Ashraf Ghani Quotes

There won’t be some overnight miracle cure. But the measures I take will be sustainable. Our goal is to cease food imports within four years. This will create a minimum of 2 million jobs in agriculture.

It’s fair to say average Americans think that the average Afghan doesn’t want American troops in their country.

Do not ever threaten an Afghan with violence. We will rise as one and we will face every threat the way we have taken on thousands of previous armies and conquerors.

We are organized by territories, whereas terrorists are organized into networks. States are very slow and terrorists are extremely fast. Intelligence sharing needs to expand beyond the regional and become global and not country-focused. We need to acquire speed and agility.

There’s no place for mob justice in Afghanistan.

We will not let the price of peace be greater than the price of war, we will firmly safeguard the achievements of the past 13 years under former President Karzai.

We live in an interconnected world, and you cannot prevent people from leaving. What you need to do is to create opportunities. At the same time, people are also coming back.

When I first raised the issue of the so-called Islamic State at the Munich Security Conference in February, speaking about its economy, its flexibility and pathology, people thought I was trying to scare them. But now we have experienced just that. If al-Qaida was version 2.0 of terror, then the Islamic State is version 5.0.

Crisis for others is a source of despair. For me, it’s an opportunity to bring reform. I owe this country a debt I cannot repay.

We [Afghanistan] are constantly dealing with situations in which we must ensure that provinces or major cities do not fall into enemy hands. People need to understand that we don’t have an air force and the forces that we do have used to get air support from NATO, which is no longer available. Our pilots have done wonders, but they are stretched thin. We are dealing with resources that have been spread thin.

Peace is our goal, but peace from strength, an enduring peace that will bring regional cooperation. What we have emphasized and agreed is that we are strategic partners. We are bound by common interests and will act together to ensure both the safety of United States and the safety of Afghanistan. That is the important consideration. Numbers are a means; they are not an end in themselves.

The bureaucratic culture that we [Afghanistan] have inherited is an obstacle. Hierarchies may be extremely efficient for dealing with certain events, but they are not quick in responding to global, flexible networks.