Quotes About Conflict

Never short of guns and guerrillas, Afghanistan has proven fertile ground for a host of insurgent groups in addition to the Taliban.

Our aim is always to minimise casualties and to separate a hardline Taliban from those who have been caught up in the insurgency.

Rebuilding Afghanistan is not going to be solved by pouring billions in. Getting rid of the Taliban does not rid us of the problems of fundamentalism and instability.

Where land mines are indiscriminate, cheap, and brutal, drones are discriminate, expensive, and brutal. And yet they are insufficiently discriminate: the assassination of the Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud in Pakistan in 2009 succeeded only on the seventeenth attempt.

I don't think the Taliban will ever come back to take Afghanistan, no.

The Taliban is resilient.

When we started after Osama bin Laden, we really decided to go after the Taliban. And we seemed to be content to kick the Taliban out of Kandahar. And then we let Osama bin Laden escape from Tora Bora.

The Taliban knows they have more to fear from an educated girl than an American drone.

The Buddhas had to be destroyed by the Taliban to get the world thinking about Afghanistan.

The people suffering most from the Taliban were Afghans.

The fact is that Iran doesn't want to see the Taliban come back any more than do most Afghan citizens.

As a matter of international law, the United States is in an armed conflict with al-Qa'ida, the Taliban, and associated forces, in response to the 9/11 attacks, and we may also use force consistent with our inherent right of national self-defense.

Rockets fired by the Taliban generally aren't guided.

The armies, the difference of all of those armies that had been fighting each other and the Taliban took advantage of that to rule over the whole country.

You know, if I were an - if I were a Taliban, I'd say, 'What did al-Qaida ever do for me except get me kicked out of Afghanistan?'

The Taliban mostly attacks international and Afghan security forces. They rarely carry out attacks in markets.

The Taliban may pine for a pre-industrial society, but most Afghans do not.

Talking to the Taliban is a process the Afghans have to manage. It is their country.

Without U.S. forces in the country, there is a strong possibility Afghanistan could host a reinvigorated Taliban allied to a reinvigorated al Qaeda.

I've dealt with the Taliban and al Qaeda.

The condition that the Taliban part with al Qaeda is not just a condition, it is an objective. We must convince them that al Qaeda ideology and dogma will not help them.

Peace cannot come without the government of Afghanistan speaking directly to the Taliban or the Taliban talking directly to us.

In principle, there is nothing wrong with the United States negotiating directly with the Taliban.

It is in Pakistan's own interest that the Afghan army is able to fight effectively against the Taliban, which is more likely if they continue to have American advisers at their side.