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

The youth are hurt. Our majority are youth, under 30. They have no hope. They don't get jobs.

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.

My priority is inclusion and justice. We need a system of justice that is applied across the board. That is what this country is striving for. We've suffered from a variety of exclusions. In the past, I compared our situation to a person with scissors who first cut the sleeve, then the fingers, then our body politic to pieces. My job is to stitch the wounds together. We need an agenda of inclusion: the youth, the women, the poor feel an enormous sense of exclusion.

Salaries are a huge area of corruption.

As the leader of a country, you are not free to enjoy the luxury of such feelings. The Afghan people want peace, which requires persistence. We are determined to defend our country, and the whole region and the entire world understands the justice of our cause and the principled way in which we have engaged in it.

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.