# Where he slept in Afghanistan > **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: "Where he slept in Afghanistan," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/where-he-slept-in-afghanistan/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia. *John Kiriakou's inventory of his own Afghan accommodation across a decade of trips, a shared tent on the first visits, a tent of his own once ("living high on the hog"), the officers' quarters at Bagram once the American foothold was serious, and a three-star Afghan hotel when he returned as a private citizen to get the Kite Runner children out.* - **First trips:** A tent shared with everybody else - **The luxury upgrade:** A tent of his own, once - **After a serious foothold:** The officers' quarters at Bagram - **As a private citizen:** One of the big Afghan hotels, comparable to any three-star - **The occasion for that trip:** Evacuating the child actors of The Kite Runner - **Wildlife recalled:** Hundreds of desert foxes, marmots, one snake, no tarantulas **Where he slept in Afghanistan** is [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)'s account of his own lodging across many trips to the country, given on 22 October 2025 in answer to a viewer who asked, after hearing about the scorpions of Baja, whether Afghanistan had been more comfortable. ## The premise of the question His first answer was about fauna rather than beds. *"I've been to Afghanistan a bunch of times. The last few times were, you know, bite-free."* There were, he noted, no tarantulas; he saw one snake; and he saw *"hundreds of foxes, desert foxes. They come out of their dens when the sun goes down. You can see their eyes shining off in the distance."* Marmots were plentiful in both countries.[1][2] ## The progression The accommodation improved as the American presence hardened, and Kiriakou lays it out as three stages. *"The first couple of times I went to Afghanistan, I just slept in a tent with everybody else."*[2] The first improvement was marginal and he mocks it. *"I mean, there was once where I actually had my own tent, so I was, you know, living high on the hog."*[2] The second came with infrastructure. *"And then, once we got a serious foothold there, I'd stay in the officers' quarters at Bagram."*[2][3] ## The civilian trip The last category is different in kind, because he was no longer working for the government. *"And then, when I went as a private citizen to get those little kids out who had starred in [The Kite Runner](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/kite-runner-rescue-mission), I stayed at one of the big Afghan hotels."*[3] His assessment of it is deliberately unremarkable: *"and it was like any three-star hotel that I stayed in anywhere else."*[3] ## Why the inventory is useful The sequence is a compressed history of the American war told through where one man was allowed to put his bed. The shared tent belongs to the improvised early period; the officers' quarters at Bagram to the years of a large, permanent, walled American installation; the ordinary hotel to a country in which a foreign civilian could check in and sleep in a room like any other. It is also a rare instance of Kiriakou answering a comfort question about a war zone without irony. He was more troubled, on his own account, by a month at [a resort in Baja](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-resort-with-no-air-conditioning) than by any of it, a comparison he makes without apparent embarrassment. ## See also - [The Kite Runner rescue mission](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/kite-runner-rescue-mission) - [Afghanistan 2011 Kerry Trip](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/afghanistan-2011-kerry-trip) - [The fox that ate the scraps](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-fox-that-ate-the-scraps) - [Cleaning up after Tora Bora](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cleaning-up-after-tora-bora) ## Sources 1. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-10-22), at 09:25. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNhvUJehZGo&t=565s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-10-22-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/ 2. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-10-22), at 09:55. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNhvUJehZGo&t=595s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-10-22-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/ 3. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-10-22), at 10:27. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNhvUJehZGo&t=627s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-10-22-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/ --- From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/where-he-slept-in-afghanistan/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt