Transcript of H.E. President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani’s Remarks at Warsaw Summit

Thank you for the opportunity to provide an Afghan perspective on NATO, threats to our interconnected world and our efforts to secure the future.  On behalf of a grateful nation, I pay tribute to your citizens who paid the ultimate price to ensure our freedom.  We thank political leaders, generals and officers, and the men and women who have fought shoulder to shoulder with us. We thank the taxpayers and the civilians from your countries who have dedicated their lives to helping us recover from the estimated $240 billion of economic losses inflicted on us by invasion and conflict.  

NATO has maintained its relevance and effectiveness in the paradigm shift presented by post-9/11 Afghanistan.  The organization’s fulfillment of both its combat and support missions in Afghanistan is a corroboration of NATO’s continued global relevance, adaptability and effectiveness.  Its transformative legacy, however, is building our 352,000 strong security and defense forces.  

We thank President Obama for expanding the authorities of the Resolute Support Mission, extending the mission of the US troops in 2015, and his latest decision to maintain American troops throughout his term.    We are grateful to leaders of the Framework countries and all leaders of NATO and allied countries for support that ranges from troops, to enablers and funds for our security forces. General Campbell and General Nicholson deserve praise from all of us for their leadership.

Coping continuously with the specter of terrorism, we Afghans have special empathy and sympathy for victims of the Fifth Wave of political violence that threatens our interconnected world today.   Global connectivity simultaneously increases our collective vulnerability to this new threat. We believe that the range of organized forms and techniques of violence today draws on previous waves of violence throughout history: anarchism, anti-colonialism, terrorism of the 1960’s and 70s, and violent ethnic and identity movements of the 1980’s and 90s.   The symbiotic relationship between criminal economic networks--manifested in drug and natural resource wars--and criminal politics is making this Fifth Wave a medium term obstacle to global stability. 

The key to our success lies primarily in our ability to transform the culture of the state from entrenched corruption to a citizen-centered governance system.   As a test of our political will, we ask all our partners to deliver their assistance on budget, and make it conditional on fulfillment of agreed benchmarks. This is an approach that we have successfully piloted with the IMF and the US. I thank Prime Minister Cameron for his leadership on anti-corruption as an international problem.  

Afghanistan is a stakeholder society per excellence and we are proud of our record of respect for democratic freedoms of expression and assembly.   An Afghan-owned agenda of reform translated into a conditionality-based international compact for on-budget support would enable us to converge the needs of key stakeholder groups –especially women, youth and the poor – and the government’s reform agenda. This, in turn, would enable us to increase the speed of delivery, enhance the quality of services and ensure accountability and transparency. 

Peace is our highest national priority.  Reaching peace, however, requires understanding the nature of the war imposed upon us.  The conflict is multi-dimensional, ranging from Al-Qaeda and Daesh to terrorist groups with Central Asian, Chinese, and Russian origins, to Pakistani groups classified as terrorists by Pakistan and Afghan Taliban groups.   Because these groups pose a threat to the region, the Islamic community and the world at large, we have devoted significant efforts to achieve cooperation regionally and within the Islamic community to defeat these groups.  

Our regional initiatives with neighbors are beginning to yield significant cooperative dividends. The exception is with Pakistan--despite clear commitments to a quadrilateral peace process, their dangerous distinction between good and bad terrorists is being maintained in practice.  The key problem among our neighboring states is an absence of agreed rules of the game, thus we seek regional and global support in creating those rules, which will bind us to collective security and harmony.   - Read More
Transcript of H.E. President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani’s Remarks at Warsaw Summit 

ترجمه سخنرانی جلالتمآب رئیس ‌جمهورمحمد اشرف غنی در نشست سران ناتو

رئیس جمهور غنی با رئیس جمهور اوباما دیدار کرد 
رئیس جمهور غنی با صدراعظم بریتانیا دیدار کرد 
جمهور رئیس غني: د وارسا ناسته زموږ د زړه‌ورو سرتېرو د اتلولیو او سرښندنو د تائيد، ستایلو او ملاتړ څرګنده نښه ده