Explaining in 2021 why his concern about Afghanistan was less about who governed it than about who lived in it, John Kiriakou reached for an encounter he says stuck with him.
The shadow box
When he was in Afghanistan — back in, he thinks, 2007 — he met a very senior Hazara leader who made a point to him that was just so interesting it stayed with him. Mounted on the wall of the man’s house was a large shadow box, framed, containing all of his judo belts, from white to black: every time he earned a new belt he had saved it, and there they were in order. [1] [2]
Kiriakou complimented him and said, you’re a black belt in judo. The man replied that he was a fifth-degree black belt. Kiriakou said that was really incredible. And the man said: I didn’t do it for fun. I did it because Hazaras are forbidden from owning weapons in Afghanistan. [2]
He went on: I’m a Shia Muslim, I’m an Afghan like any other Afghan, and I’m forbidden from owning a weapon. I had to have some way to protect myself. [2] [3]
The point Kiriakou draws
What gives the story its edge in his telling is whose law it was. That, he says, was under the Afghan government — the one that was supposed to be democratic and supportive of human rights, and that was being supported and financed by the United States. His question follows directly: what is it going to be like under the Taliban for religious and ethnic minorities like him? That really worries him. [3]
He placed the same anxiety earlier in the conversation, saying that he does not really care who leads Afghanistan, but that he worries about minorities there, about Shia Muslims and specifically about the Hazaras. [1] It is the same fault line he identifies in the Afghan National Police poisoning, where he notes that Hazaras were not supposed to be working with Pashtuns. [4]