Every year our gathering
under this roof does homage to the foresight of our
predecessors, who, by founding the United Nations,
envisioned the unity of nations. Today, this Assembly
embodies that vision: the vision of our interdependence
as members of a single community of nations. This
vision has a strong resonance in Afghanistan, where
both our past troubles and our recent accomplishments
are, in large part, related to the outside world.
When I last addressed the Assembly in 2004 I
spoke about the tremendous progress that Afghanistan
had achieved since 2001. Today that story of success
continues. Over the past two years we have taken
further significant steps forward, attaining all the
milestones in Afghanistan’s post-war transition.
Millions of Afghans have participated in two general
elections, one for the president and another for the
parliament. With the inauguration of our National
Assembly last year all three independent branches of a
democratic state were completed. We have continued to
build schools and clinics and create employment
opportunities for our people. Our trade with the region
and beyond is growing very rapidly. Industrial activity
is gradually taking root. As a result, Afghanistan’s
income per capita has doubled since 2002.
At the London Conference earlier this year our
Government presented Afghanistan’s National
Development Strategy for the next five years, which
the international community endorsed. Afghanistan and
its international partners also entered into a compact,
the Afghanistan Compact, which provides the
framework for continued international cooperation in
Afghanistan. Under the compact we Afghans
committed to continue to work towards a stable and
prosperous Afghanistan, with good governance and
human rights protection for all under the rule of law. In
return, the international community pledged continued
and long-term political, military and financial
assistance.
Regrettably, it is not all positive news that I have
to share today. Over the past year our efforts to build
Afghanistan into a stable, prosperous and democratic
polity have also encountered setbacks. We have seen
terrorism rebounding as terrorists have infiltrated our
borders to step up their murderous campaign against
our people. Terrorism sees in the prosperity of the
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Afghan people its ultimate defeat. That is why our
schools and clinics get burned down, and our ulema,
our teachers and our doctors get killed. That is why
today 200,000 of our students who went to school a
year ago are no longer able to do so.
It is also sobering to know that polio, the
children’s disease, increased from only four cases in
2005 to 27 this year. All those cases occurred in some
areas of southern Afghanistan where terrorists are
preventing children’s access to vaccination and health
care.
Terrorists are prepared to cross any boundary and
commit horrific acts of violence to try to derail
Afghanistan from its path to success. They want the
international community to fail in its collective
endeavour to help Afghanistan to rebuild. That is why
they decapitate elderly women, blow up mosques full
of worshippers and kill schoolchildren in
indiscriminate bombings of civilian areas. That is why
they are killing international soldiers and civilians who
have come to Afghanistan to help the Afghan people,
such as the four Canadian soldiers who were killed
four days ago while distributing notebooks and candies
to children in a village in Kandahar, or the Turkish
engineer who was building roads in Helmand. Clearly,
unless we confront them more decisively, terrorists will
continue to take lives and inflict greater damage.
To be sure, terrorism does not emanate from
within Afghanistan; Afghanistan is its worst victim.
Military action in Afghanistan alone, therefore, will not
deliver our shared goal of eliminating terrorism. We
must look beyond Afghanistan to the sources of
terrorism. We must destroy terrorist sanctuaries beyond
Afghanistan, dismantle the elaborate networks in the
region that recruit, indoctrinate, train, finance, arm and
deploy terrorists. We must ensure that political currents
and entities in the region are not allowed to use
extremism as an instrument of policy.
Fighting terrorism effectively is also tied to our
fight against narcotics. The menace of narcotics feeds
terrorism and threatens the foundation of legitimate
economic development in Afghanistan and also, of
course, in the region.
A combination of factors — mainly the lack of a
security environment conducive to our counter-
narcotics efforts, the absence of a comprehensive
alternative livelihoods programme and clandestine
credit flows to poppy farmers — is behind the
narcotics trade. Afghanistan is committed to fighting
narcotics, alongside terrorism, with strength and
determination and through a combination of law
enforcement and economic measures. We expect that
the international community will continue to support us
in this fight by enabling us to provide meaningful
alternative livelihoods to our farmers.
In the context of the United Nations role in
enhancing global security we endorse the
recommendations of the Secretary-General for a
comprehensive counter-terrorism strategy and welcome
the recent adoption of the strategy by the General
Assembly.
We also express our support for the proposal to
convene a high-level conference on international
terrorism with a view to concluding the draft
comprehensive convention on international terrorism at
the earliest possible opportunity.
Afghanistan also attaches great importance to the
various initiatives undertaken to promote
understanding and cooperation among civilizations.
Afghanistan stands ready to contribute to further
enriching these initiatives with our knowledge and
experience of international cooperation and
interdependence.
Meanwhile, we remain deeply concerned at the
increased incidence of Islamophobia in the West. This
trend does not bode well for the cause of building
understanding and cooperation across civilizations. As
a Muslim nation, Afghanistan is committed not only to
safeguarding the interest of our Holy Faith but also to
building bridges of understanding and friendship
among followers of all faiths.
The situation in the Middle East, including the
question of Palestine, remains a source of great
concern to us in Afghanistan. Afghanistan strongly
supports the full realization of the rights of the
Palestinian people, including the right to sovereignty
and an independent State of Palestine living side by
side in peace and coexistence with the State of Israel.
Afghanistan also shares the pain of the people of
Lebanon as they suffer a terrible relapse into
destruction caused by war. We hope that the
international community will step in with concern and
generosity to address Lebanon’s needs so that it may
recover.
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To conclude, I thank the Secretary-General,
Mr. Kofi Annan, for his exemplary leadership in
serving the cause of global security and prosperity. I
thank him especially for his interest in and
commitment to Afghanistan and for his contribution to
making our world a more secure place.
I also thank the members of the international
community for their steadfast and generous support for
Afghanistan over the past five years. I convey the
gratitude of the Afghan people for the sacrifices that
the men and women in uniform from about 40
countries throughout the world have made in the fight
against terrorism in Afghanistan. We will honour those
sacrifices by remaining true to our vision of building a
secure, democratic and prosperous Afghanistan that
will contribute to the progress of our region and to the
security of the world at large.