When Hamid Karzai swept on to the international stage at a donors' meeting in Tokyo in 2002, he was fêted as the saviour of Afghanistan - the only man who could reunite and rebuild the nation after three decades of war.

As Western leaders lauded his political skills, fashion editors gushed over his trademark Uzbek coat and Karakul lambswool hat. Gucci's Tom Ford hailed him as the most chic man in the world.

But whatever Mr Karzai says - or wears - when he attends the next donors' meeting, beginning in Paris tomorrow, he is losing some of his lustre in the eyes of Afghans and Western allies alike.

Mr Karzai plans to ask donors in Paris for another $50 billion in aid to increase food production, diversify the economy away from opium and pay for next year's presidential election, which he hopes to win.

The donors, however, are not only balking at such a massive increase in aid - Mr Karzai's Government has struggled to spend all of the $25 billion that has been pledged since 2002, they are also asking themselves - and each other - whether Mr Karzai is the right man to tackle Afghanistan's three main problems: the Taleban, the drugs trade and official corruption. Patience is running particularly thin among the main contributing military forces in the country in a week when the British death toll reached 100 since the 2001 invasion.

“The fact is, Karzai is weak,” one senior Western official in Kabul told The Times. “The question is whether there is a viable alternative.”

The concerns of some in the West were summed up by the winning joke in Laughter Bazaar, a comedy talent show held by a private Afghan television channel last year.

“I am running for president,” the joke went. “If I get elected, there will be no corruption, no favouritism, no nepotism... except, of course, for my brother.” Afghan viewers fell about laughing.

It is, after all, a widely held perception that the Afghan Government is riddled with corruption and protects the leading figures in the country's drugs trade, which the United Nations valued at $4 billion last year.

There is no suggestion that President Karzai, who became interim leader in December 2001 and won the last presidential election in 2004, is himself corrupt.

However, he has been forced repeatedly to defend his younger half-brother, Ahmad Wali Karzai (often known simply as Wali), who has often been accused of involvement in the narcotics business.

“That is complete nonsense,” Mr Karzai said in an interview published this month in the German magazine Der Spiegel. “Ahmad Wali was already accused of dealing in drugs. I investigated it thoroughly: naturally, none of it is true.”

Wali, 47, who is head of the provincial council in the southern province of Kandahar and the President's personal representative for southern Afghanistan, also denies all the allegations against him. “No one has proven anything,” he told The Times. “This is political; it's character assassination.”

Yet an investigation by The Times has uncovered widespread concerns among British, American, Canadian, Nato and UN officials that the allegations about Wali are undermining domestic and international support for Mr Karzai.

British and US counter-narcotics officials say they have no evidence that Wali is involved in drugs trafficking or any other illegal activity.

There were sufficient concerns, however, for Ronald Neumann, the previous US Ambassador in Kabul, to confront President Karzai over the issue in late 2006 and early 2007, according to diplomatic sources.

Mr Neumann advised Mr Karzai to remove Wali, calling him a “political embarrassment” and suggesting that he be sent overseas as an ambassador, the sources told The Times.

Mr Karzai responded by calling a meeting with Mr Neumann, the British Ambassador and the CIA and MI6 station chiefs and asking them if they had any hard evidence against Wali, the sources said.

They had to say “no”, the issue was dropped and the British and American embassies in Kabul now refuse to discuss the matter, on or off the record.

Yet the problem has not gone away and continues to fuel the perception, rightly or wrongly, that Mr Karzai is soft on his brother. “It's the proverbial elephant in the room,” one Western diplomat said.

At the end of last year, Habibullah Jan, a powerful tribal chief and member of parliament from Kandahar, became the first person to accuse Wali directly in parliament of involvement in the drugs trade.

Another Kandahar MP made a similar allegation, but would speak only off the record.

A senior Afghan security official, who also asked not to be identified, claimed that Afghan officials had repeatedly complained about Wali to President Karzai. “The problem is that neither the Americans nor the Europeans are interested in doing anything about this,” he said.

He also claimed that Wali had been living in a house belonging to Haji Azizullah, a notorious drugs trafficker from Helmand, without paying rent.

Azizullah has been on the US Treasury's list of Specially Designated Nationals, with whom US citizens are banned from doing business, since June 2007 because of his involvement in the drugs trade.

Wali told The Times that he lived in Azizullah's house in Kandahar - a heavily fortified three-storey mansion - but said that he was paying rent and had no idea about Azizullah's connection to the drugs trade when he moved there in 2001.

“I didn't know who he was, and then I couldn't move because of security and because I could not afford it,” he said.

Wali said his salary was 17,000 Afghanis (£175) a month and, while he had other sources of income, he did not want to discuss them or say how much rent he was paying.

President Karzai's supporters emphasise that he has tried to address the issue by telling Wali directly to clear his name and by sending his elder brother, Abdul Qayum Karzai, to Kandahar to check Wali's power.

Qayum - an MP for Kandahar - has apparently spent so much time there that parliament named him last month as one of several legislators who had not attended a single session in the current term.

Zarar Ahmad Moqbel, the Interior Minister, added that President Karzai had sent a decree to all government offices saying that “if any of my relations is involved in any violation of the law you can arrest him and publicly declare this”.

Mr Moqbel said: “Those who make these allegations are spreading propaganda. They want to harm the personality of the President with these accusations.”

Others argue that President Karzai has no power to dismiss Wali, who is an elected official, and would look weak if he bowed to Western pressure to remove him by unofficial means.

They say that Wali brings co-operation and stability to the south, principally by maintaining the dominance and loyalty of President Karzai's tribe, the Popalzai.

Even so, the result is that President Karzai and his Western backers are not seen to be serious about tackling corruption or the drugs trade, which both help to fuel the Taleban insurgency.

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund said in a joint report last week that “little headway” had been made against corruption in Afghanistan and called for “determined action” to tackle the problem.

Off the record, Western officials have a blunter message for Mr Karzai. “If Karzai does not do anything in this area he will not be a viable candidate [for re-election],” a Nato official said.

In need of assistance

90 percentage of Afghan spending financed by aid

53 percentage of the population living below the poverty line

53,000 strength of the international force supporting Afghan authorities

14,000 extra US troops involved in Operation Enduring Freedom

11,000 people killed by Taleban insurgency in the past two years

92 percentage of the world’s heroin that comes from Afghan poppies

Source: Times archives

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