Ahmed Rashid Quotes
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The key to breaking the Taliban taboo against women and the cultural brainwashing that the Taliban imposed upon many Afghans is to get women back into the workforce.
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The idea of a permanent U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, as opposed to an economic presence, is going to create a new wave of hostility toward the United States.
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Despite all the dire predictions made in 2001, the Afghans have given the international community, its aid workers and soldiers a large window of opportunity to repair the damage done by 25 years of war. That window, which has stayed open for nearly five years, with amazing good will from the Afghans, is threatening to close unless the world wakes up and deals with the crisis.
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Arab regimes need to come together far more than they have done if they are to convince their populations that the extremism carried out by IS in the name of Sunni Islam is destroying the traditional, tolerant Islam that most Arabs have always believed in.
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There's a sense of desperation in Afghanistan because of the lack of funding and the fact that the U.S. only has a one-track military strategy. It doesn't have an economic and political game plan.
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I am confident that there are hedge funds, banks or investment companies that could allocate five percent of their portfolios for risky investments. In any event, for countries like Afghanistan the formation of an entrepreneurial class is of vital importance.
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The United States only knows one form of intervention and that is the military one. Everything depends on drawn weapons. We should, however, develop a wider scope of action. And we should learn to be patient.
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We should remember that the Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. Of course, many of them did support the Taliban. But you cannot equate all Pashtuns with the Taliban.
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There is no way the Americans are going to be able to carry out a full scale war against Iraq and at the same time maintain the same kind of pressure on the Al Qaeda network in countries as diverse as Indonesia, Philippines, and Pakistan, as well as in Europe.
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The strategy for peace-building in Afghanistan is economic aid, reconstruction, international security forces. On those lines, the U.S. has been extremely slow. And it has even blocked expanding security forces from Kabul to other cities.