Verbatim Remarks by H.E. Hamid Karzai, President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan at Osmania University, Hyderabad, India, April 2006

It is a tremendous pleasure to be addressing the students in India . I insisted that I must see this University, I told the ambassador myself, ambassador Sood. I said I wanted to address a University and interact with the youth of India because I have a message for them and a story to tell.

So I am glad to have you today, the students of Osmania University . Indeed, it is a place of great repute and a place of great learning. The story that I have for you is the story of Afghanistan . When I completed my post-graduate education in India , I went straight to participate in that story of my country, a story which began with the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan.

Now I want to interject some ideas as I go through the story because they are relevant to the past and present. When the soviets intervened in Afghanistan , we had some very good Universities. The University of Kabul was among the top Universities in the region. The medical faculty in Jalalabad, another part of Afghanistan , was among the top medical faculties in the region. With the arrival of the Soviet Union , one of the most visible consequences was the disruption of life of the Afghan youth and Afghan students.

I was in India when the soviets came. Perhaps I was 20 years old. Those youth of my age, who were in Afghanistan , they must have been in the first and second year of the University. They either had to run away or were killed or had to abandon their studies. Only few of them continued.

The highly qualified members of the faculty, professors and the teachers were either killed by the communists or imprisoned. Some of them had to run away. Thirty years since then, from 1979 till 2001, no Afghan youngster got educated the way you are educated today. No Afghan youth found the opportunity to go to school or to college or to University the way the rest of the world did.

No Afghan faculty member got trained anew for the subject they were experts in. The most important aspect of life, indeed the life of any society to bring up the youth of the country and prepare them for the future of the country, was destroyed.

Thousands of our experts, academia and intellectuals were forced to migrate all around the world. The largest numbers of refugees were in Iran and Pakistan . Pakistan had nearly 3 million refugees from Afghanistan . Iran had 2 million refugees from Afghanistan . India , Europe and America had thousands and thousands of refugees from Afghanistan .

We defeated the soviets while the rest of the world helped us and while we were waging that war of liberation against the communist rule and against the invasion by the Soviet Union who were imposing on Afghanistan an alien form of life, communism. We were a deeply believing Muslim society when the soviets came and tried to impose communism on us.

On the other hand, the Jihad that we waged against the Soviets was also aided from outside and we became refugees in order to fight for the liberation of our country. Those from Europe , the West, and the neighbors who helped the Mujahideen, the resistance struggle also tried to do the same thing by trying to impose on us the other form of extremism, the extremism of the right. So the Afghan society was caught between two conflicting thoughts, two conflicting impositions on us.

When we defeated the Soviets and arrived in Afghanistan in 1992 to form the new government after the collapse of communism in Afghanistan and the withdrawal of the Soviet troops, we were suddenly faced with a country without institutions, infrastructures, manpower, the youth and without the basics of education and skills.

Unfortunately, because of that and because of the massive destruction caused to our society, we suffered for another 10 years. The consequences of that imposition from outside, the Taliban, another force from outside, extremism and Al Qaeda, another force from outside, they further caused destructions to life and property in our country, to the value system of our country.

You have heard a lot about the way the Taliban treated women. It is not only women that were treated that way, they treated everybody that way "men and women alike."

They closed schools and shut places of learning. The little that we had, were even further hurt. And then the tragic events of 9/11 happened. It is not that we were quiet in Afghanistan or waiting for things to happen on their own. We kept going to the whole world, we interacted with the international community, pleading with them the case of Afghanistan, telling them of what was happening in Afghanistan, the horror, the extremism, the terrorism and warned them that if they did not intervene in Afghanistan to salvage our nation from that destruction, they will suffer the consequences, but they did not care or they did not believe.

Let's give them the benefit of the doubt, let's say that the international community did not believe us. September 11 was the direct consequence of neglect of Afghanistan . Because they failed to recognize that a whole state with airport, with air force, with machinery, with workshops, with the availability of technical knowledge that was now at the disposal of terrorism, can plan attacks in Afghanistan and can plan attacks elsewhere.

The same people that went to destroy the twin towers in New York or the Pentagon or in other parts of the world, they also throw bombs in Indonesia , in Europe, in India , in Pakistan and other Muslim countries. These were the same people who were killing the Afghan people for years and getting trained on them. With September 11, the world suddenly woke up because the world got hurt from Afghanistan .

It brings me to a point that I believe in very much which perhaps I gained from my years as a student in India . Why did the world not recognize the plight of the Afghan people and if they did recognize the plight of the Afghan people those years, why did they not care? They did not pay attention for a very basic reason. Afghanistan was a dilapidated extremely poor country. It neither bought from the west or the rest of the world nor had anything to sell to them. So Afghanistan in terms of the economics of today and in terms of the ways the world work today was irrelevant to the world. A country that does't buy from you and that does not sell to you. The society that does not have much to sell to you or to buy from you is not relevant to the consumer world of today.

In other words, the absence of morality resulted in Afghanistan to be neglected. The absence of caring, the lack of recognizing the suffering of another human being, the lack of a moral obligation caused the neglect of Afghanistan . When the rest of the world got hurt itself, attention was suddenly focused on Afghanistan . But Afghans were very happy that the world came to us regardless of the reasons, whether it was for morality or because they got hurt.

When they arrived, the Afghan people welcomed them. Well, the Afghan people were struggling for years to free themselves from extremism and terrorism. The arrival of the International Community was a promising sign because it gave us what we needed.

There are two elements for any situation to be corrected. Volition or desire and the means to attain what you want. In Afghanistan , we always had the intention, the desire to free ourselves but we did not have the means, because we were a weakened society and a weakened country. The means were then provided to us by the International Community, the US , Europe, and the rest of the International Community, India and all joined hands to help Afghanistan . So the desire of the Afghan people and the means, the power of the International Community enabled us to defeat terrorism, Al Qaeda and the Taliban within a month and a half.

A new chapter began in Afghanistan , the cooperation of the International Community in Afghanistan with the Afghan people. Immediately, the Afghan people proved, showed that Afghanistan was capable; that the Afghan nation was capable of achieving everything the way other societies achieved or wanted to achieve. We had our first Grand Council, which means a big "panchait" not a small "panchait", a gathering of the whole country, the Jirga. Jirga means a meeting of the people, Loya Jirga means a grand council of the Afghan people.

They all got together and they elected a President and then the Afghan people voted on a constitution, which was again ratified by another great council of the Afghan people which paved the way for elections of the President and paved the way for the election of the Parliament. Now the Afghan constitution is among the most enlightened constitutions of the world. It is an Islamic constitution and Afghanistan is an Islamic country. So Afghanistan's name is the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. This means no law can be above or in contradiction to Islam.

Now within that framework, Afghanistan offers the strongest institutions of democracy. The Constitution of Afghanistan stipulates in clear terms that at least 25% of the seats in the Parliament of Afghanistan be allocated to women. So the Afghan people have to elect definitely 25% of seats for women.

Now, also equality of rights, religious freedom to other religions, they are free to practice their religion in Afghanistan in the best way they can. So the consequences was when the Afghan people went to the Presidential elections, we had 17 candidates, one of the candidates was a women, Dr. Masouda Jalal who won votes from all over the country. She comes from the northeastern part of the country. She won votes in the southeastern part of the country; she won votes more in the rural areas of the country than in the urban areas of the country. The people were aware that the women had to be voted in office and that they should make a special effort to vote for her.

In the Parliamentary elections, the constitution asked for 25%, but the Afghan people brought 28% of women to the parliament, 3 % more than demanded by the constitution. Because people voted for women, in some of the provinces of Afghanistan , women were the first vote winners. in Herat for example, a province in the west of the country from where we have 17 members to the Parliament, to the lower house, to the upper house.

From 17 members of the parliament, a woman is the highest vote winner, she has the highest votes in her province, another one has the second highest and another has the third highest number of votes from the province. I must tell you that the women in Afghanistan , in the Parliament of Afghanistan possess a lot of confidence and have a influential voice.. They participate in the debates, they hold debates and they are much more attuned to the parliamentary practices than, I must say with all due respect, the men.

We in Afghanistan have moved now to a different phase of our life and history and this phase is being aided also by India like the rest of the International Community. India has given us, if you don't know $650 million of assistance in the reconstruction of dams, roads, in the construction of the new parliament building, in education, you will have 50 students, I believe, in Hyderabad from Afghanistan . 500 scholarships were offered to Afghan students to come to India and 500 more vocational training opportunities in India . So India together with the rest of the International Community is one of the principal, one of the frontline participants in the reconstruction of Afghanistan .

I spoke earlier about the morality and how we behave as actors internationally or actors in the society among ourselves. You are from a country whose leaders, the leaders of the independence movement of India, were among the greatest speakers, the greatest voices for morality in world politics and I think that is an extremely cherished value, a value oriented society, value-oriented individuals, is definitely going to be an asset to the rest of the world and to one's own self.

My message to you today, the youth of India , is to never forget what your inner core value system is telling about love for the rest of the world, about love for the rest of the international community, about understanding other cultures and values and about associating with those core values.

It is alright to adapt to the ways of the world as we do today, but it is also very, very important to remain at core with the human being that has concern for another human being and as you will be the leaders of India tomorrow and as you will be the decisions-makers of India tomorrow, I hope you will also carry the core values of the Indian society to that leadership role and to transfer that in your dealings with the rest of the world.

India is going to be the major economic power. It already is a major economic power in the world. You will have responsibilities as the leaders of future India and those responsibilities will not only be within India , but ones that will take you across India's borders to the rest of the International Community to other societies.

That is where your core values will be of immense importance to you because if you keep those values and if there is poverty, misery or a difficulty in another part of the world, that core values of yours, the morality-based life will drive you to help them. That will go a long way in creating for us in the future a world that is better than the world we have today, that is better than what we had in the past 30 years for Afghanistan .

From the Afghan experience, for me as an Afghan citizen, morality is extremely important because if we in the world had led ourselves by morality, Afghanistan would have not suffered the way it did. Afghanistan suffered because of politics and politics without morality is close to sin. My advice to you everywhere is that we should not do the same. I hope you, the youth of India, today will have a great exchange with the youth of Afghanistan or as keen as eager and desirous of a better future for themselves, for their country and I hope they will learn from your experiences, from your education system and I hope together all of us will strive for a better world and I am sure that, when you are leaders in this world, you will have your counterparts in Afghanistan and the rest of the world that will strive for a better world, but with more effectiveness, with more wisdom and with a core value at your heart.

Thank you very much.

Source: Office of The Spokesman to the President of Afghanistan