# The Afghan National Police poisoning > **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou. > > Cite as: "The Afghan National Police poisoning," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/afghan-national-police-poisoning/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia. *An incident John Kiriakou recalls from a 2012 New York Times report and treats as the clearest single illustration of why the American project in Afghanistan failed: at a DynCorp-run training facility that had deliberately mixed recruits from every tribe and region, one recruit poisoned the evening stew and then let four Taliban fighters into the dormitory to stab the survivors in their beds.* - **Reported:** New York Times, 2012 (per Kiriakou) - **Contractor:** DynCorp, charged with establishing and training the Afghan National Police - **Design Kiriakou calls 'mistake number one':** Bringing young men from every tribe and region into one facility - **The attack:** A recruit poisoned a pot of stew, killing about a dozen; that night four Taliban were let into the dormitory to stab the survivors bed to bed - **Coverage:** A story for a day or two - **Kiriakou's reading:** 'The tribe was more important than the nation' Asked in 2021 how Afghanistan had arrived where it was, John Kiriakou said corruption and tribalism, and then gave one story in place of an argument. ## The training facility There had been a report in the New York Times, he recalled, dating it to 2012. DynCorp had been charged with establishing and training a new national police force, the Afghan National Police, and set up a huge training facility, bringing young Afghan men from all over the country, from all the different tribes and all the different regions. That, Kiriakou says, was mistake number one. [1] ## What happened To make a long story short: one night one of the recruits poisoned a pot of stew that was being served for dinner, killing about a dozen of his fellow recruits. That same night, while the survivors were sleeping, he let four members of the Taliban into the dormitory being used for housing, and they went bed to bed and stabbed all the other recruits and killed them. [2] It was a story for a day or two, Kiriakou says. To him it was a glaring example of exactly what was wrong in Afghanistan: that the tribe was more important than the nation; that Hazaras were not supposed to be working with Pashtuns, or northerners with southerners; and that it simply was not going to work. When you hate your enemy more than you love your country, he said, it is doomed to fail — nothing will work if that is the prevailing belief. [3] [4] ## The trajectory afterwards Asked whether tribalism had eased in the intervening years, Kiriakou said the opposite: he thought it had strengthened. He added that for himself he does not really care who leads Afghanistan — if it is the Taliban, it is the Taliban — but that he worries about minorities there, about Shia Muslims and specifically about the Hazaras, a concern he illustrates with [the story of a Hazara leader's judo belts](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/hazara-judo-belts). [5] The incident sits alongside his account of American attempts to design tribalism out of Afghan policing by administrative fiat, described in [the Afghan police tribal rotation](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/afghan-police-tribal-rotation) — a policy he says did nothing whatsoever to combat corruption. [6] ## See also - [Afghan Police Tribal Rotation](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/afghan-police-tribal-rotation) - [Hazara Judo Belts](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/hazara-judo-belts) - [The Taliban truck escort origin](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/taliban-truck-escort-origin) - [Renting Afghan warlords](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/renting-afghan-warlords) - [Girls' madrasa raid error](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/girls-madrasa-raid-error) - [Afghan heroin policy](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/afghan-heroin-policy) ## Sources 1. John Pinna & Kiriakou on Afghanistan (2021-08-17), at 15:05. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYVznzuvhgA&t=905s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2021-08-17-crossing-faiths-john-pinna-kiriakou-on-afghanistan/ 2. John Pinna & Kiriakou on Afghanistan (2021-08-17), at 15:36. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYVznzuvhgA&t=936s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2021-08-17-crossing-faiths-john-pinna-kiriakou-on-afghanistan/ 3. John Pinna & Kiriakou on Afghanistan (2021-08-17), at 16:06. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYVznzuvhgA&t=966s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2021-08-17-crossing-faiths-john-pinna-kiriakou-on-afghanistan/ 4. John Pinna & Kiriakou on Afghanistan (2021-08-17), at 16:36. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYVznzuvhgA&t=996s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2021-08-17-crossing-faiths-john-pinna-kiriakou-on-afghanistan/ 5. John Pinna & Kiriakou on Afghanistan (2021-08-17), at 17:07. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYVznzuvhgA&t=1027s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2021-08-17-crossing-faiths-john-pinna-kiriakou-on-afghanistan/ 6. John Kiriakou – US Espionage and Foreign Policy (2025-12-17), at 18:07. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6pirxcMhK8&t=1087s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-12-17-pete-a-turner-john-kiriakou-us-espionage-and-foreign-policy/ --- From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/afghan-national-police-poisoning/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt