The Corleones of Kandahar http://mostlywater.org/corleones_kandahar

A few months back, I wondered aloud if Canadians were killing and dying for Kandahar's Al Capone. Since then, there have been new revelations bolstering the case for gangster metaphors in describing the Karzai family at the head of the NATO-backed regime in Afghanistan. President Hamid's half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, has come under particular scrutiny. Julius Cavendish writes in the April 3 UK Independent:

"To the inhabitants of Kandahar City, Ahmed Wali Karzai is a symbol of everything wrong with their home, an emblem of the murky nexus of warlords and criminal syndicates controlling southern Afghanistan's largest city. In the words of some residents, the half-brother of Afghanistan's president is accused of being a 'warlord, a terrorist', a narcotics trafficker, and a contract monopolist. Others won't even mention his name. 'I can't tell you anything about this. I'm too scared. Someone might kill me,' one resident said."