Top 70 Afghan Quotes

Now, al Qaeda’s on the run. Afghanistan is no longer a base of operations. The Afghan government is a friendly government that is trying to bring democracy to its people.

Certainly Afghans in general and women in particular want a country in which security is a daily reality rather than a campaign slogan or the focus of drive-by speeches from diplomats dropping in for the day.

Since 1996, the Feminist Majority Foundation has been immersed in a campaign to support Afghan women and girls in their fight against the brutal oppression of the Taliban.

But the war on terror as I have repeatedly said in the past, and the Afghan people believe in it, in truth, is that the war on terror is not in the Afghan villages or homes. Its in the sanctuaries, it is in the training grounds, its in the motivation factors and the money that comes to it.

The Afghans did not have sophisticated weapons like the Soviets did, but with their faith they defeated a superpower.

There is a firm, clear commitment to provide resources and ideas to enable us to organize the Afghans towards starting the process of rehabilitation and reconstruction.

We are not in Afghanistan because girls were not allowed to go to school, but helping them do so will give the Afghan people hope for a better future.

We want an Afghanistan that is shaped by the dreams of the great Afghan people, not by irrational fears and overreaching ambitions of others.

When I arrived in the summer of 2009 to command the war in Afghanistan, I entered an effort that was failing. Many Afghans, some ISAF coalition members, and much of the American public had lost confidence in both the trajectory of the war and our ability to correct it.

I mean, honestly, we have to be clear that the life for many Afghan women is not that much different than it was a hundred years ago, 200 years ago. The country has lived with so much violence and conflict that many people, men and women, just want it to be over.

WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars and broken stories about corporate corruption.

I didn’t want kabobs, Afghan music, and rules that required girls to be carefully monitored. I wanted mac and cheese, country music, and independence.

The jury is out as to whether the Afghans are up to the task of protecting their people.

The dangers of an Afghan collapse are many: Afghan deaths, a loss of American prestige, a loss of NATO prestige, a moral blow to U.S. troops and veterans, a Taliban resurgence, huge setbacks for women, and greater power for Pakistan and Pakistani extremists.

Afghanistan has moved forward and Afghanistan will defend itself. And the progress that we have achieved, the Afghan people will not allow it to be put back or reversed.

Yarn, patterns, and needle sizes have come such a long way since your grandmother’s afghans. Creatively, there is just so much to get into, so much to play with. It’s an amazing way to turn inward and get off your phone.

In Afghanistan, I was talking to Afghan elders who were world-weary of a lack of sustained attention from their own government and from the international community to stop problems early.

Although combat operations unseated the Taliban and the Saddam Hussein regime, a poor understanding of the recent histories of the Afghan and Iraqi peoples undermined efforts to consolidate early battlefield gains into lasting security.

If it is terrorism, if it is war on terror, then the Afghan people will join you on terror.

Maybe to feel like an Afghan I needed to be born and raised in the States, and maybe I needed to live in Afghanistan for nearly a decade to feel like an American. Both worlds shaped me, but neither one of them completely correspond to the picture I have of myself.

My war buddies, some were Americans, but some were Afghans. These were the guys that I fought alongside. We bled alongside each other; we mourned together. When I came home, these weren’t people I could keep up with on Facebook.

In the calculus of western interests, there is no suffering, whatever its scale, which cannot be justified. Chechens, Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis are of little importance.

I don’t think the Palestinian people or Afghan children or some other things I’m concerned about are at the top of other people’s agendas – not right now, when America is going through such a recession and people are suffering across the board financially. But I think all that will change.

The first time I visited Afghanistan in May 2000, I was 26 years old, and the country was under Taliban rule. I went there to document Afghan women and landmine victims.

During the 19th century, Britain fought two wars in unsuccessful attempts to subjugate the Afghans. When Britain finally drew a border between India and Afghanistan in 1893, Pashtun tribes in southern Afghanistan were cut off from related tribes across the border in what was then India and is now Pakistan.

The draconian prohibitions of the Taliban years and the gains Afghan women have achieved since the Taliban government was overthrown in 2001 are now well known and often cited: Today, Afghans lucky enough to live in secure regions can go to school, women may work in offices, and the burqa is no longer mandatory.

It is not surprising that most Pakistanis do not support America’s bombardment of Afghanistan. The Afghans are neighbours on the brink of starvation and devastated by war. America has shown itself to be untrustworthy, a superpower that uses its values as a scabbard for its sword.

I tried to render the Afghan war as much as I could fro the perspective of the Afghans. I have served as an advisor to Afghan troops, and much of my war experience was seen through the lens of fighting that war alongside Afghan soldiers.

Too often, stories about Afghanistan center around the various wars, the opium trade, the war on terrorism. Precious little is said about the Afghan people themselves – their culture, their traditions, how they lived in their country and how they manage abroad as exiles.

Protecting Afghan civilians is the cornerstone of our mission.

A cultural thing that is funny to me is that every time I go out in D.C. after a show, all the nightclubs and restaurants are owned by Iranians and Afghans. It’s funny to me how we lost our countries but we gained the nightlife.

Afghan society is very complex, and Afghanistan has a very complex culture. Part of the reason it has remained unknown is because of this complexity.

Look at the Afghans, during the time of the Soviet invasion. They were among the poorest Muslims in the world, yet they were sustained by their faith in God, and God alone.

Definitely in the West, we’re all cast as the same now. Whether you’re Indian, Pakistani, Arab, Iranian, Afghan or whatever, you just get thrown into this category. And nine times out of 10, you’re depicted as bad.

Why don’t we focus on what Afghan women can do? They can cook, bear children and pray. As I recall, that was fine for our grandmothers.

By protecting our Afghan friends from reprisals and welcoming them into our American family, we can assert that the United States is still a great and good country – and that we do not abandon those who risked their lives to serve with us.

The Taliban, broadly speaking, are Afghans – farmers, subsistence farmers. As I say, most of those people can’t find the United States on the map. Al Qaeda, traditionally, are much more educated, middle-class people, often from Egypt, from Saudi Arabia, North Africa.

In all of our efforts, we continue to emphasize the importance of inclusivity and transparency on the part of the Afghan government and leadership, especially in linking nascent local governing institutions to the decision-making and financial resources in Kabul.

If American forces leave Afghanistan, the Taliban is going to do what to America? Don’t say you’re worried about what they will do to the Afghan people. If that was America’s concern, America’s operational presence there would be much different.

The Taliban may pine for a pre-industrial society, but most Afghans do not.

In 2012, I received a phone call from the family of Arsala Rahmani, the Afghan senator with whom I’d become friendly. That morning, a gunman had pulled up alongside Rahmani’s vehicle, idling in a crowded intersection, and shot him point blank.

The fact is that Iran doesn’t want to see the Taliban come back any more than do most Afghan citizens.

As the Obama administration negotiates with the Karzai government and with Pakistan, we may be tempted to make commitments that, in the name of nation-building, restrict our ability to fight terrorists. If we must involve the Afghan government in every night raid, our operations will slow and targets will escape.

Foreign aid projects have pumped billions of dollars into the Afghan economy.

The people suffering most from the Taliban were Afghans.

Well, the reports are correct that we’re conducting very robust military operations on the Afghan side of the border in areas where we think al-Qaida is operating and Taliban remnants are.

The Taliban mostly attacks international and Afghan security forces. They rarely carry out attacks in markets.