By ideology, yes. They have the same ideology. There's no difference within their ideologies; they can get together in one night. When they were in competition, they had no power. They were struggling for power. Before this, they were fighting for political power and now they are together, as we can see. The former president, the predecessor of Karzai, was Rabanni. Rabanni announced full support for Taliban engagement, with political power, but before that, he was fighting them.
Ten years ago, Rabanni was taken away from Kabul as president to a province in the northern part of Afghanistan, bordering with Tajikistan. He was receiving support from the Russians to fight the Taliban. He fought the Taliban for five years. But after the international community came in, he was replaced by President Karzai. So he fought for five years in a military advance against the Taliban, but now he has announced that he is friendly with them and is completely supporting their engagement in political power.
Why? Because their source of feeding is the same: it is extremist funding sources in Arabic countries for the Taliban and also for the warlords. We call them warlords; it's the same.... So the master told both of them that they had to be together to get the political power of Afghanistan, and with the energy of some countries, with the money of their technical assistance or whatever assistance they give, make an extremist government and put the name “democracy” on it. That's why he announced that, yes, he wanted the Taliban to come.
So you see what the machination behind it is: they only want to use the funding. Behind the curtains, they're together. They're brothers. And they run their own agenda. They don't let any woman activist with the vision of real human rights in Afghanistan and democracy and liberalism go further in working in Afghanistan, because they are enemies.
You know they're enemies. In the philosophy of religious dictatorship, there's no space for women, so that is why women are targeted by them, too. That's why I say that the international community or international sources are needed to support women activists inside Afghanistan politically, so that they can survive there, be protected, and be working on women's rights for a positive change in the country.
I wanted to do that, but in 2002 the international community didn't know me. I became a candidate through my own individual popularity. I was a social activist, and I was working directly with thousands and hundreds of thousands of people, helping them to receive aid from the United Nations. That's why they knew me and supported me. They're normal people. But the international community in 2002 didn't know me. I was telling everybody that if this chance is given to women, I can do this for Afghanistan, with honesty.
I knew that our powerful men were dealers, and they have become very experienced in political business. They make money. It is my second day in Ottawa and I have heard from many Afghans. I knew about these people in Afghanistan and they didn't have a house in Afghanistan; I knew about the personal and family lives of many of the leaders in Afghanistan. But I've heard that they are buying properties in Canada, with millions of dollars. That's why I started thinking that if we women in Afghanistan get power, we will start investigating their personal properties and get all these national properties that they have taken away from these countries back to the Afghan national treasury.
I've just heard that the head of the office of President Karzai has bought a house in Vancouver worth $1 million: a one-million dollar house here for a person who didn't have a house in Kabul before. So in eight years, the head of the office can do that.
So you can see that a lot of the money that has been handed to Afghanistan and the national income of Afghanistan have been misused because of the absence of rule of law in the country; it has been taken away to different banks of the world and also to countries like this one. This is another source of income for Afghanistan that can be investigated and can be taken to the national treasury of Afghanistan.
Also, the warlords and extremist leaders have millions of dollars, so we have a national source, and if we have a strong government, and your countries, your governments, and the UN can support us, the UN, together with the Afghan government, can start an investigation of the personal properties of these warlords, these commanders, and these extremist leaders.
All the people of Afghanistan know that their fathers' lives, their personal lives, three decades back, were very poor, and they don't have to anymore say to people how they made it: they were fighting for jihad, and jihad is in the name of Allah. But how did this richness happen? This means that it is the people's property so they should return it. The UN started in a previous administration nine years ago, but then it was stopped. The UN started asking the different banks of the world about the property of extremist leaders, but suddenly it stopped.
That process can be taken ahead again. How many properties and how much money do they have in different parts of the world? It can be investigated, and they can go to court and defend themselves, and if they can't--and obviously they cannot--they should be punished and should go to prison, and the properties that belong to the people of Afghanistan should go to the national treasury. That is a very big income for Afghanistan.
I've heard about one extremist leader having $20 million--$20 million--in a bank outside Afghanistan. That's only one of them. So if you put all of them together, it's hundreds of millions of dollars, and that could make Afghanistan reconstructed. All these desires we have to be free and liberated, with lawfulness, a shining, happy and healthy Afghanistan, a democratic Afghanistan, all we want can be done with that, with our property that was taken away from the people of Afghanistan.
Thank you.