Hamid Karzai
Current President of Afghanistan.
On behalf of the Afghan people, I pledge today that we will be a dependable asset to the security of the region and of the world.
The past is gone. We were unaware: The Soviets came, invaded us and we went out of Afghanistan to defend our country. We defended our country and that was right, but we made a mistake by leaving our country. It was one of the biggest mistakes we made, leaving the country.
Terrorism sees, in the prosperity of the Afghan people, its ultimate defeat.
I am burning out. When I feel burned out I am immediately reminded of Frost's great poem: "The woods are lovely, dark and deep/ But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep/ and miles to go before I sleep." We have a lot of miles to go. A lot of miles to go. I think no Afghan president, even after my term is complete, will have an option on this account. I have to work very hard. You can't imagine how destroyed this country was. You can't imagine how dispirited this country had become. How miserable it had become. Unbelievable. When you go to the country, to the mountains where I was fighting the Taliban, I came across families and people who had nothing on earth. Nothing. And if they survived it worked. We have to provide them a better life. It will take time, it will take effort, and it will take very hard work. And no vacations.
There is no doubt that people are angry. When a family is hit by a bomb and I am the president here with the responsibility -- when a suicide bomb takes places and murders the people of this nation -- I am the president of this country and it is my responsibility to bring peace to these people.
We are bloody determined. It is not going to be Pakistan playing the Pashtun, non-Pashtun game in Afghanistan. It is not going to be Iran playing this or that game or any other country. We can play the same game with a lot more historical power, with a lot more power in our history than others can. They should know that very well.
We must not turn away when we hear the cries of the hungry. We must not stand by when we see the killing and terrorizing of the innocent. We should not wait until hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of our fellow human beings have died as occurred in Afghanistan, before we act.
Every time we ignore the suffering of others or stand by and watch, we do not only act against our own interests but we violate a part of our humanity.
Let me tell the world that we Afghans today stand with full dignity and declare to the world that we are rising from the ashes of invasion and will live forever……
In the past we suffered alone. This time everybody will suffer with us.
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.
It has to be very, very clear. That is why I am talking so clear. This is my conscience speaking, the conscience of an Afghan person.
My job here is to try to move forward, keeping this very delicate jar of the Afghan peace process and reconstruction and institution building in my hands through troubled waters. Through minefields, through stormy conditions, through areas that don't have proper light and keep this jar intact and safe, and take it to the distant place. Along the way I may have to do things that some in the international community may not like. But I have my Afghan judgment and that is what I use. And that Afghan judgment does not need to be understood by the international community.
Democracy as a system of government may indeed be unprecedented in Afghanistan, but democracy as a way of life, a set of principles and values, is deeply embedded in our society.
My problem is that I am perhaps too much of a democrat for this time of the country's life. If you need a dictator, then go to the Afghan people. Let them elect a dictator. I am not one of those.
If you don't fight these terrorist here ,you will have to fight them in your capitals in Europe and America and where not.
Today, while celebrating the jihad victory, we once again invite those who have sided with aliens because of seduction against their nation, to give up sedition and evil and join peaceful life.
Any effort to divide Afghanistan ethnically or weaken it will create exactly the same things in the neighboring countries. All the countries in this neighborhood have the same ethnic groups that we have, so they should know that it is a different ball game this time
Afghanistan was a dilapidated extremely poor country.It neither bought from the west or the rest of the world nor had anything to sell to them. So Afghanistan in terms of the economics of today and in terms of the ways the world work today was irrelevant to the world. A country that doesn´t buy from you and that does not sell to you. The society that does not have much to sell to you or to buy from you is not relevant to the consumer world of today.