Kabul Quotes

• No possible future government in Kabul can be worse than the Taliban, and no thinkable future government would allow the level of Al Qaeda gangsterism to recur. So the outcome is proportionate and congruent with international principles of self-defense.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Government, Self, Principles

  Christopher Hitchens (2004). “Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays”, p.433, Nation Books

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• Kabul is... a thousand tragedies per square mile.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Squares, Tragedy, Miles

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• When you walk down the street of Kabul your values for life changes, they do change.

  Marco Pierre White

  Life Changing, Walks, Streets

  Source: www.notquitenigella.com

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• Trying to rebuild Afghanistan on the cheap has left the country in the hands of warlords and an impotent Northern Alliance puppet regime that runs Kabul and nothing else.

  Ted Rall

  Running, Country, Hands

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• Kabul was a thriving cosmopolitan city with its vibrant artistic, intellectual and cultural life. There were poets, musicians, and writers. There was also an influx of western culture, art, and literature in the '60s and '70s.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Art, Cities, Intellectual

  Interview with Razeshta Sethna, newslinemagazine.com. November, 2003.

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• If I could go to Kabul and not die, I would go back to Afghanistan as soon as I could. And, that was the most interesting place that I've been to.

  Henry Rollins

  Interesting, Afghanistan, Dies

  Interview with Danny Stygion, www.sinicalmagazine.com. October 1, 2011.

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• The strategy for peace-building in Afghanistan is economic aid, reconstruction, international security forces. On those lines, the U.S. has been extremely slow. And it has even blocked expanding security forces from Kabul to other cities.

  Ahmed Rashid

  Cities, Lines, Strategy

  Source: progressive.org

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• I wouldn't want to roll the dice on Kabul by myself, because I really think getting killed is definitely a possibility there. A very good possibility.

  Henry Rollins

  Thinking, Want, Dice

  Interview with Danny Stygion, www.sinicalmagazine.com. October 1, 2011.

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• People don't dream all their lives of escaping the hellish countries they live in and pay their life savings to underworld types for the privilege of being locked up in a freezing, filthy, stinking container ship and hauled like cargo for weeks until they finally arrive in Moscow or Beijing or Baghdad or Kabul. People risk their lives to come here---to New York. The greatest city in the world, where dreams become reality.

  Sean Hannity

  Dream, Country, New York

  Sean Hannity (2002). “Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty Over Liberalism”, p.8, Dubois Publishing

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• Kabul was very popular with the hippies in the Sixties and Seventies. It was very quiet and peaceful.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Hippie, Peaceful, Quiet

  "This much I know". Interview with Tom Templeton, www.theguardian.com. May 03, 2008.

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• Since the 1950s (until the early 1990s), girls in Kabul and other cities attended schools. Half of university students were women, and women made up 40 percent of Afghanistan’s doctors, 70 percent of its teachers and 30 percent of its civil servants. A small number of women even held important political posts as members of Parliament and judges. Most women did not wear the burqa.

  Eleanor Smeal

  Girl, Teacher, School

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• In Kabul, hot running water had been like fathers, a rare commodity.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Running, Father, Water

  Khaled Hosseini (2011). “The Kite Runner: Rejacketed”, p.290, A&C Black

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• According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

  Zbigniew Brzezinski

  Military, Army, Reality

  "How Jimmy Carter & I Started the Mujahideen". www.liveleak.com. January, 1998.

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• I would be quite happy to see the Northern Alliance steam across northern Afghanistan and take Kabul.

  Geoff Hoon

  Would Be, Alliances, Steam

  "British troops in Afghanistan", www.cnn.com. November 11, 2001.

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• While women may look different, as some wear suits and others wear saris, or some cover their hair while others wear their hair loose, women need to stand together because they all face the central point of discrimination, although the extremity of which may be different from Kigali to Kabul.

  Zainab Salbi

  Hair, Together, May

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• I went to Afghanistan in '96 to write about terrorist training camps south of Jalalabad and Tora Bora, in the mountains. I was there right before the Taliban took over, literally a few weeks before they took Kabul. The frontline wasn't terribly active, but it was definitely there. And they swept into power.

  Sebastian Junger

  Writing, Training, Mountain

  "A Few Good Men". Interview with Adam Weinstein, motherjones.com. September/October 2010.

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• I wanted to tell them that, in Kabul, we snapped a tree branch and used it as a credit card. Hassan and I would take the wooden stick to the bread maker. He'd carve notches on our stick with his knife, one notch for each loaf of naan he'd pull for us from the tandoor's roaring flames. At the end of the month, my father paid him for the number of notches on the stick. That was it. No questions. No ID.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Father, Flames, Knives

  Khaled Hosseini (2004). “The Kite Runner”, p.104, Penguin

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• I was out there for 12 days. There are more beggars in Soho than there are in Kabul.

  Neil Morrissey

  America, World, Soho

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• Deborah Rodriguez went to Afghanistan to transform her own life and ended up revolutionizing the lives of many of her Afghan sisters. This book made me feel like I was right there in the beauty salon, sharing in the tears and laughter as, outside my door, an entire country changed. KABUL BEAUTY SCHOOL is inspiring, exciting, and not to be missed.

  Masha Hamilton

  Country, Laughter, Book

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• The warlords took part in atrocities during the civil war in Afghanistan. They looted, they raped, they killed. They have become incredibly empowered and entrenched. They live in mansions, they have jobs in the government, and they're incredibly powerful. In Kabul, people don't want to speak about it too publicly, because these people are essentially like Tony Soprano.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Jobs, Powerful, War

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• He was an Afghan Hound name Kabul. Since him I have had other Afghan Hounds.... Perhaps I am looking for his ghost. He is the only one that I sometimes think about. Often, if he comes in to my mind when I am working, it alters what I do. The nose on the face I am drawing gets longer and sharper. The hair of the woman I am sketching gets longer and fluffy, resting against her cheeks like his ears rested against his head.

  Pablo Picasso

  Dog, Thinking, Hair

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• I want my fellow citizens to wise up and stop falling for [war]. I try with my limited access, I'm not getting into Kabul with a camera, they're not letting me get into Benghazi with a camera. I do what I can with my flimsy American passport and a visa. The photos are a bit more heavy from Southern Sudan and Haiti and Cuba.

  Henry Rollins

  Wise, War, Fall

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Afghanistan has always been sort of a fractured nation, very tribal, where the countryside and the distant provinces have been run by custom, by tribal law and by tribal leaders rather than edicts from the central government in Kabul.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Running, Government, Law

  "Khaled Hosseini, Kabul’s Splendid Son". Interview with Michael Mechanic, www.motherjones.com. May/June, 2009.

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• In 2001, we were told that the war in Afghanistan was a feminist mission. The marines were liberating Afghan women from the Taliban. Can you really bomb feminism into a country? And now, after 25 years of brutal war - 10 years against the Soviet occupation, 15 years of US occupation - the Taliban is riding back to Kabul and will soon be back to doing business with the United States.

  Arundhati Roy

  Country, War, Marine

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• I experienced Kabul with my brother the way Amir and Hassan do: long school days in the summer, kite fighting in the winter time, westerns with John Wayne at Cinema Park, big parties at our house in Wazir Akbar Khan, picnics in Paghman.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Summer, Brother, Party

  Interview with Razeshta Sethna, newslinemagazine.com. November, 2003.

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