From The Naples Daily News  December 15, 2014:

NAPLES, Fla. – You can always go home again, but you might find that things are quite a bit different when you do.

At least that was the case for Naples resident and author Abdullah Sharif, who served as the latest speaker in the Naples Council on World Affairs lecture series that hosts about 10 lectures each tourist season.

Sharif’s debut book, “SARDAR: From Afghanistan’s Golden Age to Carnage,” served as the focal point to his speech to about 100 people Monday at St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church on 111th Avenue in North Naples.

An aerospace industry professional who grew up in Kabul and left Afghanistan as a teenager in 1976 before returning as a diplomat in 2007, Sharif said he found his native country nearly unrecognizable from the vibrant land he’d left three decades earlier.

“I wanted to give the reader an idea of what Afghanistan looked like before it was devastated by war and corruption,” he said of his inspiration for writing the book. “Between 1930 and 1975, it was a viable country that could feed itself and defend itself, not what you see on TV and read in the newspapers.”

Sharif said Afghanistan’s decline began in earnest with Russia’s 1979 invasion of the country that lasted until 1989 and continued with NATO’s invasion following the events of Sep. 11, 2001.

U.S. and NATO forces ceremonially withdrew from Afghanistan Dec. 8.

“It took 30 years to descend into the abyss and it’s going to take several generations and hundreds of years to come out of it,” Sharif said. “There is no short-term solution.”

Sharif said in 2008 he met with former Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, who offered him various government jobs that he turned down flat.

“I didn’t want to be associated with the corruption of that political machinery,” he said.

While in Afghanistan, Sharif said he also served as a mentor to the mayor of Kandahar, who was subsequently murdered by the Taliban.

“I was protected well, but you could hear the explosions on a daily basis,” he said. “With the resurgence of the Taliban, life is the same for the rank-and-file Afghanistan citizens as it was before.”

Sharif said an informed voting populace in the United States would go a long way toward restoring Afghanistan to its former glory.

“At the end of the day we live in a democracy, and it’s the voice of the people that is going to impact foreign policy,” he said. “Unfortunately, only two percent of people vote based on foreign policy, even though we spend so much blood and treasure in the conflicts we’re involved in.”

Judi Lipnick, president of the Naples Council on World Affairs, said Sharif marked a natural choice for the lecture series.

“He was born in Afghanistan and has a special relationship with the country and the U.S. government, so he fits our mission perfectly,” she said.

For his part, Jim Perkins of Naples and Boston said he always looks forward to each installment of the lecture series.

“There’s always new information and you get a different view on things,” the 79-year-old said. “And at my age, anything that keeps me alert and functioning is a good thing.”