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Middle East

That is an enormously important issue. I was in Nepal last week, where I saw the effects that a small literacy and health care project that the embassy is running had on women’s lives in a little village. The situation was extraordinary: people were speaking up with confidence about how they could alter their lives. I want to say something about that because it is so important. These are the goals that terrorists and extremists fear; they do not want people liberated in that way or for people to feel that they can speak with openness, freedom and impunity about matters that affect them so much. That is why terrorists want to provoke instability and why our objective of creating the conditions for lasting stability is such a threat to them.