Daily Inspiration Quote by Lakhdar Brahimi

Coordination is the polite word Brahimi uses to describe the chronic dysfunction of good intentions turned into competing fiefdoms. As a diplomat who spent years inside the UN machine and on the ground in Afghanistan, he’s not offering a neutral observation; he’s issuing a carefully coded indictment. The opening concession, “you are absolutely right,” signals agreement while also buying permission to deliver bad news: even when the world shows up with money, expertise, and moral certainty, it often arrives as a crowd, not a team.

The subtext is that “the international community” is not a single actor at all but a loose brand name for governments, militaries, NGOs, UN agencies, contractors, and intelligence services, each carrying its own mandate, metrics, and political constraints. “Help in a meaningful manner” is doing double duty. It flatters the idea of solidarity, yet it hints at how rare “meaningful” help actually is - and how quickly meaning gets diluted once it’s routed through rival chains of command.

Brahimi’s repetition - “very, very difficult indeed” - is more than emphasis. It’s a diplomatic form of escalation: strong enough to convey exasperation, restrained enough to remain publishable in a room full of stakeholders. Context matters here: Afghanistan became a laboratory for state-building after 2001, where parallel programs, overlapping security agendas, and donor-driven timelines routinely undercut local legitimacy. His line warns that complexity isn’t an unfortunate side effect; it’s a predictable outcome when outsiders treat a country as a project and coordination as an afterthought rather than the core political task.