Afghan Quotes

I saw houses burned by the Mujahadeen, as well as disfigured bodies of prisoners they'd taken. But I saw other things too: villages destroyed by our shelling and bodies of women, killed by mistake. When you shoot at every rustling in the bushes, there's no time to think about who's there. But for an Afghan, it didn't matter if his wife had been killed intentionally or accidentally. He went into the mountains to see revenge. ~ Vladislav Tamarov

In Afghan culture, you don't date - you marry. Even talking to boys before marriage brings great shame to your family. ~ Azita Ghanizada

As a 22-year Army Veteran who served in Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom, and as a Civilian Advisor to the Afghan Army in Operation Enduring Freedom, I understand both the gravity of giving the order, and the challenge of carrying it out. ~ Allen West

Finally a soldier marched in and, holding his right hand to his chest, said, "Salaam aleikum. Chetor hastid? Jan-e-shoma jur ast? Khub hastid? Sahat-e-shoma khub ast? Be khair hastid? Jur hastid? Khane kheirat ast? Zinde bashi."
Which in Dari, the Afghan dialect of Persian, means, "Peace be with you. How are you? Is your soul healthy? Are you well? Are you well? Are you healthy? Are you fine? Is your household flourishing? Long life to you." Or: "Hello. ~ Rory Stewart

There is a story which is not being told strongly enough of the Afghan employees of the UN inside the country who are saving hundreds of thousands of lives everyday by their bravery and nobody talks of them. ~ Lakhdar Brahimi

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. ~ Lynsey Addario

even if Noam Chomsky were right about everything, the Islamic doctrines related to martyrdom, jihad, blasphemy, apostasy, the rights of women and homosexuals, etc. would still present huge problems for the emergence of a global civil society (and these are problems quite unlike those presented by similar tenets in other faiths, for reasons that I have explained at length elsewhere and touch on only briefly here). And any way in which I might be biased or blinded by "the religion of the state," or any other form of cultural indoctrination, has absolutely no relevance to the plight of Shiites who have their mosques, weddings, and funerals bombed by Sunni extremists, or to victims of rape who are beaten, imprisoned, or even killed as "adulteresses" throughout the Muslim world. I hope it goes without saying that the Afghan girls who even now are risking their lives by merely learning to read would not be best compensated for their struggles by being handed copies of Chomsky's books enumerating the sins of the West ~ Sam Harris

Being born with power, as a boy, doesn't necessarily spur innovation. But being born entirely without it forces innovation in women, who must learn to survive almost from the moment they are born. Afghan women do not need much well-intentioned training on that. ~ Jenny Nordberg

The United States supports the reintegration of people who have fought with the Taliban into Afghan society provided they: one, renounce al Qaeda, two, lay down their arms and renounce violence, and three, participate in the public political life of the country in accordance with the constitution. ~ Richard Holbrooke

The conservatives had started bringing demagoguery to the table on the [Afghan] war issue the previous fall [fall 2006]. Whenever opposition members criticized the war policy, assorted Tories accused them of being disloyal and of failing to support the troops ... [Harper] was gaining the reputation of a leader who couldn't see a belt without wanting to hit below it. ~ Lawrence Martin

The reasoning for our civil-military plan is that lasting success will be when the Afghan government, security forces and people can resist the insurgents and terrorists themselves. ~ Bob Ainsworth

Many Afghan intellectuals in the United States believe that their country is best kept together. They are encouraged by the fact that no leading tribal or political figure there has called for secession. ~ Stephen Kinzer

I don't know anyone who is more admired and respected in the international community than President Karzai, for his strength, for his wisdom and for his courage to lead this country, first
in defeat of the Taliban and now a democratic and unified Afghanistan. And I can tell you I am with foreign ministers and with heads of state all over the world. I sit in the councils of
NATO. I sit with the EU. I sit with people all over the world and there is great admiration for your president and also for what the Afghan people are doing here. ~ Condoleezza Rice

In Afghan society, parents play a central role in the lives of their children; the parent-child relationship is fundamental to who you are and what you become and how you perceive yourself, and it is laden with contradictions, with tension, with anger, with love, with loathing, with angst. ~ Khaled Hosseini

If we can't understand the Afghan family, we can't understand Afghanistan. ~ Asne Seierstad

A teenage girl lay asleep on the sofa, curled up under a red-and-black knitted afghan. She was on her side, with one slender arm cradling a throw cushion nestled under her head. Long wavy blond hair spread across her back and her shoulders like a cape. Even though she was sleeping, Alex could see how pretty she was, with her delicate, almost elfin features. He stood in the doorway, watching the soft rise and fall of her chest. ~ L.A. Weatherly

It's going to be really interesting to see what the heroin market does in the next two years or so. One thing you can be pretty sure of. The Afghan peasants who grow poppies won't get rich. The money will end up in places like Dubai. ~ Bruce Sterling

In a way, both the U.S. media and those wacky rioters in the Afghan-Pakistani hinterlands are very similar, two highly parochial and monumentally self-absorbed tribes living in isolation from the rest of the world and prone to fanatical irrational indestructible beliefs - not least the notion that you can flush a 950-page book down one of Al Gore's eco-crazed federally mandated low-flush toilets, a claim no editorial bigfoot thought to test for himself in Newsweek's executive washroom. ~ Mark Steyn

Once the Afghan people vote and they choose their President with direct, secret ballot from all over the country, there will be a lot of difference in this country and a lot of legitimate power to flow with implementation. ~ Hamid Karzai

Afghan villages traditionally ran their own affairs, each valley a law unto itself. Afghanistan never enjoyed much of a central government. ~ Daniel P. Bolger

If you look back historically, admittedly a long time ago, there were three Afghan wars in which Britain didn't even come a good second. In more recent years the Russians were there with 120,000 men for ten years. ~ John Major

In response to the question "Do you favor or oppose making sharia law, or Islamic law, the official law of the land in our country?" the nations with the five largest Muslim populations - Indonesia (204 million), Pakistan (178 million), Bangladesh (149 million), Egypt (80 million), and Nigeria (76 million) - showed overwhelming support for sharia. To be precise, 72 percent of Indonesian Muslims, 84 percent of Pakistani Muslims, 82 percent of Bangladeshi Muslims, 74 percent of Egyptian Muslims, and 71 percent of Nigerian Muslims supported making sharia the state law of their respective societies. In two Islamic nations that are considered to be transitioning to democracy, the number of sharia supporters was even higher. Pew found that 91 percent of Iraqi Muslims and 99 percent of Afghan Muslims supported making sharia their country's official law. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

EVERYONE THOUGHT QUINN was watching Meet the Press with Grandma, even Grandma. Lying on the sofa, covered with an afghan, Quinn had simply rolled off and stuffed pillows under the covers while Grandma stared at the screen. Then she had sidled upstairs, out her bedroom window, and down the oak tree growing right by the house. ~ Luanne Rice

But wars - or the threat of war - at least put an end to American chattel slavery, Nazism, Fascism, Japanese militarism, and Soviet Communism. It is hard to think of any democracy - Afghan, American, Athenian, contemporary German, Iraqi, Italian, Japanese, ancient Theban - that was not an outcome of armed struggle and war. ~ Victor Davis Hanson

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

Do we really think that the United States will have the protection of innocent Afghans in mind if it rains terror down on the Afghan infrastructure? We are supposedly fighting them because they immorally killed innocent civilians. That made them evil. If we do the same, are we any less immoral? ~ George Lakoff

The Afghan - obviously the parties will decide which course of action. The most important there, get a government that is seen as legitimate to the people and has the credibility to be a partner in the effort to secure Afghanistan so it's not a haven for al Qaeda or other type of terrorists or international terrorist organizations. ~ Rahm Emanuel

Regardless of who they are, whether they are rich or poor, educated or illiterate, Afghan women often describe the difference between men and women in just one word: freedom. ~ Jenny Nordberg

The most significant thing is public participation. That assures the Afghan public that our promises are not empty. ~ Ashraf Ghani

When I first got famous, Greg Dulli was also just starting to cook with the Afghan Whigs, and because of the MTV awards I met Dave Grohl and Nirvana and all these rock and roll bands. So I had experience with what it was like when people were taking off at that time. ~ Denis Leary

This might explain why Obama gave billions to Wall Street crooks, and dragged the Iraq and Afghan wars on and on.
Happily for the busy lunatics who rule over us, we are permanently the United States of Amnesia. We learn nothing because we remember nothing ... We have ceased to be a nation under law but instead a homeland where the withered Bill of Rights, like a dead trumpet vine, clings to our pseudo-Roman columns. ~ Gore Vidal

After receiving the customary answer that the government was performing superbly, I generally asked the person how they arrived at this conclusion. They often cited the construction of schools and clinics, solar panels and paved roads as signs of progress. Mind you, the majority of this infrastructure was paid for and coordinated by the United States and other NATO countries. Most were built by U.S. and other Coalition Forces, not the Afghan government, and not the Afghan citizens. The typical Afghan citizen did not realize this however. Most were under the impression that their own government had planned, funded and overseen these projects. None ever stopped to think about how their government had miraculously come up with the billions of dollars necessary to complete these developments. ~ Jennifer Dunham

The majority of the Afghan people support a strategic partnership with the United States. ~ Hamid Karzai

The yearning to be Afghan, to be part of the country, part of the land helped me separate myself from the casual traveler and claim my Afghan identity. ~ Hyder Akbar

They [U.S. soldiers] are also building schools for the Afghan children so that there is hope and opportunity in our neighboring country of Afghanistan. ~ Sarah Palin

Deborah Rodriguez went to Afghanistan to transform her own life and ended up revolutionizing the lives of many of her Afghan sisters. This book made me feel like I was right there in the beauty salon, sharing in the tears and laughter as, outside my door, an entire country changed. KABUL BEAUTY SCHOOL is inspiring, exciting, and not to be missed. ~ Masha Hamilton

As I have said for two years now, when Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda were cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora, it was wrong to outsource the job of capturing them to Afghan warlords who a week earlier were fighting against us. ~ John F. Kerry

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. ~ Hillary Clinton

Jihad is the Afghan bling. ~ Aman Mojadidi

It's the Afghan national army that went into Najaf and did the work there. ~ George W. Bush

The Afghan government is as corrupt as a prostitute with a law degree. ~ Craig Ferguson

Then set out after repeated warning the grizzly
Afghan Duryodhan
in blazing sun
removed sandal-wood blooded stone-attired guards
spearing gloom brought out a substitute of dawn
crude hell's profuse experience
Huh
a night-waken drug addict beside head of feeble earth
from the cruciform The Clapper could not descend due to lockdown
wet-eyed babies were smiling
.
in a bouquet of darkness in forced dreams
The Clapper wept when learnt about red-linen boat's drowned passengers
in famished yellow winter
white lilies bloomed in hot coal tar
when in chiseled breeze
nickel glazed seed-kernel
moss layered skull which had moon on its shoulder scolded whole night
non-weeping male praying mantis in grass
bronze muscled he-men of Barbadoz
pressed their fevered forehead on her furry navel
.
in comb-flowing rain
floated on frowning waves
diesel sheet shadow whipped oceans
all wings had been removed from the sky
funeral procession of newspaperman's freshly printed dawn
lifelong jailed convict's eye in the keyhole
outside
in autumnal rice pounding pink ankle
Lalung ladies ~ Malay Roychoudhury

If you're an Afghan village leader in a small town down around Kandahar somewhere, and you know that the footprint is getting smaller for your security, and the Taliban saying don't forget, I'm going to be back real soon, who is your loyalty going to go through? ~ Mike Rogers

It is cocaine," he said, "a seven-per-cent solution. Would you
care to try it?"
"No, indeed," I answered brusquely. "My constitution has not got
over the Afghan campaign yet. I cannot afford to throw any extra
strain upon it."
He smiled at my vehemence. "Perhaps you are right, Watson," he
said. "I suppose that its influence is physically a bad one. I find
it, however, so transcendently stimulating and clarifying to the
mind that its secondary action is a matter of small moment. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

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. ~ Aman Mojadidi

The reality is that [Barack] Obama has some 15 countries in the current Libya coalition. President Bush put together close to 50 countries for the Afghan coalition, some 40 countries for the Iraqi coalition, more than 90 countries for the Proliferation Security Initiative and over 90 countries in the Global War on Terror. ~ Donald Rumsfeld

Over the past 30 years, hand grenades, tanks, fighter jets, missiles, helicopters and assault rifles have replaced traditional floral patterns in rug making and other textiles. Depicting these realities of war has helped the Afghan people to survive during times of conflict. ~ Henri Cole

Life was full of adventure: I learnt the smell of danger - I've got a sixth sense for it now. We're homesick for it, some of us; it's called the 'Afghan syndrome'. ~ Svetlana Alexievich

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

The book came after the fall of the Taliban, it says something about Afghan family life. Those kind of stories - what happens behind the scenes on a TV screen - are important. ~ Asne Seierstad

And across Afghanistan, every single day, Afghan soldiers, Afghan police and ISAF troops are serving shoulder-to-shoulder in some very difficult situations. And our engagement with them, our shoulder-to-shoulder relationship with them, our conduct of operations with them every single day defines the real relationship. ~ John R. Allen

The best weapon the Afghan people have against the Taliban or any other terrible power that may choose to put itself in Afghanistan is education. ~ Andrea Busfield

As the leader of a country, you are not free to enjoy the luxury of such feelings. The Afghan people want peace, which requires persistence. We are determined to defend our country, and the whole region and the entire world understands the justice of our cause and the principled way in which we have engaged in it. ~ Ashraf Ghani

The decision to rely heavily on high-altitude air power, target urban infrastructure and repeatedly attack heavily populated towns and villages has reflected a deliberate trade-off of the lives of American pilots and soldiers, not with those of their declared Taliban enemies, but with Afghan civilians ... There will be no official two-minute silence for the Afghan dead, no newspaper obituaries or memorial services attended by the prime minister, as there were for the victims of the twin towers. ~ Seumas Milne

I believe most Afghan men, on an individual level, are far from extremist or fundamentalist.
Hope rests with those men, who control what happens to their daughters. Behind every discreetly ambitious young Afghan woman with budding plans to take on the world, there is an interesting father. And in every successful grown woman who has managed to break new ground and do something women usually do not, there is a determined father, who is redefining honor and society by promoting his daughter. There will always be a small group of elite women with wealthy parents who can choose to go abroad or to take high positions in politics. They will certainly inspire others, but in order for significant numbers of women to take advantage of higher education and participate in the economy on a larger scale, it will take powerful men educating many other men ~ Jenny Nordberg

But I still state unhesitatingly, that for pure, vacillating stupidity, for superb incompetence to command, for ignorance combined with bad judgment --in short, for the true talent for catastrophe -- Elphy Bey stood alone. Others abide our question, but Elphy outshines them all as the greatest military idiot of our own or any other day.
Only he could have permitted the First Afghan War and let it develop to such ruinous defeat. It was not easy: he started with a good army, a secure position, some excellent officers, a disorganized enemy, and repeated opportunities to save the situation. But Elphy, with the touch of true genius, swept aside these obstacles with unerring precision, and out of order wrought complete chaos. We shall not, with luck, look upon his like again. ~ George MacDonald Fraser

an Afghan archaeologist followed the Taliban through the museum, "pleading for mercy as if begging for the lives of [his] own children."14 Such pleas were meaningless to those who felt their axes swung with God's weight behind them. ~ Karima Bennoune

Without women taking an active role in Afghan society, rebuilding Afghanistan is going to be very difficult. ~ Khaled Hosseini

Marriage can wait, education cannot. ~ Khaled Hosseini

Lance: "Who are you?"
the kid:
"I am Amanullah"
"I am Najeeb"
"I am Masoud"
"i am an Afghan ~ Bilal Taibzada

There are tens of thousands of interactions every single day across Afghanistan between the Afghan troops and International Security Assistance Force. On most of those, every single day we continue to deepen and broaden the relationship we seek. ~ John R. Allen

The Afghan "negotiation phase" immediately precedes the traditional Afghan "surrender phase." This entails the following: The defeated party surrenders and then comes out shooting. This is repeated several times. Finally, the vanquished party runs out of ammunition and is forced to surrender ' but seriously this time ' at which point the victors kill the foreigners and hug their fellow Afghans like long-lost brothers. ~ Ann Coulter

What about Andrews? He doing any better? She spotted him near the entrance of the hangar, talking to one of the Afghan locals who worked as a janitor. The guys rarely talked to her ~ Kaylea Cross

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

Bhutto brought up the coup in Afghanistan, which has resulted in deposing the country's monarchy and replacing it with a republic under a nationalist cousin of the king. Kissinger said he had discussed the matter with the Soviet Ambassador. "I told him if the recent coup in Afghanistan remained an internal Afghan affair, that would be one matter" he said, "but if it resurrected the Pashtunistan dispute, the U.S. would be engaged. This is the basic policy of the president. ~ Husain Haqqani

Come on, I said, taking his hand. Clutching the afghan with the other hand, he trailed down the hall after me, a snow white giant in tiny red underwear. ~ Charlaine Harris

Carolyn Maloney has been a consistent fighter for Afghan women but also for International Family Planning Bills. ~ Eleanor Smeal

In all the debate about Afghanistan, we don't hear much about our obligation to the wretched lives of Afghan women. They are being treated as collateral damage as the big boys discuss geopolitical goals. ~ Tina Brown

If any overarching conclusion emerges from the Afghan and Iraq Wars (and from their Israeli equivalents), it's this: victory is a chimera. ~ Andrew Bacevich

Well, the movie isn't bad. For a while, I even told myself I liked it, even as it missed one mark after another. But in the end, it's shapeless and blandly apolitical, apart from its watered-down feminism. You see, Fey's Kim Baker - changed from Barker - transforms herself from a neophyte reporter, condescended to by male war correspondents, soldiers and Afghan officials, into a hard-charging political animal who speaks the language fluently and parties as hard as men. That's about as edgy as a sitcom. ~ David Edelstein

The United States made no secret of its desire to have the House of Saud bankroll Osama bin Laden's Afghan war against the Soviet Union during the 1980s, and Riyadh and Washington together contributed an estimated $3.5 billion to the mujahideen.5 However, U.S. and Saudi participation went far beyond this. ~ John Perkins

A society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated ... ~ Khaled Hosseini

Afghanistan is where much of the al Qaeda journey began. It is the main site where Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar and their cohort rose to prominence fighting the Soviets in the 1980s. Afghan territory holds special significance to the group, which is committed to retaking it and re-establishing it as the base of a global movement. ~ Jack Keane

Many of us didn't believe in the image of bin Laden as a wandering Old Man of the Mountains, living on plants and insects in an inhospitable cave somewhere on the porous Pakistan-Afghan border. ~ Salman Rushdie

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. ~ Bob Ainsworth

We provide transit facilities, we cooperate in equipping the Afghan army and security forces with arms and helicopters, we cooperate in training officers for law enforcement agencies. ~ Sergei Lavrov

Now, look you here, Sekundar," says I, but he came up straight like a little bantam and cut me off.
"Sir Alexander. if you please," says he icily, as though I'd never seen him with his breeches down, chasing after some big Afghan bint. ~ George MacDonald Fraser

I'm reading a bunch of fiction by Afghan and Iraq War veterans for a New Yorker piece. There hasn't been that much, but it's starting to come out, and some of the fiction is really good. ~ George Packer

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

Our presence in Afghanistan is not worth the price of any more American lives or treasure. ~ Camille Paglia

Protecting Afghan civilians is the cornerstone of our mission. ~ John R. Allen

We stayed huddled that way until the early hours of the morning. The shootings and explosions had lasted less than an hour, but they had frightened us badly, because none of us had ever heard gunshots in the streets. They were foreign sounds to us then. The generation of Afghan children whose ears would know nothing but the sounds of bombs and gunfire was not yet born ... ~ Khaled Hosseini

It's being made out that the whole point of the war was to topple the Taliban regime and liberate Afghan women from their burqas, we are being asked to believe that the U.S. marines are actually on a feminist mission. ~ Arundhati Roy

Let us also acknowledge that the hearts which suffer the most from our wars are those of mothers. Their vital voices have been left out of the political equation for too long. An Iraqi or American mother cries the same as an Israeli or Afghan mother. The eyes of a mother who has suffered the loss of a child can destroy the soul of anyone who gazes upon them. More souls become casualties of war than physical bodies. ~ Suzy Kassem

I mean, how many men would have gone on to the floor of the House as Carolyn Maloney did and wear a burkha to show the fight of Afghan women. ~ Eleanor Smeal

Afghan Girl

Ice blue eyes that look to the morning sky as I knit the pieces and remnants of my life. I have No books, no paper, no pencils, and no black boards. I look at the holes in my life as I see the hills of the Appalachians that echo. I think to myself, who will I marry? Is my life-like Pari?

These strings please come together.

Snowflakes give me hope, and my dreams dance all around me. I'll put another log on the fire. I watch the brown paper bag over the broken glass pane letting the cold wind in; I'll take some of these remnants and stuff it.

These strings are come together.

Mama told me that life would be hard. I bartered for flour the other day, and the chickens ain't laying no eggs. I struggle with life and these strings. My hands are worn and tired. Now, I have granny square hands.
I am unclean, unblemished, and finished,

Afghan girl. ~ Edna Stewart

Today the Iraqi and Afghan people are on the path to democracy and freedom. The governments that are rising will pose no threat to others. Instead of harboring terrorists, they're fighting terrorist groups. And this progress is good for the long-term security of all of us. ~ George W. Bush

When the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996 after a searing, four-year civil war, they immediately instituted laws which fit their utopic vision of the time of Islam's founding more than 1,300 years earlier. Afghan women's lives offered the most visible sign of the imagined past to which Afghanistan's present was to be returned. ~ Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

I do spend a lot of weekends on the road. I have to pace myself. It can be pretty busy, but I'm not out in the Afghan desert with 70 pounds on my back, away from my family for a year at a time. I keep a good perspective on it. ~ Gary Sinise

Obviously what I think Senator [John] Kerry was pointing to, which is absolutely correct, which is the essential part of the strategy or a key component or a leg on the stool, is an Afghan partner that is ready to take control of both the security situation in Afghanistan, and the civilian side of that. ~ Rahm Emanuel

Dellosso's cleverly plotted second Jed Patrick novel (after 2015's Centralia) finds the Afghan war vet hiding with his wife, Karen, and their eight-year-old daughter, Lilly, in a cabin in the Idaho wilderness. Two months earlier, two CIA agents gave him a thumb drive containing "every damaging piece of information about the Centralia Project," the exposure of which threatens to cause a "scandal that would be talked and read about for decades to come." Then one day Jed returns to the cabin to find Karen in tears. She tells him that three armed men burst into the cabin asking for the thumb drive, but she didn't know where it was. The men took Lilly, and vowed they would return for Karen. More shocks follow. Meanwhile, CIA technician Tiffany Stockton discovers a plot to control Jed's mind in a sophisticated update of The Manchurian Candidate. Can she stop him from becomes an unwilling assassin? Dellosso expertly misdirects readers, but they should be prepared for only serviceable prose. ~ Publishers Weekly

No one writes better historical fiction than Steven Pressfield. The Afghan War that was waged by Alexander the Great 2000 years ago is eerily similar to the one that's being fought today. This book should be required reading for anyone who wants to better understand what American and Coalition forces are up against in one of history's most tribal and troubled regions. ~ Vince Flynn

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. ~ Elliot Ackerman

You must keep in mind that Pakistan has suffered the aftermaths of the Cold War, and that Cold War had left deep imprints on our society. We were the worst sufferers from the ills of the Afghan war. ~ Asif Ali Zardari

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. ~ Maz Jobrani

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. ~ Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

I myself had to grow a longer beard and Afghan clothes. I was in danger of being kidnapped by smugglers, though I didn't know it at the time. ~ Mohsen Makhmalbaf

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. ~ Condoleezza Rice

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. ~ Ashraf Ghani

It is time we accept there's no Cronkite moment for Afghanistan. Perhaps it's time we value the hearts and minds of our own over distant Afghan tribes. ~ Tiffany Madison