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We never had reports of Mullah Omar living luxuriously or making money in large quantities or anything like that.

Ahmed Rashid

We never had reports of Mullah Omar living luxuriously or making money in large quantities or anything like that.
AHMED RASHID

Anything Large Living Luxury Making Met Money Quantities Report
In my view, the Western model of influencing the development of third world countries is doomed to failure.
AHMED RASHID

Country Development Doomed Effort Failure Influencing Model Western World
People like myself were saying the Taliban would be driven out very swiftly from the north of Afghanistan, but given that their main support base was in the Pashtun belt, there would be greater resistance there. That didn’t happen.
AHMED RASHID

Country Driven Greater Happen North People Resistance Saying Support Swiftly
We should remember that the Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan.
AHMED RASHID

Country Ethnic Group Largest Remember Support
The West would be well advised to change its approach towards failing states. At present, no major power can find the correct ways and means – and the numbers of failing states are increasing.
AHMED RASHID

Advise Approach Change Falling Mean Promise State Toward War West
They were communists and had the same vision for Afghanistan that Stalin and Lenin had for the Soviet Union: Progress is communism plus electrification. And today? Today Kabul gets its electrical power from Uzbekistan, Herat from Iran and Jalalabad from Pakistan.
AHMED RASHID

Communist Country Electrical Power Progress Union Vision
[Mullah Omar] gave himself this religious title. So it was something that all those people there who swore an oath of loyalty to him as a religious leader could not easily get rid of.
AHMED RASHID

Loyalty People Religious Something Title
What everyone underestimated was the acute unpopularity of the Taliban, even in the Pashtun areas.
AHMED RASHID

Acute Everyone People Population Support Underestimate Unpopularity
The West does not understand how to deal with states that no longer have any authority and are threatened by dissolution. Their efforts failed in Iraq as well as Afghanistan.
AHMED RASHID

Authority Country Deal Effort Longer State Threatened Understand
Of course, many of them did support the Taliban. But you cannot equate all Pashtuns with the Taliban.
AHMED RASHID

All Country Course Support
I think within a year or so, perhaps, if 9/11 had not happened, in Afghanistan would have been a very broad-based general uprising against the Taliban.
AHMED RASHID

Happened Political Span Thinking Uprising Within Year
The idea of a permanent U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, as opposed to an economic presence, is going to create a new wave of hostility toward the United States.
AHMED RASHID

Country Economic Idea Military Opposed Permanent Presence United States
America does not hold to the colonial tradition. America came, liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban and al-Qaida, came to an arrangement with Hamid Karzai, wanted to organize elections as soon as possible and then withdraw.
AHMED RASHID

Allocate Army Bank Company Country Fall Fund Investment Percent Police
Despite all the dire predictions made in 2001, the Afghans have given the international community, its aid workers and soldiers a large window of opportunity to repair the damage done by 25 years of war.
AHMED RASHID

Aid Community Country Despite International Opportunity War Worker Year
They are simply not capable of promoting the indigenous economy. Many billions of dollars flooded into Afghanistan, but without any significant effect.
AHMED RASHID

Billion Economy Effect Flood Indigenous Influencing Significant Simply
Our Pakistan elites are spoiled by permanent foreign aid and therefore find it difficult to change course. Pakistan needs someone who stands up and says: Fundamentalism is bad, capitalism is good.
AHMED RASHID

Aid Change Country Course Difficult Elite Energy Foreign Permanent Spoiled

We never had reports of Mullah Omar living luxuriously or making money in large quantities or anything like that.

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We never had reports of Mullah Omar living luxuriously or making money in large quantities or anything like that.

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Popular Authors

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