Your Highnesses, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, I would like first to thank the Government of the Kingdom of Bahrain and the IISS for organising this meeting and giving me the honour to be present today. I would like also to take this opportunity to express the gratitude of the Afghan people for the help and sacrifices that all those countries have given to Afghanistan. We will be eternally grateful for that and we hope that one day we can give it back.
I want to tell you a short story about why Afghanistan is present today and why Afghanistan is a problem today. In the early 1970s, Afghanistan was a poor, peaceful and stable country. It had good relations with its neighbours at that time. After the communist coup d’état, imposed by foreigners, and the invasion of the Soviet Union – which was our neighbour at that time – an alien ideology was imposed on the Afghan people. Afghanistan was a devout, moderate Muslim country and the people rose against this. With the help of the international community, especially the Western countries, and our Arab brothers, we started the struggle. For this, we paid a very heavy price. More than 1.5 million Afghan people were killed. All our poor infrastructure was destroyed. With all these sacrifices and the help of our friends, the Soviet Union was defeated in Afghanistan and withdrew from the country. After that we were left alone in a country that was completely destroyed, poor and wounded. The neighbours, with their extremist elements, started a war in Afghanistan by proxy to bring their influence. This started the bad days. The internal fighting and the promotion of extremism by our neighbours as a tool of policy led to Afghanistan becoming a country occupied by terrorists and run by terrorists. It was run by al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and others.
We tried to bring the message to our friends around the world that there was going to be a major threat, but nobody listened to us at that time. Unfortunately, the events of 9/11 happened and this was a huge shock to the world. The international community, led by the US, came to Afghanistan. The Afghan people fully cooperated and continue to operate with these forces. We see these forces in Afghanistan as liberation forces.
Today I am going to tell you about the achievements we have seen in the last seven years, our challenges, and what we should do for the future. Today Afghanistan is a free country, recognised by the international community. We have embassies around the world, and 36 embassies are present in Afghanistan. We have an elected government; we have a parliament; we have a free press; we have a democratic system. Over five million of our refugees have returned to Afghanistan. More than five million Afghan children are going to school today. Never in our history have as many of our children been going to school. 40% of them are girls. We have built more roads, with your help, in the last seven years than throughout our history. More than 80% of Afghans, for the first time in our history, receive primary medical care. However, we have many challenges.
Why today, seven years after the defeat of the Taliban, are we still fighting terrorists and the Taliban? During the war on terror in 2001 and 2002, the majority of the Afghan people participated fully with international forces to defeat the Taliban. The Taliban was defeated in less than two months in Afghanistan. So what happened?
Many of these people crossed the border and went to neighbouring countries. They had time to train themselves, recruit, and prepare themselves for the future. We tried to bring the attention of these issues to our friends. We continue to be in touch with our neighbours. We had a series of meetings and discussions with our friends in Pakistan about the risk that was present not only for Afghanistan but also for Pakistan.
The combination of this with a country that was completely destroyed – with a lack of institutions, without police, and without a judicial system – meant that the situation slowly deteriorated. To add to that, we have the factor of narcotics. Of course with a lack of security, the production of narcotics in Afghanistan increased. It became another factor in destabilising the country.
Today, with the help of our international friends, led by the US, we have recreated an Afghan National Army which is performing well. It is well-equipped and the numbers are going to be increased. There was a lack of time for the police, but now the police force has started training. Our institutions are going to be built. Internally, we are preparing ourselves to face these challenges.
There is also the problem of corruption in post-conflict countries. In some areas, there is not good governance. We are fighting all these factors to contribute to the stability of the country. As everyone has mentioned today, Afghanistan alone cannot fight the threat of Islamic extremism and terrorism. There should be full and sincere regional cooperation. Without that, we will not win this war alone inside Afghanistan.
From day one, we tried to engage our neighbours in the regional countries to cooperate with us in the war on terrorism. We proposed an exchange of intelligence, military to military cooperation, and developmental cooperation. Today there are opportunities. We have a very good working relationship with the elected Government of Pakistan. We hope that this understanding will continue. We are planning to work together to build a joint anti-terrorist strategy for the region. We are also approaching other neighbours to try to make them understand that Afghanistan is fighting for the security of those countries again. If we do not fight every day inside Afghanistan, these people will cross Afghanistan and reach other countries, putting the security of those countries in danger.
Also, as everyone has mentioned, military force is not the only way to bring a solution. We need to bring development into the area of Afghanistan and our neighbouring countries. Without development it will be very difficult to provide jobs. Those young, uneducated people will then be attracted by terrorist groups. They will be trained and paid to fight all of us. Therefore, development is very important. One of the reasons why these people are destroying the infrastructure of Afghanistan and killing engineers is because they are worried that development will bring the potential to work against them.
Education is extremely important. In the areas of Afghanistan where people are more educated there is much less threat of security than in areas where people are less educated. Therefore, education is another major factor and an area where we should work together.
I think continuation of the war on terrorism can be done by full regional cooperation, which I mentioned before. We need a much more vigorous fight against narcotics, which provides funding to the terrorist. We have achieved some results in Afghanistan: 18 provinces in Afghanistan this year are free of poppy and we have some reduction in the production of poppy in Afghanistan, but this is directly linked to security, not to poverty. Therefore, the more we bring security to Afghanistan the fewer poppies there will be and there will be less money for the bad guys to act.
I mentioned corruption. This is something we are starting to fight very rigorously against. There is a problem of poverty, but with development we hope there will be more jobs for the people, and also the issue of drought and food crisis that we need to look at.
In conclusion, Afghanistan has had enough of war and conflict. Afghanistan wants to live in peace and security and aspire to become a centre for stability in the region and in the world. Thank you.
