A biography for Lakhdar Brahimihasn’t been written yet.
“But you are absolutely right that when the international community decides to help in a meaningful manner a country like Afghanistan, then coordination between the various actors that are involved in these processes is very, very difficult indeed.”
“A fly cannot go in unless it stops somewhere; therefore weapons, fuel, food, money will not go to Afghanistan unless the neighbors of Afghanistan are working, are cooperating, either being themselves the origin or the transit.”
“To leave Afghanistan as a playground for terrorists and adventurers was simply not possible anymore.”
“Of course the UN brings in a lot of moral authority.”
“There is a story which is not being told strongly enough of the Afghan employees of the UN inside the country who are saving hundreds of thousands of lives everyday by their bravery and nobody talks of them.”
“There again, that is a fundamental principle: no two situations are alike.”
“There is a firm, clear commitment to provide resources and ideas to enable us to organize the Afghans towards starting the process of rehabilitation and reconstruction.”
“If you are talking about terrorism, you need to sit down and understand what is making these people put dynamite around their waists and blow themselves up.”
“When you go from one place to another, you go with experience, you don't go with prescriptions.”
“There is an element of luck, there is an element of trial and error, sometimes you fail, sometimes you succeed. It's not as beautifully simple as it may seem when we are talking about it.”
“The third point is that for some time the UN has been talking about helping Afghanistan in the reconstruction of the country but there has never been any real commitment by the international community to provide resources for that.”
“People now realize that globalization is not only for the multi-nationals and the circulation of money.”
“Iraq is a country that has been invaded. It's not a failing state that you want to help. It's a country that was functioning good or bad, with a horrible dictator, but you have invaded.”