Foreign Affairs Committee on April 19th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Obhrai.

Madame Lalonde, very quickly, and then to Mr. Wilfert.

[Francine Lalonde, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Chairman, I call for a vote.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

All right. It's Mr. Wilfert's motion, so he can speak last.

Mr. Wilfert.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Very quickly, I just want to say that this is not a partisan issue, and I really take exception to that.

The individuals in question want justice. They want answers, and very clearly, I think it's important that their voices are members of Parliament. If members of Parliament do not have the ability to provide that voice, then what role do we have?

So I would suggest that we call the question and see the result.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

I'll call the question on the motion that we invite Minister MacKay and Honourable Helena Guergis, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and International Trade, to appear before the committee at the earliest opportunity, and the friendly amendment is included in this.

(Motion agreed to)

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

All right. Thank you.

We'll now ask the witnesses to take the table, and we'll suspend for a few moments to allow them to do so.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Good morning, and welcome.

This is meeting 49 of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development. We are reconvening, and it is April 19, 2007.

Today we have another briefing on the circumstances in Afghanistan. We're going to combine both of our witnesses.

We have with us Houchang Hassan-Yari, professor and head of the Department of Politics and Economics at the Royal Military College of Canada.

We welcome you, sir. We waited for you before, and we're glad that you made it. We heard you had a bit of an accident, and we're glad you're all right.

Dr. Hassan-Yari is professor in the Department of History at Queen's University, he is a senior fellow at the Queen's Centre for International Relations, and he has a lot of expertise in this area.

We also have journalist and writer David Van Praagh. He has specialized in reporting on and analyzing Asian developments for more than 40 years. He has written a number of publications and has written articles in newspapers in North America. He is well known to television audiences in Canada and around Ottawa, the nation's capital, in particular.

We welcome both of you here today, and we thank you for adjusting your schedules. This committee will go until 11 o'clock, at which time there is another committee. We'll invite you each to give an opening statement, and then there will be questions from our committee members.

Thank you.

[Dr. Houchang Hassan-Yari, Professor, Political Science, Royal Military College of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm terribly sorry to be late. That doesn't happen very often. As you mentioned, I had a minor accident while coming here. I left home much earlier to be here, but unfortunately couldn't make it.

I'm going to talk very briefly about the situation in Afghanistan, in hopes that we are going to have an exchange after that.

Afghanistan, as you know, is a country composed of different ethnic groups and regions.

Afghanistan is a country rich in history and events, that is going through a turbulent period which, unfortunately, has lasted a very long time. This country has always been the target of invasions from neighbouring regions. What is happening now is to some extent the continuation of these events.

In particular, there is what is known as the "Great Game", which lasted from the end of the XIX^th century until the beginning of the XX^th, during which the Russian and English empires squared off. The situation today is, of course, a continuation of what has happened since the Soviet invasion, and subsequently, the American invasion. And all of this happened in a context of the post September 11, 2001 world and the events that followed the collapse of the Taliban regime.

If we want really to understand what's going on now and how to prevent the kinds of errors that probably we are going to make in the future, we have to recognize the errors of the past. I enumerated a number of them. The first one, in my view, is the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001; it shouldn't have been done. The question of the Taliban and al-Qaeda could have been addressed differently. It wasn't the case, unfortunately.

The second error was this victorious celebration by neo-cons in Washington that everything is possible now that the Taliban are not in power, and then move on and go to the second one and so forth.

The third error the Americans made was the invasion of Iraq and distracting really the international community from the problems that existed in Afghanistan.

As for the problems today, we might be more concerned about those problems. The first one I can identify is the absence of viable institutions. In Afghanistan, the institutions--whatever exists that we can call an institution--are extremely weak. Afghanis need really to have institution-building. Some elections were held, but again, whatever was created is extremely weak and it should be reinforced.

What is needed is to have a very strong and efficient administration. We don't have that in Afghanistan, and it's one of the sources of the many problems we have. Other institutions that need to be reinforced are related to security, the army, the police, and so forth.

The enjeux principale, in my view, in Afghanistan is really to improve the life of the Afghani population. We know that the Taliban took over because of the failure of others, the Mujahadeen and others. It seems that what's going on in Afghanistan is really a kind of repetition of the same situation. So there is an accumulation of errors by a number of countries and institutions in Afghanistan. I should emphasize that those errors are simply reinforcing the position of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

We absolutely need to rebuild the trust of the people in Afghanistan. It used to be very strong, but unfortunately it is eroding. We need to rebuild the people's trust to achieve a better future, both from a material and security point of view. As Canadians, we are well aware of Afghanistan's security problems and of the problems faced in daily life by both individual Afghans and Afghan society.

But there are serious obstacles to rebuilding trust. There are a number of reasons for this. The first one is the lack of awareness of Afghanistan's priorities. I believe that democracy, individual freedoms and these types of concepts are extremely important. However, we have set up a window dressing type of democracy in Afghanistan instead of first making the country secure and then creating institutions which can function in a secure environment.

The second one is also very important, and it is something which has considerably weakened Afghanistan since October 2001, namely excessive corruption. At the beginning of the 1990s, the Taliban were successful at the expense of the Moudjahidine precisely because of the corruption issue and in-fighting among the Moudjahidine. But that is exactly what is still going on today in Afghanistan. There's no cohesion between ministers. There are problems.

The third obstacle is poverty among the masses and the wealth of a few. Schools are having a difficult time. We need to address these realities, including pay for teachers, policemen and other government employees.

The fourth one is political freedom and freedom of the press. These freedoms are now being threatened by the government and by the excessive actions of the Afghan police force.

The fifth obstacle is that the current government and the countries' presence in Afghanistan, including Canada, are, in my view, too dependent on the warlords, the very people who destroyed Afghanistan in the first place and who facilitated the Taliban comeback. It's the same problem all over again.

The sixth obstacle is Afghanistan's, and the entire region, problem with drugs. Lastly, there is a lack of coordination at the macro level in the areas of security and development.

I will stop here. There are other issues, but I'll come back to them later.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

Mr. Van Praagh.

[David Van Praagh, Journalist, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members. It's an honour and a privilege to address the committee today on a subject as important, timely, and sensitive as Afghanistan, and on Canada's role in that tortured country.

I'm not an expert on Afghanistan like Barnett Rubin. I'm not a historian, although I hold the title of professor. I'm a journalist who has been engaged with Afghanistan, as with many other Asian countries, for many years, since driving across that rugged land in 1961 and nearly not making it to the Khyber Pass on roads as non-existent then as they are now, and in 1966, which may seem a long time ago, writing the first series of articles on Afghanistan in a Canadian newspaper, The Globe and Mail.

I might just add that as a journalist I'm used to asking questions and reporting speeches and I'm not used to giving speeches or taking questions, but I think it's very important for me to say at the outset that I believe journalists have a responsibility, as well as a right, to come to their own consensus about any situation, and that's what I'm trying to do. I'm not trying to express any opinions as such, as that word is usually used.

What I'd like to do briefly this morning is note some relevant history of Afghanistan and its neighbourhood that may be ignored or forgotten with the too often tragic impact of the lives and deaths of brave Canadian soldiers.

As you know, Afghanistan was the focus of what the British called “the great game” to protect the Raj in India from Russian imperialism. I've written a book called The Greater Game: India's Race with Destiny and China.

Afghanistan is a key battle of the greater game, the conflict in many countries between free, tolerant peoples and global terrorists. Democracies and would-be democracies near and far will suffer a severe defeat in the greater game if Afghanistan, Canadian credibility, and NATO effectiveness are lost.

For more than 1,000 years, Afghanistan has been the historic gateway to India for conquerors and would-be conquerors going back to Alexander the Great. Afghans are tough tribesmen who come by suspicion of farenghi, or foreigners, naturally, since Genghis Khan nearly obliterated Afghanistan in the 13th century. Three times in the 19th and early 20th centuries they defeated would-be British conquerors, who nevertheless made Afghanistan a classic buffer state against Russian imperialists in central Asia.

When the British left India and the subcontinent was partitioned in 1947, Pakistan, with the North West Frontier Agency made famous by Kipling, became Afghanistan's eastern neighbour. Pustun or Pashtun tribesmen, called Pathans in Pakistan, live on both sides of the British-drawn Durand Line dividing the two countries. Russia never gave up its designs on Afghanistan. Pakistan, next to attaining its highest territorial aim, which is control of the Indian-held Vale of Kashmir, made control of Afghanistan its highest territorial aim.

In the mid-1960s, however--and I think it's important to go back to that period for reasons I'm going to briefly sum up--Afghanistan made its first attempt to emerge into the modern world. I watched in justifiable disbelief as the Afghans under King Muhammad Zahir Shah built new roads, allowed women, especially at Kabul University, to go unveiled, and even held constitutional parliamentary elections, but with no political parties. Canada joined the U.S., the Soviet Union, and other countries in competing economic aid projects--but a series of tragic events jolted the Afghans back to the Middle Ages: a Soviet-backed coup in 1973 overthrew the progressive king; a Soviet-backed Communist coup succeeded in 1978; when ruling Afghan Communists faltered, Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan at the end of 1979; a decade of insurgency by U.S.-armed Mujahadeen fighters compelled the Soviets to leave in 1989; and three more years of war against a brutal Communist regime were followed by civil war among victorious Mujahadeen.

Then Pakistan created an army of benighted Pashtun Islamist extremists, called the Taliban, that conquered most of the country by 1996. This led to a steady, unresisted invasion by al-Qaeda terrorists led by Osama bin Laden.

Finally, on September 9, 2001, in what may have been a signal of what happened on the other side of the world two days later, Ahmed Shah Massoud, the legendary commander of the Northern Alliance who had defeated the Red Army in the Panshir Valley northeast of Kabul and had blocked total Taliban conquest of Afghanistan, was killed in a terrorist suicide bombing.

But with the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the Afghans quickly adapted to the greater game. Their country shared only devastation with the World Trade Center. But they seized a way out of fanatical Taliban rule, which was demolished along with world al-Qaeda headquarters by a temporary U.S.-led invasion, including Canadian troops, notably JTF2.

In 1989, a miracle saved Afghanistan from Soviet rule. In 2001, a second miracle saved Afghanistan from Taliban rule.

The Afghans are still finding it difficult to rebuild a nation that Sir Henry Rawlinson, the first westerner to describe Afghanistan in detail, called in 1875 “a mere collection of tribes”--the Pashtuns, the Tajiks, the Uzbeks, the Turkmen, the Hazara descendants of Genghis Khan.

These armed tribes were symbolically held together by Zahir Shah, the reformist king who in 1933, following assassination of his father, had assumed the Pashtun Durrani throne dating back to 1747. In 2002, at the age of 87, he convoked a loya jirga, or grand gathering, of the Afghan tribes that confirmed Hamid Karzai, a highly educated tribal chief related to Zahir Shah, as leader of the Afghan government. He was later elected president, and of course he visited Canada last September.

Afghans have made a start toward democratic government, including election of a parliament, still with no political parties, and with recognition of equal status of women. But tribal rivalries persist. Warlords control some parts of the country. Corruption is endemic. The opium trade thrives. Worst of all, the Taliban have been revived by Pakistan, a key fact we must never forget. Pakistan allows bases for Pashtun insurgents and sanctuaries for al-Qaeda leaders, who have moved their world headquarters from Kandahar to Karachi and Quetta.

It was clear in September 2003, when Pakistan's General Pervez Musharraf visited Ottawa, that engagement of Canadian troops and Taliban forces was inevitable. The Canadians were moving out of Kabul to provide stability and reconstruction in the provinces. Taliban fighters--trained, armed, organized, and advised by ISI, Pakistan's military Inter-Services Intelligence--were moving back into Afghanistan in large numbers.

Three years later, in September 2006, Canadian troops with U.S., British, and Dutch air support decisively won the biggest battle in Afghanistan since late 2001. Hundreds of Taliban insurgents were killed in the Panjwai district near Kandahar, the movement's original base, and hundreds fled back to Pakistan.

Now the war in Afghanistan has entered a critical new phase. Both sides have promised spring offensives, but the Taliban appear to be avoiding major battles and are counting on roadside bombs and suicide bombers to wear down the will of NATO forces.

NATO, while training Afghan soldiers and police, is stepping up efforts to win the support of Afghan villagers by providing civic improvements as well as military protection. Both are necessary. Reconstruction in Afghanistan is not possible without armed force. That is a fact.

Canada's 2,500 troops in Afghanistan have played a major, I would say magnificent, role. Canada is committed to continuing this difficult task to 2009--I know the time beyond is controversial, and I will just leave it at that--and is acquiring better armoured tanks against Taliban bombs. If Canada pulled out before Afghanistan was safe and stable, the impact on all NATO forces and on the Afghan government would be devastating at a time when the U.S., Britain, and Australia--Australia is not a NATO member--are increasing the number of their troops in Afghanistan.

To answer the most asked question about Canadian troops in Afghanistan, yes, it is worth it. If Afghanistan falls under Taliban rule again, a deadly combination of Islamist terrorism and Pakistani militarism will spread in South Asia and Central Asia and make further conflicts inevitable, whether or not conditions in the Middle East continue to deteriorate.

More than patience and understanding is necessary, but those two things are necessary. Economic and possible military pressure needs to be put on Musharraf in Pakistan to call off the Taliban. Karzai's government needs to reduce corruption and ties to tribal warlords. Canada and its allies need time to defeat the Taliban, rebuild a free Afghanistan, and win the greater game.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you to both our guests today.

We will go into the first round of questioning. We'll go to Mr. Patry.

[Bernard Patry, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Mr. Chair, I will share my time with Mr. McTeague, and I will go right away to a question.

Thank you very much. You said at the beginning that we have to talk about past mistakes if we want to find—

You say that we need to admit our mistakes in the past if we want to know and understand what we should do in the future.

It's the same with Professor Van Praagh, who talked to us about the history of the country. If we understand the history of the country, we can try to find a solution. You talked about the gateway, the buffer zone between Russia and India, but my question concerns Pakistan.

We know that President Musharraf of Pakistan doesn't control his borders. He doesn't control the south and north. That is to say, in a sense, in the Pashtun area in Quetta in Pakistan, there is no government and there is no presence of a central government. It's left to the people there to control their area.

You talked about the Durand Line and all these issues. What can we do to try to help find a solution? My understanding is that we can help as much as we can in Afghanistan, but if the Taliban still controls this area and gets into Kandahar, we could have a domino effect throughout Afghanistan, and we would have to start over again.

Do you think it would be good to have an international conference for the region itself? We have to have the input of Russia, China, Iran, all the P-5, and the European Union. What do you think about this? I don't see a diplomatic solution at the moment.

[David Van Praagh]

Well, I think you've raised two questions.

The first one was about Pakistan. In my mind, there's no question that Pakistan really is at the root of this evil: the Taliban. It created the Taliban, and it continues.... Even when the Northern Alliance was at the gateway to Kabul back in 2001, he was trying to stop—and did for awhile—the bombing of the Taliban, and he tried to dictate the new Afghan government at the time.

But as you point out, the danger now is there are tribal areas where Pakistani troops have gone in that are really out of control. So Musharraf, as usual—as he has with the issue of Kashmir, though I won't get into that—is playing a double game with the issue of Afghanistan. The game is to say, oh, look, I know how dangerous the Taliban are and I'll go after them, and we've suffered heavy casualties. At the same time he's afraid; he wants to say in power and knows there are elements in his country that want him out of power. It is a military dictatorship. So at the same time, he encourages and continues to arm....

I mean, the Taliban could not have begun to have done the things they've done militarily without the help of the Pakistani army. Now, it's true, the Pakistanis have...and there other people than the Pashtun tribe. The whole movement has new adherents; there are some Uzbeks, and there are the Pashtuns on either side of the border. But the point is that it's all in line with Pakistan's goal, which really goes beyond Musharraf—but he's trying to carry it out—to control Afghanistan, like they say, as a buffer against India.

So we have to put the greatest possible pressure on Musharraf. The Americans have been very late in doing this. I think it's no secret that Canada and Holland, together, for some months now, have been trying to put on economic pressure. We don't know much about this, because it's been kept quiet. And now Bush has weighed in. But we don't know exactly what kind of pressure it is, and I think it has to be very strong to force Pakistan....

The second question you raised, about an international conference, sounds fine in principle. I'm not sure this is the right time. I would rather wait until.... I mean, now the Taliban could claim, well, we are a major force. I'd rather they got a few more black eyes and were hurt a little more and were definitely seen to be losing before we had an international conference.

The Taliban will have supporters. There'll be some in Pakistan among the ISI and the military who will support the Taliban.

Iran doesn't make sense. A lot of things don't make sense. Iran, of course, is Shia; the Taliban is Sunni, but we now know, in the last few days, of increasing evidence of Iranian-designed and -provided weapons being found not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan.

So I think, in principle, a conference is a good idea. I'm not sure this is the right time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

Mr. Hassan-Yari

[Dr. Houchang Hassan-Yari]

Yes, thank you.

Pakistan is playing, really, a significant dirty role here. Everybody is talking about the responsibility of Pakistan, but nobody is really doing something against it. There should be something, and the Americans and others—Canadians and the international community in general—have a lot of leverage here.

We should not be shy, saying that if you put pressure on it, this government is going to collapse and the alternative would be even worse. There is not such a thing yet. So he should be pressured; he's not.

If you asked the Dutch or Canadian soldiers who are in the south and southeast, they would tell you the border is open. There is nobody there to just ask the question, where are you going. So they come, go, and so forth.

The reason is really to address the Pakistan issue with more force. The regional conference is overdue, really. It should have been done earlier; it should be done now. If it's not going to be done, we will probably see even more negative intervention by the neighbours.

I'm not really convinced that Iran is playing a very negative role in Afghanistan. Just go to Iraq and ask the Iraqis. And here, I'm really quoting General Richards, who was talking about the positive Iranian role in that region and the necessity to engage them. When I asked him in October 2006 why they were not doing it, he said, “Some of our friends do not want us to do it.” He didn't mention who the friends are, but everybody could guess who.

So the regional conference is extremely important, and it should also have another component within that conference—and Canada can push in that direction—the organization of an Islamic conference.

The reason we need to engage.... My colleague is talking about Shia, Sunni, and all of those issues. I don't believe really that in the case of Afghanistan this is a significant element. But the organization of an international Islamic conference can bring some kind of positive input to the issue by engaging Muslim countries—57 of them—and also by providing forces. Why should Canadian, Americans, Dutch, British, and others do it?

I'll just finish by saying that in many of the Muslim countries, they see the situation in Afghanistan as being like an Anglo-Saxon, white conspiracy, or however you want to qualify it.

This means that the reason is really to engage those people who can bring something positive to the table.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

We'll go now to Madame Lalonde.

[Francine Lalonde, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

I will share my time with Ms. Barbot.

I would like to thank both the witnesses for their presentations, which complete each other.

I would like to speak of Mr. Hassan-Yari's presentation. He said that the strength of the Taliban lay in the weakness and the mistakes of those we refer to as allies. You gave us a fairly long list of what these mistakes were.

Of all the elements on this list, can you tell us what Canada's priority should be?

[Dr. Houchang Hassan-Yari]

I think that Canada alone cannot do very much, but with the coalition in Afghanistan, Canada could forcefully—and I am not referring to using force or weapons—remind the Afghan government that it has responsibilities and that it has a mandate to fulfil. The Afghan government must first and foremost clean its own house. This means that it must eradicate corruption which, as my colleague and I pointed out, is a source of enormous problems. As I mentioned a little earlier, the Taliban were successful because when they came to power, they cleaned up corruption. Despite all the atrocities which the Taliban committed, Afghans will tell you that they did bring about some positive changes in the area of security. So corruption is a huge problem.

Further, as I said earlier, another issue is international coordination. Today, when you visit Afghanistan, you'll find dozens of organizations and NGOs, and each one is doing its own thing. There is very little, if any, coordination between these organizations. We therefore need to coordinate the work of these organizations, the Afghan government and the foreign forces which are there to maintain security. In fact, I was very pleased to learn that Mr. Bush is now talking about this very issue. I don't know if he will do anything about it, but he has said that this type of coordination is necessary.

In my opinion, these are the two most important things, from which others flow.

[Vivian Barbot, Bloc, Papineau, QC]

Gentlemen, thank you for being here today.

Mr. Hassan-Yari, you listed a number of problems, including the fact that the current government is too dependent on the warlords. Furthermore, other witnesses have told us that the current government would have no choice but to deal with the warlords and the Taliban if it was to reach an eventual resolution of the conflict.

How do you reconcile these two points of view?

[Houchang Hassan-Yari]

To begin, the warlords must face up to their responsibilities. Because of them, the Taliban became what they are, and they are also the ones who created the unfortunates events we are dealing with today. We can achieve this within the framework mentioned by Mr. Patry a little earlier, that is, a regional meeting involving all roots of Afghan society, of course. But as long as these warlords do not face up to their responsibilities, they will continue to believe that the Afghan people owe them a huge debt. They believe they saved Afghanistan from the Soviet Union. It's how they see the situation.

If we go back in time and look at what the situation was of today's warlords, we would realize that they were nothing compared to the Taliban. The Taliban controlled the land, except for 3% of it, which was controlled by Ahmad Shah Massoud and his colleagues, in the north of the country. So how did the warlords become so powerful?

When the Americans invaded Afghanistan, they unfortunately believed they needed the warlords. It was a very faulty reading of the situation, and it was imposed by people like Zalmay Khalilzad and others. In their opinion, there was no other choice but to deal with the warlords. But these people are criminals, any Afghan will tell you so, but today they are in positions of power. How can you expect a criminal to become a law-maker? It is simply impossible.

And incidentally, who are the Taliban? They really are not like the mollah Omar or other people who received media notoriety. In fact, the Taliban is made up of a vast array of people each having their own interpretation of Islam. This does not mean that every Taliban has the same perception of the situation or looked for the same things. So, in certain regions, the former Taliban who have since become governors are accomplishing extraordinary work. It was a movement, and not a single individual; it was not based on solid principles as would be a party. It was a movement which brought together all kinds of people, including people who are doing good things for the country today.

I believe that national reconciliation is not a bad idea, but we must be careful to avoid falling into a trap. It worked in South Africa, but the context was different. In Afghanistan, we need to begin a national dialogue, of course, but the warlords must be reminded of their responsibilities and they have to be sent home so that the country can finally develop.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Van Praagh, do you want to quickly respond to that?

[David Van Praagh]

Let me make a couple of remarks. I said there were two miracles here: the Afghans got rid of the Soviets and they got rid of the Taliban. Frankly, it's another miracle that most Afghans--and I think it's fair to say “most”--are accepting Canadians, Americans, Australians, Dutch, and Danes in their country, because they don't like foreigners. They have very good reason not to like foreigners.

One of the points my colleague made on Islamic countries.... There are tremendous rivalries among these countries and groups within these countries, and I'm not sure the Afghans would welcome other people from other countries.

There are questions about NATO, of course, and what NATO is doing. This raises a bigger question that goes far beyond Afghanistan, but Afghanistan is the key test. NATO is trying to move out of Europe and started to do that in the former Yugoslavia successfully.

The NATO stabilization force in Afghanistan, which is UN-authorized, and of which we're a part, has been operating as a command structure. If it doesn't work I think NATO might begin to think about packing it in. If it does work, I think we've begun to have a model for where NATO again can step into serious situations within countries and play a positive role.

Again, I go back to the Pakistan thing. The Russians will come back if you let them, and the Russians are distrusted more than anyone by the Afghans. You've got to establish trust, and we know it's very difficult. Our guys are getting killed because of it. But we've got to aid people in the villages and at the same time take military action if need be to get rid of the guys who are causing the trouble.

Let's not forget who the Taliban are. Their main target, their main weapons, are suicide bombs, roadside bombs. Their favourite targets are schools, particularly schools for girls. When they were in power they literally kept women confined to their homes, took away their jobs, kept them completely covered up and out of sight, and destroyed Buddhist monuments that go back in the history of the region. These are fanatics.

There will always be fanatics among us in every society. We just had a very good example in Virginia. But in this case so much is riding on an effective international answer. I think we're on the way, but it's going to be difficult.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Van Praagh.

Our time is out. It's unfortunate that we didn't even get through a first round. I'm going to ask Mr. Goldring if he would conclude. He may have a comment or two, but there will not be time for another question.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

It's interesting, Mr. Van Praagh, that I'm sensing pessimism from the professor of the Royal Military College when I'm hearing so much optimism from the military officers who have graduated from RMC out in the field.

Just last night Colonel Strogan, who was quite involved in some of the earlier work in Afghanistan, and I were relating about the good efforts and positive results that have been done. On education there is a tenfold increase, from 700,000 to seven million some-odd. More important are the positive efforts of the military using the political knowledge they've gained, I suppose from RMC, to work with the tribal communities, the local areas, and how effective that is and how well they are interrelating with those local tribal areas, communities, and their form of governance. It seems to be working very effectively. More so, to underscore what you said earlier, the Canadian soldiers are being well accepted and being respected for it. The message they're delivering and the work they're doing is being very well received.

This colonel related to me last night that there's a possibility that Afghanistan could be our Holland of this era, in other words, a country that has been liberated from a long history by the good efforts of what our Canadian soldiers, Canadian presence, and Canadian aid is doing. The long-term future for Afghanistan could be very bright.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Goldring. We can't respond to that. Certainly that is a very optimistic view, and we all wish that will indeed be the case. We all hope for the success of freedom and the values we believe in.

We are now adjourned. I apologize to the committee waiting for us.