Bodyguard who killed Karzai's brother was a trusted CIA contact

The bodyguard who assassinated President Hamid Karzai’s brother had been working closely with US Special Forces and the CIA before he was recruited by the Taliban, raising fears over the Islamist movement’s increasingly sophisticated intelligence apparatus which has managed to threaten the inner circles of power in Afghanistan…

“Our investigation shows that for the last three months he was acting out of character, not normal, erratic,” said Mahmoud Karzai, another Karzai brother. “He wasn’t sleeping, he was nervous, he was getting phone calls in the middle of the night, and our information shows he made a trip to Quetta [in Pakistan] and met with some Taliban. His father was a mullah. So all these things combined, plus the Taliban claim of responsibility… but our preliminary investigation indicates this was the work of the Taliban.”

Security analysts say that, if true, it shows not only the problems facing the Afghan army and police as they start taking control of the country from Nato, but also how sophisticated Taliban intelligence operations have become.