We need to create jobs for 300,000 youth graduating from high school in the next three years. We need to produce growth so we can have an economic system that can turn our natural wealth into a productive system. We need services, because poverty reduction cannot take place without effective citizenship.
Ashraf GhaniTerrorism attacks peoples' trust in the system of their state. There is protection, but only if there is collective action and collective understanding about how to really deal with this phenomenon.
Ashraf GhaniWe don't have warlords. We have strongmen. They control provinces with military forces. These men at one time controlled territory; they have now been transformed into businessmen and politicians. Today our national security forces are built to control the provinces.
Ashraf GhaniWe 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.
Ashraf GhaniEconomics 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.
Ashraf GhaniWhen I first raised the issue of the so-called Islamic State at the Munich Security Conference in February, speaking about its economy, its flexibility and pathology, people thought I was trying to scare them. But now we have experienced just that. If al-Qaida was version 2.0 of terror, then the Islamic State is version 5.0.
Ashraf Ghani