Karzai Speaks

don · 11-01-09 10:10 pm

Karzai Speaks The thread intends to examine the views and assertions of Hamid Karzai, President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. If anyone can speak for the people of Afghanistan, certainly he can. .

don · 11-01-09 10:14 pm

39th PARLIAMENT, 1st SESSION EDITED HANSARD • NUMBER 051 Friday, September 22, 2006 (This was a speech given to Canada's Parliament at a joint session. Some have suggested that we have no more business being in Afghanistan. Does Karzai agree?)<blockquote>His Excellency Hamid Karzai (President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan): Honourable members of Parliament, in Afghanistan, in a very respectful place, you wear your hat, so I will wear my hat as a mark of respect. [Mr. Karzai spoke in Arabic] The Right Hon. Prime Minister, hon. Speaker of the Senate, hon. Speaker of the House of Commons, hon. members, ladies and gentlemen. [Translation] I thank you very much for this great honour and for welcoming me to the people of Canada's House. [English] Honourable members, I stand before you today with deep emotions. It is a pleasure to be among friends in Canada today and to be visiting a great nation that is a model to the rest of us for all that is good. Yet, I know my visit comes at a time of sadness for a number of families across Canada who have lost loved ones in my country, Afghanistan. I also know that it is a time when many in Canada are pondering their country's role in Afghanistan. Therefore, in addition to the hon. members, it is to those families and the Canadian public that I wish to address myself today. If the greatness of life is measured in deeds done for others, then Canada's sons and daughters, who have made the ultimate sacrifice in Afghanistan, stand among the greatest of their generation. On Saturday, four of your fallen soldiers will return home to their final resting place. They have sacrificed so that we in Afghanistan may have security. They have sacrificed to ensure the continued safety of their fellow Canadians from terrorism. I know that there are many others who also feel the emptiness and loss of their loved ones. My heart goes to the families, the friends, and the Canadian people at this time of reflection and sorrow for those families. More than anyone else, Afghans very much understand that these sacrifices are for a great, good cause. It is the cause of all of us as humanity, the cause of security for all, and the cause of peace in the basics of life for Afghan children as, Mr. Prime Minister, you earlier mentioned. Honourable members, the people of Afghanistan have suffered from over two decades of invasions and destruction. The miseries of the Afghan people began with the invasion of our country in 1979 and continued until the tragedy of September 11, brought to the world by al-Qaeda and its associates. The freedom loving Afghan people, backed by supporters from what was then referred to as the free world, fought and defeated the invasion, facilitating the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall. These were indeed significant accomplishments of our time, for which Afghans paid dearly. Over one million Afghans lost their lives, another one million were disabled, more than a quarter of our population became refugees in neighbouring countries and elsewhere, and our country's infrastructure was razed to the ground. Whereas Afghans had fought and won the world's war against communism, the reward that Afghanistan received was abandonment by the international community. We were left with a world of destruction to rebuild and at the mercy of a predatory neighbourhood and bellicose extremist forces that had been brought to Afghanistan. Few cared about the dismal plight of the Afghan people and even fewer thought about the consequences of leaving a country so dangerously vulnerable to foreign extremists. It was in this environment that al-Qaeda, with supporters in the region and beyond, set up its deadly campaign of terror against Afghans and the whole world. While the Afghan people continued to suffer and while we continued to warn the international community about the danger of international terrorism that was brewing in Afghanistan, the world remained unmoved. Both our sufferings and our warnings were ignored as if Afghanistan did not exist. Perhaps by the standards of today's world we did not exist, for we had nothing to sell to the world or nothing to buy from the world, so we did not matter. The tragedy of September 11 showed in a terrible way the flaws of the arguments against helping Afghanistan. For one thing, it showed that, in fact, the cost of ignoring Afghanistan was far higher than the cost of helping it. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 brought home to many in the West the pain of terror and the fear that we in Afghanistan had been feeling at the hands of foreign-sponsored terrorists for so many years before September 11. And when the international community forces, including Canadians, came to Afghanistan later that year, they came as partners under the banner of a United Nations Security Council Resolution to liberate Afghanistan from the extremist forces which had seized control of our nation many years before that. The arrival of the international community to our rescue after 9/11, however, was not a partnership solely of military might. Over the last five years, Afghanistan and the international community have developed a remarkable partnership which I would call a cooperation of civilizations, a partnership that extends from enhancing security to developing the rural areas of Afghanistan to providing education and health services to our needy people. Canada, in all respects, has been among the leaders of this partnership. Thanks to Canada’s contributions, Afghanistan today is profoundly different from the terrified and exhausted country it was five years ago. Today, Afghanistan has the most progressive constitution in our region, which enables the Afghan people to choose their leadership for the first time in their history through democratic elections. Over the past five years, our people have voted in two elections, one for the president and another for parliament. With the inauguration of Parliament, 28% of women were placed as members of Parliament. All the three branches of the state have been established. More than six million children are going to school today. To bring a comparison, during the time of the Taliban, only 700,000 children went to school; only boys. Today, over six million children go to school; over 35% of them girls, from little girls to adult girls. Once, five years ago during the rule of the Taliban, people were running away from Afghanistan. We have seen in the past five years that over four and a half million of our refugees have returned to the country, from His Majesty, the former King of Afghanistan, living in Italy, to the political leaders of the country, to the educated elite of Afghanistan in Europe, America and Canada, to the millions of refugees, poor ones, living in the neighbourhood of Afghanistan. They have all come back home. Afghanistan, Mr. Prime Minister and hon. members of Parliament, because of your help, is once again the home of all Afghans. Some hon. members: Hear, hear! Hon. Mr. Hamid Karzai: During this period, we have also disarmed thousands of illegally armed persons, collected thousands of weapons, light and heavy. We have begun to create our national army and our national police. We have achieved fiscal stability. Our economy has grown. When we began in 2001, our income per capita was only $180. Today, it is only $355 but it is twice more than $180. In short, we in Afghanistan have embraced the vision of a prosperous and pluralistic society which Canada so richly embodies. A democratic nation is not built overnight, nor in one or two elections. A democratic state draws its strength not only from strong state institutions but from the confidence of the people in those institutions and in the democratic process. Afghanistan's democracy will continue to grow, will continue to develop and will continue to gain the confidence of its people but only with patience and with the continued support of Canada and other members of the international community. As we move forward, we will continue to look to Canadian institutions, like this great Parliament, and to Canada's pluralistic traditions to help us move forward. Despite our phenomenal progress, our new democracy faces serious challenges and threats. Insecurity in parts of our country, as a result of the rise of terrorist activities, is our greatest challenge. Five years ago, Afghans and international forces defeated terrorists within two months because of the power of the international community and the will and desire of the Afghan people. While some terrorists were removed, most of them ran away and took refuge in neighbourhoods beyond our borders. Unfortunately, it was in those sanctuaries beyond our borders where they were reorganized, trained, financed and provided with ideological motivation to come into Afghanistan, kill our children, kill our teachers, kill the clergy, destroy mosques full of worshippers, destroy schools, destroy clinics, kill international aid workers, attack international security forces and try to bring us defeat. A year ago, in southern parts of Afghanistan, all schools were open. Today, all over the country, as I speak to you, more than 150 schools are burned by these terrorists and 200,000 children, boys and girls, who went to school last year cannot go to school today because of these attacks. Terrorism sees its ultimate defeat in the prosperity of the Afghan people which is why terrorists attack. Polio, which was almost eradicated, with only four cases last year, this year 27 cases have been registered by the minister of health and only in those areas of the country where terrorism has come back to strike health workers, children and their parents. Terrorists are prepared to cross any boundaries and commit horrific acts of violence to try to derail Afghanistan from its path to success. They want the international community to fail, and I emphasize they want the international community to fail in its collective endeavour to help Afghanistan rebuild. That is why they decapitate elderly women in the name of spying for the coalition forces. A 75-year-old woman in Afghanistan rarely goes out of her house and is busy almost all the time with her grandchildren. You cannot imagine that a 75-year-old Afghan lady in the village would be in contact with either the international security forces, with the Afghan government or with any entity outside the walls of her house. However, they would kill her and then label her a spy just to frighten us all into the dark ages. That is why, again, terrorists are killing international soldiers and civilians who have come to help Afghanistan. Clearly, unless we confront them more decisively, terrorists will continue to attack us everywhere, in Afghanistan and in the rest of the world. We will not succeed in eliminating terrorism unless we seek and fight the source of terrorism wherever it might be and dry its roots. Our strategy of fighting terrorism in Afghanistan has so far been mainly focused on addressing the symptoms of terrorism, that is, on killing terrorists who come from across our borders. This strategy is bound to fail unless we move beyond the military operations in Afghanistan and to address terrorism's political ideological and financial basis. We must also show that extremism is not used by any country or entity as an instrument of policy. Unless we go to the roots of terrorism, to where they are trained, where they are equipped and where they get inspiration, in other words, to the sources of terrorism, the world will not be a safer place for all of us, not Afghanistan, nor any other country. Globally that is true too. If terrorists continue to harm innocent people around the world, which is what we have seen happen from New York, to Bali, to Madrid, to London, then it is our collective duty to stop them at the point of origin, at the breeding grounds before they can reach far and wide. Fighting terrorism collectively is also tied to our fight against drugs. The menace of narcotics feeds terrorism and threatens the foundation of legitimate economic development in Afghanistan. A combination of factors, mainly a lack of a conducive security environment for our counter-narcotics efforts, absence of a comprehensive alternative livelihoods program and clandestine credit flows to poppy farmers from outside are behind the narcotics trade in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is committed to fighting narcotics, alongside terrorism, with strength and determination and through a combination of law enforcement and economic measures. We expect that the international community will continue to support us in this fight by enabling us to provide meaningful alternative livelihoods to our farmers. The narcotics problem in Afghanistan is as serious as terrorism. As an Afghan, I know, as do the members of my delegation, that if we do not destroy poppies in Afghanistan, poppies will destroy us. Therefore, trust us when we say that we will fight them and we will because we want a country as good as yours and a parliament as good as yours. We will not have that unless we have destroyed poppies. However, it will take effort in the world and many years of patience before we succeed. I hope you will have the patience to bear with us for that long, perhaps five to ten years. Honourable members, today, under the United Nations mandate and consistent with the wishes of the Afghan people, your sons and daughters are together with the citizens of more than 35 other nations committed to security for Afghanistan, while more than 60 nations, along with multilateral organizations, have pledged generously to help rebuild our wartorn country and to have a stable, prosperous and democratic Afghanistan. Canada has made a tremendous difference in the lives of millions of Afghans already. I have described only five or six aspects of the improvement of life. I have told you of children going to school. I have told you of millions of refugees coming back. I have told you of parliament coming back. I have told you of women back in parliament and in the workplace. There are hundreds of other examples, ladies and gentleman, honourable members, of where your country is helping us on a daily basis to secure our country, to bring us a better life, better roads, better agricultural production, a thriving civil society and press freedom that is unprecedented in Afghanistan. Today in our country, where we had no television station five years ago, we have six television stations, private ones, all critical of me. We have more than 300 newspapers, again, almost all of them critical of me. Over 30 radio stations belong to the civil society. There is no part of the media that the government owns and the ones that we own people do not listen to, they do not watch. Now extend that to the Afghan villages and the access that Afghans in the countryside suddenly have to world news, to the rights that the constitution has given to them and to the awareness that this is the right they have, that the government is nobody to give it to them, that it is theirs. This has come to us because your troops are serving in Afghanistan, because your taxpayer dollars are helping in Afghanistan. That presence of your sons and daughters and your resources has enabled Afghanistan to offer this great virtue to all people. We are proud, honourable members, to be recipients of your assistance. It has gone a long way, as I mentioned earlier, in addressing the needs of our people, especially with the kind of generosity that you have offered that help. Mr. Prime Minister, you chose Afghanistan as your first foreign journey and we are grateful for that. You have shown steadfast support for us and for the ideals that we share together through this Parliament and through the government. I am also grateful, ladies and gentlemen, honourable members, to the two former prime ministers, Prime Minister Chrétien and Prime Minister Martin, for they too committed to Afghanistan and for the Parliament of Canada for having made that possible. Honourable members of Parliament, those of you who visited Afghanistan, from the Senate and the House of Commons, and those of you who helped Afghanistan through your work in this Parliament should know that this help may seem little to you here, but it multiplies a thousand times when it goes to Afghanistan, for you do not know, sitting in this Parliament, the desperation of the Afghan people, the need for security of the Afghan people and also the danger that the lack of security can bring us here in Canada or in the United States. Therefore, your help to us for building us into the future is much more valuable than perhaps you can imagine. It takes us into the future, a secure future. Ladies and gentlemen, there is much that we can learn from Canada, from a society that speaks two languages, which is exactly what we do in Afghanistan. When I address the Afghan people, I do exactly as you did today, Mr. Prime Minister. I switch from one language to another. We have learned from your experience: the freedom to all the languages, the recognition of the minority languages. The national anthem of Afghanistan was a year ago in Farsi. Today it is in Pashto, another official language of ours, but the national anthem of Afghanistan, through the modern constitution that we built for us, through your help, recognizes today all the 14 major ethnic groups of Afghanistan and it is in our national anthem to mention all the 14 ethnic groups of Afghanistan. It is a beautiful song. It is not that long. It only takes a minute. Once again, your presence there and your help there has brought to Afghanistan the stability of a political system that is working toward a better tomorrow, and I thank you for that, too. Honourable members, in Afghanistan we admire your respect and adherence to the rule of law. That is what we are trying to do in our country, for justice and for human dignity—we feel so stepped upon in Afghanistan by all those invaders—of the Afghan man and woman. We are trying to do that with your help. Most important, we admire your determination to help Afghanistan, at times with the dearest sacrifice that mankind can offer, the lives of your soldiers. I sometimes think, what if Afghanistan soldiers were serving in Canada, what would the families of Afghanistan think when an Afghanistan soldier died in Canada? Would they justify it? Would they see the value in it? Would they understand it? When I think of the interconnectedness between humanity today, the dangers and the virtues, together, I understand that, yes, it is sad but it is worth it. Afghanistan also sheds blood there. Every day we lose the lives of our children, we lose the lives of our soldiers, we lose the lives of our teachers. We lost one of our best governors, the most educated of ours, to a suicide bomber. All of that is for a common cause, the cause of security for all of us. It is this cause of security that you are serving in Afghanistan, but in Afghanistan you are not only serving the cause of security for the international community and your country, you are also helping one of the most oppressed societies in the world and its little children. Thank you. <a href="http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=39&Ses=1&DocId=2349128" target="_blank">http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publicati on.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&Parl =39&Ses=1&DocId=2349128</a> </blockquote>

elaine · 11-01-09 10:58 pm

If anyone can speak for the people of Afghanistan, certainly he can. For someone who was unable to win the election, then a run-off was needed because the corruption of ballots, and now Abdullah has dropped out, how can he be assumed that he "can speak for the people of Afghanistan? They do not have a democracy nor arer the majority of people behind him, but the drug lords are the ones that really "speak for the people." And, what about Pakistan?

don · 11-01-09 11:51 pm

but the drug lords are the ones that really "speak for the people." On what basis can you say that? If the U.S. has been totally unable to change the situation there, and now that Abdulla has ceded to Karzai, we no longer have any reason to be there, The U.S. and its NATO allies have been able to bring about change. Read Karzai's speech. .

elaine · 11-02-09 12:04 am

I am unimpressed by speeches, especially one as corrupt as Karzai, and much more from reporters on the ground. When there is a great disparity, "officials" are not usually the one to listen to as they will project what others wish to hear. From Fareed Zakaria's article in Newsweek, Nov.2: He tells of a few hours of fierce fighting in a village in the southeastern corner of Afghanistan. After a few hours, nine American soldiers lay dead, the largest number killed in a single engagement in years. "Why were we there in the first place?" Tom Ricks, the superb defense expert, points out that area around this village is a mountainous region with few people, many of them hostile to outsiders. Why are we putting our fist in a hornet's nest?" A reporter there recently said, "ceding territory to the Taliban is more effective than maintaing small, vulnerable bases in forbidding terrain. Let the Taliban try to set up bases in these remote areas with prickly locals. NATO forces can then periodically disrupt the Taliban rather than the other way around. Zakaria's message means more to Americans than anything Karzai might say.

elaine · 11-02-09 12:07 am

Name one nation or ruler that has ever fully conquered Afghanistan. They are an unconquerable people made up of many tribes where loyalty is given, not to any national leader. The history of Afghanistan should have told the many rulers who have tried, unsuccessfully to rule them. Simply looking at the mountainous terrain should be sufficient to realize that fact.

don · 11-02-09 5:12 am

Elaine, what would you have done, as President, after 9/11? You have just discovered that the Taliban runs terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. The graduates were in the planes on 9/11. .

elaine · 11-02-09 12:38 pm

The chance of "hitting" the terrorist was nearly zilch. "Terrorists" are not limited to any country as we have seen them in Indonesia, the U.S., and many other foreign countries. "Striking at terrorists" is a game that can never be won. Some experts have said that we were almost in sight of Obama and then retreated. Whether that is true or not, the U.S. sent most of their military power to Iraq which had absolutely nothing to do with the terrorists who had trained in Saudi Arabia (our friend because of their oil). This nation needed to take revenge, and trumping up Sadam as having WMD, for which there was absolutely no evidence then, or afterward (thanks to Cheney's continued assertions), we spent all the defense capital on a futile quest. Yes, we eliminated Sadam, but there was, and still is absolutely no evidence that he had anything to do with 9/11. And those terrorists actually trained here in the U.S. and the girl at the FBI who vainly tried to report on it was summarily dismissed, as were other reports of a soon-coming attack. Perhaps like Pearl Harbor, the U.S. needed a reason for war?? The terrorist training camps are most certainly not limited to Afghanistan but are in Pakistan, Indonesia, and other places. Now that NATO (largely U.S.) forces are in Afghanistan, we should recall why it has been called "The Graveyard of Empires" and unless we can adequately define the mission and goal, we should declare "Mission Accomplished" and bring our military home and let them "duke it out." Any area so corrupt as that country (it is not, nor never has been a nation) of tribal loyalties is unconquerable, as history has demonstrated. What do you suggest as a possible goal in Afghanistan? Long ago, we have given up seeking the perpetrators of 9/11 and enlarged the mission. I'm currently reading 5 pages I printed out on a brief history of Afghanistan. President Bush, who has a dim view of history at best (MBA), would not listen to his experts on this area and went with his "gut" as the "Decider" and never looked back. Remember the landing on a ship with "Mission Accomplished" only a few short months into the Iraqi invasion? Seeking revenge is a poor reason to invade a country. It's like sticking your fist into a hornet's nest for revenge on one sting.

elaine · 11-02-09 12:42 pm

Don, do you believe that NATO is responsible for establishing stable governments around the world? This appears to be our mission in Afghanistan now. A country with such corrupt voting, with more than a million were found to be fraudulent, is a country and leader that we should not be propping up. We did not create their problems: they are homegrown.

don · 11-02-09 1:30 pm

do you believe that NATO is responsible for establishing stable governments around the world? This appears to be our mission in Afghanistan now. No, not around the world. But NATO has created the vacuum in Afghanistan by destroying the Taliban rule. It would be immoral to up and leave after having done so. . (Message edited by Don on November 02, 2009)

elaine · 11-02-09 5:15 pm

Where is there evidence that the Taliban rule has been destroyed? Do you honestly believe that they are now impotent? They are supported by the poppy trade, which has not decreased.

don · 11-02-09 9:42 pm

Where is there evidence that the Taliban rule has been destroyed? Has Bush's rule, 8 years, come to an end? Certainly. Has Bush's influence been destroyed? Not completely. Ask the women of Afghanistan whether their life is better now that the Taliban can no longer enforce the burka like they once did. That is just one example. Elaine, are saying that there has been no progress, fragile as it is, of freedom in post-Taliban ruled Afghanistan? .

elaine · 11-02-09 9:58 pm

No, I did not say that women's conditions have improved. But after 8 years and there has been no improvement what are the chances of success? There is still reports of girls' schools being closed and men in isolated areas still prosecute women who are not covered. In such a terrain, it is almost impossible to force rules in that country. More than intent will accomplish desired results. Even the U.S. female soldiers must cover their hair!

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