Afghanistan, 2006

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.