Successive Western officials or generals realised that whether they liked or loathed him, it was very hard to get anything done in "AWK's" Kandahar power base without him.
Any journalist arriving at his offices, as I did last August, keen to get to grips with a man accused of everything from being a drug lord to having his political opponents killed soon found themselves wrong footed.
Ahmad Wali Karzai, who had spent years as an exile in Chicago could deploy English with skill and subtlety, happily chat about British Premier League soccer (or indeed US Major League baseball), entertain you with a delicious lunch, and paint himself as an indispensible pillar of the community in a city that has long been seen as the great prize in Afghanistan.
While he was seen as a key power broker in the region and an ally of the international forces fighting the Taliban, the president's brother was also accused of corruption, drug trafficking and being on the CIA payroll, allegations he denied.
For the last several years, President Karzai had relied on his brother to help maintain support among his ethnic Pashtun community in the south. The United States and other Western nations also relied on Wali Karzai and his influence in Kandahar, where international troops were working to clear insurgent strongholds.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai strongly defended his paternal half-brother against any criticism. Both men returned to Afghanistan from the United States after the Taliban-led government was ousted by U.S. forces in 2001. Wali Karzai used to own a restaurant in the midwestern U.S. city of Chicago, before returning to his native country.
Wali Karzai was born in 1961 and had five children. He survived several assassination attempts before his death on Tuesday.
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