# The Afghan police tribal rotation > **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 police tribal rotation," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/afghan-police-tribal-rotation/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia. *An American anti-corruption scheme in Afghanistan that John Kiriakou describes as achieving the reverse of its purpose: someone in the Pentagon decided that regional chiefs of police should come from other tribes in other parts of the country, so a man from Herat would head the police in Kandahar — which only deepened hatred between tribes and did nothing at all about corruption.* - **Purpose:** To combat corruption in Afghan regional policing - **Attributed to:** 'Some genius in the Pentagon' - **The rule:** Regional police chiefs posted to regions of other tribes - **Examples Kiriakou gives:** Herat to Kandahar; Kandahar to the Tajikistan border - **Effect he reports:** People hated representatives of other tribes even more than before - **Effect on corruption:** 'Nothing. Nothing.' Discussing why American programmes in Afghanistan so often produced the opposite of their stated aim, John Kiriakou offered an example from policing that he treats as definitive. ## The scheme Afghanistan, he began, is very very heavily tribal. And so what was decided — by, in his phrase, some genius in the Pentagon — was to make the regional chiefs of police come from other tribes in other parts of the country. If you were from Herat, you were going to head the police force in Kandahar; if you were from Kandahar, you were going to head the police force up along the border with Tajikistan. [1] ## The result All that did, Kiriakou says, was make people hate representatives of other tribes even more than they had previously. And it did nothing to combat corruption. Nothing. [2] ## The pattern it belongs to The rotation scheme is one of a family of examples Kiriakou uses to argue that American programmes in Afghanistan were designed against the grain of the society they were meant to reform. The same instinct — assembling men from every tribe and region in one place and expecting a national institution to emerge — produced [the Afghan National Police poisoning](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/afghan-national-police-poisoning), which he calls mistake number one. [3] He places it in the same conversation as his broader complaint about how American initiatives were measured. The question he says commanders were asked was how many schools are in that area, when the questions that mattered were how many children attend when we are not there, what curriculum is taught, and how the parents feel. [4] The result across two decades, in his summary, was that the priority rotated — schools one year, the electrical grid the next, then farming, then heroin poppy — nothing was ever finished, and in the end the Americans were thrown out. [5] ## See also - [The Afghan National Police poisoning](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/afghan-national-police-poisoning) - [Renting Afghan warlords](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/renting-afghan-warlords) - [Afghan heroin policy](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/afghan-heroin-policy) - [The Taliban truck escort origin](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/taliban-truck-escort-origin) - [The Hazara leader's judo belts](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/hazara-judo-belts) - [General Abdul Rashid Dostum](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/general-dostum) ## Sources 1. John Kiriakou – US Espionage and Foreign Policy (2025-12-17), at 17:36. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6pirxcMhK8&t=1056s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-12-17-pete-a-turner-john-kiriakou-us-espionage-and-foreign-policy/ 2. 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/ 3. 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/ 4. John Kiriakou – US Espionage and Foreign Policy (2025-12-17), at 07:16. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6pirxcMhK8&t=436s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-12-17-pete-a-turner-john-kiriakou-us-espionage-and-foreign-policy/ 5. John Kiriakou – US Espionage and Foreign Policy (2025-12-17), at 07:47. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6pirxcMhK8&t=467s · 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-police-tribal-rotation/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt