The National Security Advisor Hamdullah Mohib has said that the Afghan military forces are fighting for a purpose and that it is to protect the values that they have gained with the support of the international community.

Speaking at a Town Hall meeting on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference on Friday, Mohib said that Afghanistan is not country of 2002 and its neighbors should think and fix what went wrong in 2002.

He said: “Afghanistan has come a long way. That’s completely a different country tangibly and intangibly and we are heading to our prosperous future and we are now able to bring the region together.”

The other participants of the Town Hall meeting were Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Uzbekistan’s Foreign Affair Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov, and Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi.

In his speech, NSA Mohib also paid tribute to the Afghan soldiers who have made sacrifices to defend their country’s values and territorial integrity.

“My soldiers do not fight for $300 salary.” He said. “They are fighting for a purpose. They fight to defend our values with the support of our partners and millions of Afghans around the country and Taliban have lost the purpose and what they’re fighting for.”

 “My soldiers make sacrifices and media call it causality; they are not causality, those are sacrifices we make on behalf of our country for our freedom, sovereignty and values we stand for and we will continue that as long as Afghanistan exist and a single Afghan exists in the country,” Mohib added.

He also expressed his sympathies with India over the Pulwama attack that left at least 40 Indian security personnel killed.

Referring to the ongoing peace efforts, Mohib assured that peace will come to Afghanistan, but he said it requires all of the stakeholders to involve substantively in the process.  

“Peace is coming to Afghanistan. We will bring peace. it is the ultimate desire and wish of the major of the Afghan people. It is not going to be a simple process of meeting and facilitation. It requires all of us to involve and getting engaged substantively to ensure that everybody’s interests in the region who are involved in this conflict are taken care of but also it is a peace that’s acceptable to Afghan people,” he said.

The official stressed that under the last five years, the Afghan security forces made 45,000 sacrifices to protect the values that they are fighting far.

“I come back to the purpose point, there is a purpose that the Afghans are fighting for, it is our freedom, our values, and sovereignty and we will not give up on that,” Mohib said.