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My war buddies, some were Americans, but some were Afghans. These were the guys that I fought alongside. We bled alongside each other; we mourned together. When I came home, these weren't people I could keep up with on Facebook.

However, it does seem now that the international community, more importantly the powers that have influence, and, even more importantly, Afghanistan's neighbors realize that it is high time that they work together, and not against one another.

I just immediately connect everything to the wars I have been covering overseas, and that's not the case back home. I wrongly assumed all Americans at home were as consumed with our troops in Afghanistan as I was abroad.

One thing that I noticed is having met some former Taliban is even they, as children, grew up being indoctrinated. They grew up in violence. They grew up in war. They were taught to hate. They were, they grew up in very ignorant cultures where they didn't learn about the outside world.

Wherever I have gone in this country, I have found Americans.

Many Afghan intellectuals in the United States believe that their country is best kept together. They are encouraged by the fact that no leading tribal or political figure there has called for secession.

It's ironic that early on in the war with Afghanistan, the Americans and the British were saying, 'We recognise there must be a Palestinian state,' then they rapidly forgot about it. I think history will show that that kind of amnesia will come back to haunt you.

Europeans are familiar with terrorism and violence. We have not experienced a true conflict on our soil in a hundred years, and especially not one that involved 3,000 dead.

In Afghanistan, I was talking to Afghan elders who were world-weary of a lack of sustained attention from their own government and from the international community to stop problems early.