Crisis for others is a source of despair. For me, it's an opportunity to bring reform. I owe this country a debt I cannot repay.

We live in an interconnected world, and you cannot prevent people from leaving. What you need to do is to create opportunities. At the same time, people are also coming back.

The national unity government is a necessity in this country and I am happy to serve it. We have negotiated for months to create a government, but Belgium also went for a year without one.

We [Afghanistan] are constantly dealing with situations in which we must ensure that provinces or major cities do not fall into enemy hands. People need to understand that we don't have an air force and the forces that we do have used to get air support from NATO, which is no longer available. Our pilots have done wonders, but they are stretched thin. We are dealing with resources that have been spread thin.

Salaries are a huge area of corruption.

Ninety percent of our police are fighting terrorists, so we don't have enough oriented towards their key duty, which is enforcement of the law. But these are precisely the inheritance that we want to overcome. Particularly the mark for success for us would be that a woman can not only walk in the streets of every major city, but can go from one province to another without any hindrance.

Deadlines concentrate the mind. But deadlines should not be dogmas.