but I began to feel that he was using me like a pawn to prove to his brothers he, too, could generate wealth for the family.” For their part, the Karzais say the lunches were only social and they had no direct control over Daman.
Sharifi says he quit the enterprise without ever receiving a penny.
Instead, he threw himself into yet another new venture — the launch of a radio station to better reach the estimated 80 per cent of a provincial population unable to read or write. He assembled a team, began ordering equipment, all underwritten with the profits of the billboard business.
As the radio plans took shape in early 2006, Sharifi was summoned to the Governor’s Mansion, where he was confronted by an uncharacteristically stern Governor Khalid.
“Drop this idea for a radio station,” said the governor, according to Sharifi.
“He said, ‘Don’t ask why. Just know that Qayum and Ahmed Wali Karzai don’t want it.’”
Governor Khalid then placed a call, with the speakerphone amplified so that Sharifi could hear the conversation. Qayum Karzai answered.
“The governor said to Qayum, ‘I just called to assure you that the work is done. Sharifi will not open the radio station.’ And Qayum answered, ‘Good, just make sure. Naseem is the kind of person that gets things done. He will make us look bad. Just make sure we stop this,’” Sharifi says.
“I was stunned. I had such hope up to this point, but my whole perception changed. These mountains we call the Karzais — I began to realize how tiny they were. I was just a small player, but their self-confidence was so low that a little guy like me doing things with enthusiasm made them feel threatened.”
Sharifi acquiesced, dropping his radio plans. But the tension with the Karzais worsened in 2007 with the appointment of Ghulam Hamidi, a lifelong friend of the Karzai brothers, as mayor of Kandahar.
Within days of the new mayor’s arrival a tax dispute erupted, with Mayor Hamidi publicly accusing Arakozia of not paying its share. Sharifi says he was blindsided — but quickly produced what he claims is full accounting of every bill, to the last Afghani.
Mayor Hamidi would not let the matter rest. The final cut, says Sharifi, came in when the mayor arbitrary declared a tenfold increase in municipal taxes against Arakozia’s billboards — from six per cent to 60 per cent.
Sharifi acknowledges he was a small player in the big picture, pursuing small but legitimate business opportunities that paled against the multi-billion-dollar security and narcotics racketeering that is widely believed to permeate Kandahar. Why squeeze out a little guy like me, he wondered?
And on this point, if nothing else, the Karzais agree — Sharifi was a minor figure in town. Each of the three brothers, Ahmed Wali, Qayum and Shawali, played down Sharifi’s place in their lives in statements to the Star. He was an acquaintance, not a friend, they say. There were never any business dealings. The story of Daman and the radio station story are “pure fiction,” said Qayum Karzai.
The brothers also accuse Sharifi of exploiting the Karzai name, and hint darkly that perhaps his adoption to the U.S. as a teenager was never formally legal.
But there is a certain velocity to the Karzai denials — a flurry of emails, phone calls and written statements — that suggests the saga has penetrated the Karzai brothers’ famously thick skins.
Perhaps one explanation is a particularly provocative cartoon published by Surgar in early 2008, which portrayed Mayor Hamidi as a snarling dog on a leash held by Qayum Karzai. Even in a stable democracy, such an image likely would make noise. In Kandahar, it was a thunderclap.
“(Sharifi’s) relationship with me changed for one reason and one reason alone — that cartoon,” Qayum Karzai told the Star in a telephone interview addressing the allegations.
“Mayor Hamidi and I have known each other since we were 6 years old. His father was my father’s friend. We went to the same school, we swam together, we hunted together. We were part of a very tight clique,” said Qayum Karzai.
“Everybody knows the mayor is a friend of mine. So this cartoon of me holding him like a dog, it was … disappointing.”
Mayor Hamidi responded to the Star with an epic four-page letter defending not only his dispute with Arakozia but the entirety of his tenure in office. Hamidi denied any wrongdoing and attributed the entire dispute to a battle over back taxes.
Surgar, however, kept pushing. In 2008, the newspaper became more aggressive about reporting corruption allegations. It also began translating and reprinting in Pashtu the widening array of international media stories drawing attention to the growing power of the house of Karzai.
“The next phase was threats of physical violence,” says Sharifi. “I was getting anonymous phone calls warning, ‘Leave the city or face the consequences.’” The journalists at Surgar were regularly threatened. In at least one case, he says, the threat came directly by phone from AWK — a claim Ahmed Wali Karzai categorically denied in his statement to the Star.
“More than once I was followed by armed men on motorcycles. I had always lived openly. But now my openness was vulnerability. I had a pattern of travel between home and office,” he says.
After the next big scare — the 2008 high-speed chase through Kandahar City that ended at police headquarters — Sharifi knew the end was near. He now saw the Karzai hold over Kandahar as both omnipotent and potentially lethal. And he was in their crosshairs. For their part the Karzais say they had nothing to do with any police chase.
But for Sharifi, the breaking point came two weeks later, when Ahmed Wali Karzai, now the elected head of the Kandahar Provincial Council, summoned local journalists to disclose details of a suicide attack.
At the end of the news conference, as reporters packed their equipment, AWK called on Surgar’s reporter and issued an ominous warning that was heard by all: “Tell Naseem we have information there are four more suicide bombers in Kandahar. He is the next target.”
Sharifi was notified immediately.
“I knew I had to leave immediately. My (pregnant) wife, my two kids, my dad, my brother and my sister — we were on the next plane to Dubai. I had built my dream house in Kandahar. And now the dream was over.”
Ahmed Wali Karzai, in a statement conveyed through his U.S. lawyer, adamantly denied threatening Sharifi. The “intel report” about a Taliban suicide bomber was real, he said, and thus Karzai felt duty-bound to convey the information.
“I’ve had nine attempts on my life,” said Karzai. “I did it to help him, not to scare him. I remember when (Sharifi) left the country, I thought it was a sign of cowardice and it was empowering the Taliban. Those of us who are committed to building a new country cannot flee when the Taliban threaten us.”
In Sharifi’s absence, Arakozia shrunk rapidly, losing two-thirds of its staff as the billboard business collapsed. The final blow, said Sharifi, came by acetylene torch. “Every one of my billboards was cut with a torch, taken and confiscated.”
The next twist of fate, Sharifi says, was the sudden emergence of a new billboard company — Innovative Kandahar Advertising. On paper, the new operation belonged to Kandahar businessman Qazi Omar. But everybody in Kandahar, says Sharifi, knew the real owner was Qayum Karzai, the Baltimore restaurant baron.
Sharifi claims the new firm, with its ties to power, forced out Arakozia and the other three smaller billboard companies in the south, creating a de facto monopoly and raising prices accordingly. To verify the claim, the Star located the owner of one of those firms, Pashtani Advertising, in Quetta, Pakistan. Noman Kaker, speaking in halting English on his cellphone, confirmed, “All of the business has been taken over by Qayum Karzai.
“He destroyed us all and took all the billboard contracts for himself,” said Kakar. “Arakozia was the biggest but I had 14 people working for me. Now we are all unemployed and I have come to Quetta to try and find work to feed my family. It is a mafia. If you want billboards you must go through Qayum. Nobody else can do the work.”
To further test Karzai’s denial of ownership, the Star contacted the new company, Innovative Kandahar Advertising, posing as a prospective client — a fictitious American charity looking to mount a counter-narcotics billboard campaign.
Company manager Qazi Omar quoted a price of $700 per billboard per month — a fourfold increase over what the now-defunct billboard companies in Kandahar, including Arakozia, charged for their services.
The Star then asked whether “Your company’s owner, Qayum Karzai, might agree to a discount for such a large contract?”
Omar responded, “Yes, this is possible. You should contact Qayum Karzai directly to negotiate a discount. You can email him. Do you have his address?” He then proceeded to carefully recite Karzai’s email address, spelling it slowly letter by letter.
In a subsequent telephone interview, Qayum Karzai denied any financial ties to the company, suggesting that Qazi Omar’s poor grasp of English was the reason for the “miscommunication.”
“I have absolutely nothing to do with this company. What kind of a nutty businessman would own or invest in such a thing if he does not even know the employees. It is absolutely, totally wrong,” Qayum Karzai said.
Afghan cell telephone records obtained by the Toronto Star, meanwhile, show very active lines of communication between Qayum Karzai and Qazi Omar. Over the span of six months this year, Qazi Omar’s phone registered nearly 60 calls to Qayum Karzai’s Baltimore cellphone. Karzai, in turn, appears to have placed eight calls to Omar’s phone in Kandahar over the same span.
Arakozia is not quite dead, relying upon its small-scale printing operation — posters, handbills, and the like — that pay some bills. And Surgar, the weekly, is as popular and feisty as ever, even to this day, with a subscription base of 15,000 and popular support throughout the Sharifi belt. But shorn of the billboard income, the paper barely breaks even.
Ahmed Wali Karzai, in a statement to the Star, pointed to the continuing existence of Surgar as part of his defence against Sharifi’s allegations. “His paper is still open, so no one tried to close it,” AWK said through his lawyer. “If it closes, it’s because he is not making any profit, not because anyone is telling him to close.”
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