Our current administration is a patchwork - some from the French, some from the Swiss, the Turks, the Ottomans; then the Russians came; now we have a global presence. We need to create a system that is organic and can function for the whole state. Currently, foreign policy here is domestic policy.

Economics taught in most of the elite universities are practically useless in my context. My country [Afghanistan] is dominated by drug economy and a mafia; textbook economics does not work in my context.

Peace cannot come without the engagement of those who have been before. Gen. Dostum will make peace possible. He was engaged in conflict of the past. Forgiveness is an extremely important part of our culture. But, like Rwanda and South Africa, we need to fashion our own solution.

We are organized by territories, whereas terrorists are organized into networks. States are very slow and terrorists are extremely fast. Intelligence sharing needs to expand beyond the regional and become global and not country-focused. We need to acquire speed and agility.

The Americans made the decision out of principle to buy Russian equipment for us because our pilots and mechanics were trained on Russian aircraft. But, then, as a result of the Ukraine crisis, the US Congress imposed sanctions on Russia and the equipment could no longer be delivered to us. I am proud of our security and defense forces.

The economy is the silent elephant in the room.

We have sacrificed and we have endured extreme hardship, but we have maintained the key goal - we have denied the enemy its main objective of creating two political geographies in this country through the all-out war which has been unleashed against us. If we had a first-rate air force, the nature of the conflict would be completely different.