# Hamid Karzai

> **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: "Hamid Karzai," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/hamid-karzai/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*The president installed in Afghanistan after the American invasion, whom John Kiriakou uses as the standing illustration of what occupation actually buys: after twenty years and more than a trillion dollars, Karzai was 'little more than the mayor of Kabul' — and did not control all of Kabul either. The line began as a joke among Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff, and Kiriakou used it to Senator John Kerry's face ten years into the war.*

- **Position:** President of Afghanistan under American occupation
- **Kiriakou's assessment:** 'Little more than the mayor of Kabul — and even then, he didn't control all of Kabul'
- **Origin of the phrase:** A standing joke among [Senate Foreign Relations Committee](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/senate-foreign-relations-committee) staff
- **Cost of the occupation he cites:** Twenty years and more than a trillion dollars

**Hamid Karzai** was the president of Afghanistan through most of the American occupation, and in [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)'s usage he functions as a measurement rather than a biography.

Asked why plans that look straightforward on paper collapse in practice, Kiriakou answered with Afghanistan: *"look at Afghanistan. After years and years, Hamid Karzai was really little more than the mayor of Kabul — and even then, he didn't control all of Kabul."*[1]

The accounting that follows is the point of the example: *"20 years of American occupation, more than a trillion dollars spent — and still we're facing enemies as soon as we leave the city limits. It's not a way to run a war."*[1]

He raises it as a caution against the assumption that seizing a capital settles a country — the assumption underlying [the four requirements of a coup](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-four-requirements-of-a-coup) as applied to [Venezuela](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/venezuela-regime-change-2026).[2][1]

## Where the phrase comes from

The formulation is older than the podcast circuit. It was a joke among [Senate Foreign Relations Committee](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/senate-foreign-relations-committee) staff while Kiriakou worked there, already ten years into the war, aimed at the false belief that the central government in Kabul controlled the countryside — it controlled very little.[3][4]

He used it directly on Senator [John Kerry](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kerry). Ten years after the start of the war, coming out of a briefing, Kerry said *"we may actually win this thing."* Kiriakou's reply was that they would not: it was the same briefing the committee had been given for a decade. *"Hamid Karzai is the mayor of Kabul. That's it. The Taliban's got the rest of the country … That's just happy talk from the generals because they know that you have the ability to hold up their budget."*[5][6][7]

## An installed government

Kiriakou's account of how Karzai came to office is that the United States dispensed with the Afghan system rather than working through it: told that Afghans had chosen leaders their own way for thousands of years, Washington's answer was that it did not like that, there would be an election instead, and it had a man for it — Karzai, whose brother ran a popular Afghan restaurant in Baltimore. When the Afghans said they did not want that kind of system, the reply was *"we're not asking you, we're telling you."* Kiriakou sets that against the absence of any comparable democratic demand on Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain or Egypt.[8][9]

The relationship with the agency was direct and transactional. Where a foreign leader is on the books, Kiriakou says, the [CIA](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia) station chief walks straight into the office for the meeting — suitcases full of money and all that goes with it — and Karzai is now known to have been such a case. Asked how such a person is kept from getting out of control, his answer is [Manuel Noriega](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/manuel-noriega): the United States overthrew him, kidnapped him, occupied his country and jailed him for life. *"It's like you're fired."*[10][11]

## Loyalty on both sides at once

The limits of the government Karzai headed show up in Kiriakou's smaller stories. In 2010 he met a man in Afghanistan who saw no conflict at all between working by day for Karzai's Northern Alliance government as an irrigation expert and going out at night with the [Taliban](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/taliban) to blow up irrigation canals — the great cycle of life for these people, in his telling, with no contradiction felt on either side.[12]

## The admission about the Siddiqui children

After the war Karzai was placed under house arrest, and it was in that condition that he supplied the answer to a question nobody had been able to settle for seventeen years.

[Aafia Siddiqui](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/aafia-siddiqui)'s lawyer, [Clive Stafford Smith](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/clive-stafford-smith), had gone to Afghanistan and befriended the Taliban government; Siddiqui is, in Kiriakou's words, *"a giant hero in both Pakistan and Afghanistan."* When the lawyer said he needed to talk to Karzai, the Taliban simply instructed him: *"you're going to talk to this British human rights lawyer."*[13][14]

Karzai did not equivocate. In Kiriakou's rendering: *"Yeah, we snatched the kids. We turned them over to the CIA. They just farmed them out for adoption."* On the strength of it the lawyer found the two older children — adults by then — and reunited them with Siddiqui's sister in Pakistan, with whom they now live. The youngest has never been found.[14][15]

## See also

- [The four requirements of a coup](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-four-requirements-of-a-coup)
- [The Taliban](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/taliban)
- [Renting Afghan warlords](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/renting-afghan-warlords)
- [Afghan heroin policy](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/afghan-heroin-policy)

## Sources

1. Piers Morgan Uncensored (2025-12-22), at 29:06. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=178ec0ZUJPQ&t=1746s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-12-22-piers-morgan-uncensored-piers-morgan-uncensored/
2. Piers Morgan Uncensored (2025-12-22), at 28:35. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=178ec0ZUJPQ&t=1715s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-12-22-piers-morgan-uncensored-piers-morgan-uncensored/
3. Talk Afghanistan (2021-09-01), at 02:48. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4cxV2fz6ks&t=168s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2021-09-01-garland-nixon-talk-afghanistan/
4. Talk Afghanistan (2021-09-01), at 03:19. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4cxV2fz6ks&t=199s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2021-09-01-garland-nixon-talk-afghanistan/
5. John Kiriakou – Enhanced Techniques & Whistleblowing (2024-12-10), at 04:40. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkkqwGDDbE0&t=280s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2024-12-10-pete-a-turner/
6. John Kiriakou – Enhanced Techniques & Whistleblowing (2024-12-10), at 04:40. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCF5MN7R66g&t=280s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2024-12-10-jon-leon-guerrero-john-kiriakou-enhanced-techniques-whistleblowing/
7. CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou Confronts the Deep State, (2025-06-25), at 18:50. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-8pQrcfQ8U&t=1130s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-06-25-harrison-berger/
8. CIA Spy Reveals MKUltra's More Sinister Twin Experiment (2026-06-16), at 32:44. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy8EslNPwKU&t=1964s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-06-16-julian-dorey-daily-mkultra-twin-experiment/
9. CIA Spy Reveals MKUltra's More Sinister Twin Experiment (2026-06-16), at 33:15. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy8EslNPwKU&t=1995s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-06-16-julian-dorey-daily-mkultra-twin-experiment/
10. DeProgram (Ted Rall) (2025-11-21), at 10:50. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uyLgnRHjk4&t=650s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-21-deprogram-ted-rall-deprogram-ted-rall/
11. DeProgram (Ted Rall) (2025-11-21), at 11:20. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uyLgnRHjk4&t=680s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-21-deprogram-ted-rall-deprogram-ted-rall/
12. DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou: “Gaza-istan?” (2025-11-01), at 22:24. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7-d0Y6eESc&t=1344s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-01-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-with-ted-rall-and-john-kiriakou-gaz/
13. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-09-06), at 49:33. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_K7Ab0PsdM&t=2973s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-09-06-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/
14. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-09-06), at 50:03. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_K7Ab0PsdM&t=3003s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-09-06-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/
15. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-09-06), at 50:36. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_K7Ab0PsdM&t=3036s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-09-06-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/hamid-karzai/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt