Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The people suffering most from the Taliban were Afghans.
The Taliban may pine for a pre-industrial society, but most Afghans do not.
The overwhelming majority of Afghans are not tribal, and they're not Pashtun.
Talking to the Taliban is a process the Afghans have to manage. It is their country.
The jury is out as to whether the Afghans are up to the task of protecting their people.
The Afghans themselves say that if you put two Afghans in a room, you get three factions.
As late as 2009, 90 per cent of Afghans reckoned Karzai's performance was excellent, good or fair.
The Afghans are probably the world champions in resisting foreign domination and infiltration into their country.
One can only imagine how Iranians or Afghans would deal with unelected judges moving to de-Islamicize their nations.
The Afghans did not have sophisticated weapons like the Soviets did, but with their faith they defeated a superpower.
The Afghans, despite their backwardness, are a friendly lot, but the Taliban are as barbaric as the Huns from the past.
When US-led forces toppled the Taliban government in November 2001, Afghans celebrated the downfall of a reviled and discredited regime.
Unlike the Afghans and Iraqis, the South Korean people solidly supported the American military presence, which was part of a United Nations operation.
No Afghans, as far as we know, have been involved in terrorist acts against our country. We shouldn't be swatting at hornets' nests we know nothing about.
It also seems that the Afghans themselves want to avail themselves of this opportunity and all recognize that the UN is uniquely qualified to help bring them together.
There is a firm, clear commitment to provide resources and ideas to enable us to organize the Afghans towards starting the process of rehabilitation and reconstruction.
I wasn't a hoarder, but I was on my way. I went to thrift stores and never didn't buy something. A lot of cat figurines, needlepoint, afghans. Grandma stuff, I suppose.
Look at the Afghans, during the time of the Soviet invasion. They were among the poorest Muslims in the world, yet they were sustained by their faith in God, and God alone.
In the calculus of western interests, there is no suffering, whatever its scale, which cannot be justified. Chechens, Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis are of little importance.
'In the nineteenth century, we beat the British more than once,' Afghans often told me. 'In the twentieth century, we beat the Russians. In the twenty-first, if we have to, we'll beat the Americans!'
Certainly Afghans in general and women in particular want a country in which security is a daily reality rather than a campaign slogan or the focus of drive-by speeches from diplomats dropping in for the day.
These guys that were standing up to fight, for the most part, had pride in their country, and they wanted to do the best, and they wanted to go out and fight, and I was as close to these Afghans as I was to the Marines.
Yarn, patterns, and needle sizes have come such a long way since your grandmother's afghans. Creatively, there is just so much to get into, so much to play with. It's an amazing way to turn inward and get off your phone.
A cultural thing that is funny to me is that every time I go out in D.C. after a show, all the nightclubs and restaurants are owned by Iranians and Afghans. It's funny to me how we lost our countries but we gained the nightlife.
My war buddies, some were Americans, but some were Afghans. These were the guys that I fought alongside. We bled alongside each other; we mourned together. When I came home, these weren't people I could keep up with on Facebook.
The Afghans I met were some of the nicest and most honorable people I've ever encountered. There is a code called 'Pashtunwali,' so if someone invites you into their village, every last man will fight to protect your life. I was impressed by that.
'I Am Singh' is about Sikhs, who, despite living in the U.S. for generations, were mistaken for Arabs and Afghans due to their turbans and became victims of racist violence in the aftermath of 9/11. The film takes a look at the discrimination against Sikhs post 9/11.
The Taliban, broadly speaking, are Afghans - farmers, subsistence farmers. As I say, most of those people can't find the United States on the map. Al Qaeda, traditionally, are much more educated, middle-class people, often from Egypt, from Saudi Arabia, North Africa.
When I arrived in the summer of 2009 to command the war in Afghanistan, I entered an effort that was failing. Many Afghans, some ISAF coalition members, and much of the American public had lost confidence in both the trajectory of the war and our ability to correct it.
Afghans long ago resigned themselves to this sort of thing. Compromises must be made. Deals with the devil are better than ceaseless butchery. In the exigencies of post-conflict bygones, against the threat of collapse into more terrible bloodletting, the ugliness of realpolitik is the lesser evil.
The majority of Afghans do not see the Americans as foreign occupiers who must be defeated. Instead, they are hungry for the Americans to step up and help them make their country safer, their government cleaner and their economy stronger. They are disappointed because the international community has done too little, not too much.
As a Scot, I instinctively feel a sympathy towards a culture which is based on generosity. It's very refreshing. Afghans think they're the best people in the world and their country is the best place in the world, and it's strange because you go there and it doesn't really look like it, and yet they assume that everybody else envies them.
In media coverage of the war, Afghans are often characterized as corrupt and deceitful. There has certainly been plenty of corruption and deceit in this conflict, but why? What inspires these behaviors? In 'Green on Blue,' I wanted to render a world that is often overlooked: that of the average Afghans who are helping America wage its war.
