Foreign Affairs Committee on April 26th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Culpeper.

Mr. Dillon.

[John Dillon]

One step forward would be to bring United Nations bodies like the United Nations Development Programme into the picture when it comes to making policy advice. This need not be the exclusive realm of the Bretton Woods institutions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

I want to thank you for coming here. It's a fascinating study. We don't spend a lot of time looking at the Bretton Woods institutions and the different IFIs and how they play into humanitarian development. We appreciate your being here today.

We're going to suspend for a few minutes while we get the teleconferencing video set up.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

I call this committee meeting back to order. In our second hour we are very pleased to have by videoconference an update on views and the situation in Afghanistan.

Our witnesses include Mark Sedra, research associate, from the Bonn International Centre for Conversion, and Scott Gilmore, executive director of Peace Dividend Trust.

At the close of this meeting we will take a bit of time to adopt the steering committee report so the clerk can start working on the guests for next week.

We welcome you this morning. It's good to have you both here--Mr. Gilmore in our committee room and Mr. Sedra by videoconference.

Perhaps we'll go to our video relay first. Welcome to our committee. We look forward to what you have to say. Then perhaps you can take questions from our committee members.

[Mark Sedra, Research Associate, Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC)]

Thank you very much.

First of all, I'd just like to thank you for allowing me to speak in front of you today and say what an honour it is.

As many keen observers of Afghanistan have recognized in recent months, the Afghan state-building process is facing a tipping point. Most Afghans have yet to receive the peace dividend promised them by Afghan and international leaders following the collapse of the Taliban regime. Talk of a Marshall Plan for the country was heard by ordinary Afghans, buoying hope for a break with the violence and endemic poverty that characterized life in the country over the past two decades. However, by 2007 the most noticeable change in the lives of most Afghans has been a rise in insecurity and the growth of a public administration increasingly seen as predatory, obtrusive, and corrupt. This has fed a growing sense of pessimism and disillusionment that has emboldened spoiler groups such as the Taliban.

Today, many Afghans, from Kabul to Kunduz to Kandahar, assume that the Taliban will return to power, not because of a renewed belief in the Taliban fundamentalist ideology, but due to a feeling that momentum is on their side, that international actors are losing interest, and that the Karzai regime is weak and faltering. Afghans are pragmatists. After 23 years of civil war, they have learned to pick the winning side. As the Taliban becomes bolder, more and more Afghans will gravitate towards it as a coping mechanism. We are already seeing this in the south, where some Afghans have begun to speak nostalgically of the relative peace and security of the Taliban period.

Of course, the reason for the Taliban's initial popularity, when it came to power in 1996, was its provision of security and its disarmament of the same warlords who reconstituted their fiefdoms on the heels of Operation Enduring Freedom and who are entrenched in the government today.

As the media coverage of Afghanistan clearly illustrates, the security situation now defies classification as a “post-conflict environment”. Contrary to the situation in previous years, the violence is no longer contained within the Pashtun belt, the Taliban heartland. In a disturbing trend in 2006, heretofore stable areas of the country, such as Wardak province in central Afghanistan, experienced a sharp rise in insecurity. Wardak province was one of the most stable areas of the country in 2003 and 2004. By 2006, however, the United Nations was forced to halt all travel on major roads due to threats of armed attacks.

One need only compare statistics for 2005 and 2006 regarding the insurgency to grasp the extent of the problem. By September 2006, an average of 600 insurgent and/or terrorist incidents were occurring on a monthly basis, up from an average of 130 per month in 2005. There were 139 suicide bombings in the country in 2006, a significant increase from the 27 that occurred the previous year. Finally, the insurgency resulted in more than 3,700 fatalities in 2006, a figure more than four times greater than that of 2005.

Poor governance, particularly at the subnational level, an area which received very little attention by donors up to 2006, has been a major driver of insecurity. The police, who represent the main interface between state and society, exemplify the failure of the contemporary Afghan state. There is no more corrupt and dysfunctional institution in Afghanistan than the Afghan National Police. Since 2002, the police have been a source of insecurity for communities across the country, rather than a solution to it. A significant proportion of Afghans view the police with fear and resentment. When they interact with the police, it is often to pay bribes or illegal taxes. The police are increasingly the perpetrators of crimes ranging from kidnapping for ransom to bank robberies. In November 2004, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission claimed that 15% of all human rights violations reported were perpetrated by the police. The most common offences reported were torture, theft, and the failure to prosecute murder cases.

Corruption is rampant throughout the police, with up to 80% of the force involved in the drug trade. A majority are loyal to local commanders rather than to the Ministry of the Interior. In a telling expression of the depth of corruption and factionalism in the police, one senior Afghan police official told me in June 2006 that he trusted only 27 of the approximately 1,500 police stationed in all of Helmand province.

The Kabul riots provided the clearest signal yet of the failure of the internationally supported police reform process. Not only did the police fail to quell the mob, which ransacked the capital—causing in the process at least 17 deaths, over 190 injuries, and millions of dollars in damages—but they joined them. The few officers who did confront the rioters were shown to be grossly unprepared, lacking basic crowd control training and equipment.

This brings me to what will be the main focus of my talk, the security sector reform process, or SSR, which is the effort to reconstruct the security architecture of the state. Not only is SSR a cornerstone of the state-building process, but it also provides the exit strategy for the international community. Only when the Afghan state has a monopoly over the use of force across the whole national territory will the conditions be present for international forces to withdraw.

Although significant strides have been made to advance the process over the past five years, including the training of over 30,000 Afghan National Army soldiers and the disarmament and demobilization of 60,000 militiamen, severe problems remain, and I will touch on three of them.

The first problem is what I refer to as the slide toward expediency in the implementation of reforms.

SSR is not merely a process to train and equip the security forces; it is also intended to instil modern democratic principles such as respect for human rights, to ensure that the security institutions are accountable to democratic civilian authority, and to institute the rule of law. However, in Afghanistan the process has been almost entirely dedicated to enhancing the operational effectiveness of the security forces. Efforts to rebuild the judicial system and reform the ministries intended to manage and provide oversight of the security forces, the ministries of defence and interior, have been treated as an afterthought. We are already witnessing the damaging implications of this approach, with deep-seated corruption in the ministry of interior infecting every corner of the police service.

The second overarching dilemma is what I refer to as the political will problem.

The Afghan government has not always demonstrated the necessary will to undertake the difficult reforms necessary to advance the state-building process. This is most clear in relation to corruption and the drug trade. It is widely known which government officials—some up to the level of minister—have links to the drug trade, yet they remain in office. This is also true in reference to the issue of illegal armed groups. The international community has funded the most expensive disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration process in history, but numerous prominent members of the government have retained their private militias. According to some estimates, up to 60% of the members of Parliament have links to illegal armed groups, despite a provision of the electoral law that should have barred their candidacy for having these links.

What message does this send to the Afghan people about the counter-narcotics and demilitarization campaigns? Afghans will not take these processes seriously, or place their faith in the government more generally, unless the same rules apply to all. Perhaps the key to advancing the counter-narcotics and demilitarization processes and expanding the state's legitimacy in the eyes of the people is to go after the big fish, the high-profile targets. The problem is that such an approach conflicts with President Karzai's leadership style, which can be described as accommodationist.

Instead of confronting deep-seated problems within his own government, President Karzai has sought to place most of the blame for the country's security crisis on the doorstep of Pakistan. Pakistan certainly does represent one of the paramount threats to Afghanistan's security. The Talibanization of the federally administered tribal areas, which provide a base for insurgents to attack governments and international targets in Afghanistan, coupled with the Musharraf regime's duplicitous position on the Taliban, condemning them publicly while providing them with clandestine support, has been a major driver of the insurgency.

It is clear that greater pressure must be brought to bear on the Pakistani government to bring an end to its double game in Afghanistan. However, perhaps it's also time for the international community to demand more of President Karzai's government. The bogeyman cannot be used to distract attention from the failures of the Karzai administration and Afghanistan's homegrown security problems.

Aid and assistance to the Afghan government has largely been provided unconditionally. Perhaps it is time to condition aid in a manner that will promote difficult reforms. One thing that is clear is that dedicating vast resources to assist them where the commitment of the political leadership to the fundamental principles of the process is tenuous is not only wasteful but could exacerbate corruption and instability.

The final problem, which I will discuss today, can be described as the justice gap. The rule of law is absent in much of Afghanistan today due in large part to the decrepit state of the judicial system. It is a truism in the field of post-conflict reconstruction that regardless of how well-trained the police are, without a functioning judicial system they will not be able to perform their duties.

Lord Paddy Ashdown, who served as the high representative for Bosnia from 2002 to 2006, has stated that one of the primary lessons he learned from his time in Bosnia was that justice should come first. Without a functioning justice system, you cannot have security, combat corruption, or establish an efficient regulatory system for the national economy.

Afghanistan's state builders seemingly failed to heed this lesson. By 2005, and this situation continues today, less than 3% of the funds allocated to the SSR process were channelled to the justice institutions. It is of little surprise then today that more than 90% of legal matters in the country are taken to the informal or customary legal system rather than to state courts.

To the average Afghan, the courts are expensive, corrupt, and out of touch with local realities. The courts are barely able to function in some parts of the country as the system lacks basic infrastructure, equipment, and trained jurists. I've come across abundant anecdotal evidence of criminals being apprehended by the police only to be released shortly thereafter because there was no court to try them or jail to keep them.

In my remarks today I have tried to show that a foundation has been built for a democratic state in Afghanistan, but it is fragile and teetering. Afghans are becoming increasingly disaffected with a government that is incapable of delivering basic public goods, that is dominated by warlords and drug traffickers, and that is endemically corrupt. The 2006 Kabul riots not only showed the depth of frustration of many Afghans with the slow pace of change, but demonstrated how easily the entire state-building process could implode.

Combatting growing insecurity in the year ahead will be one of the main challenges for the Afghan government and international community and will require renewed attention to the security sector reform process. The recent U.S. commitment of $8.6 billion for SSR will provide a vital boost to the process, but the problem with the Afghan security sector is not just one of insufficient resources. A change in strategy is needed that will balance the short- and long-term goals of the process. Efforts to enhance the operational effectiveness of the security forces must be accompanied by steps to strengthen the government's ability to control and manage them and create a legal and judicial framework within which they can work.

At present, the system, in many respects, is merely making corrupt and factional security forces more efficient and effective. The process must seek to change the culture of this sector, which is a long-term process.

The uncomfortable reality for most donors is that intensive engagement will be required in Afghanistan for another five to ten years to consolidate the gains that have been made and to prevent the state from once again slipping into failure.

This does not mean that international military forces will be fighting an insurgency of the intensity seen today for another decade; rather, with the necessary investments in development, governance, and SSR, the security element of the state-building project could be gradually scaled down and phased out in favour of its development and diplomatic dimensions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Sedra, can I just interrupt? You mentioned “phased out”, and I'm going to have to phase you out pretty quickly.

[Mark Sedra]

Okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

How much more do you have? We're at 15 minutes.

[Mark Sedra]

I have one more paragraph.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Go ahead and read it quickly, please.

[Mark Sedra]

Canada has paid a heavy price for its engagement in Afghanistan, and the reticence among some to maintain the current military commitment, especially when so many other NATO member states are watching from the sidelines, is understandable. But a Canadian withdrawal, in the absence of another state to pick up the slack, will deliver a significant blow to the state-building process. The reality is that if international troops were withdrawn tomorrow, or even a year from now, the likelihood that Afghan forces would collapse is high. They simply need more time to develop.

Despite the immense challenges I've outlined, I firmly believe that the mission in Afghanistan is ours to lose. With the right investment and the right changes in outlook and approach, the process can achieve its goals.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Sedra.

We'll move quickly to Mr. Gilmore.

[Scott Gilmore, Executive Director, Peace Dividend Trust]

Thank you, Mr. Sorenson.

I have a relatively short statement. I'll go through it quickly.

My views on Afghanistan that I'm bringing to you today have been formed by my relatively unique experience working on Afghanistan, both inside and outside of the Canadian government.

I'm currently the executive director of Peace Dividend Trust. It's a not-for-profit foundation founded by a group of diplomats, entrepreneurs, and aid workers whose sole and unique focus is to work with the UN and other international agencies in New York, Afghanistan, Sudan, and other peacekeeping missions to make peace and humanitarian operations more effective, more efficient, and more equitable.

Prior to this, in 2002-04, I was the deputy director of the South Asia division at Foreign Affairs, where, you could say, I was present at the creation, so to speak, of the three-D approach to our work in Afghanistan. In that role my primary focus was on the coordination of the efforts of the Department of National Defence, Foreign Affairs, and CIDA in the establishment of our embassy in Kabul.

PDT has two projects in Afghanistan right now. Both are focused on the problem that only a very small portion of the money that the international community spends on Afghanistan is spent in Afghanistan. There is a massive lost opportunity to use the operational spending of the donors and international agencies to drive economic recovery through local procurement in the hiring of Afghan staff. This is supported by the emerging consensus in the development world that economic growth is the foundation of peace and stability.

Our procurement marketplace project, which was originally funded by CIDA and is now also funded by the U.K. and the United States, has a simple task. We match the procurement needs of the coalition forces, international agencies—including Canadian agencies—that are currently being filled outside of Afghanistan, largely in Dubai, to local Afghan businesses, and we train Afghan entrepreneurs to bid on international contracts.

This may sound mundane, but I assure you, by increasing local spending, it has a massive economic impact; it creates jobs. Boys who would be planting IEDs are working in factories and paying taxes to the struggling Afghan government.

Our second project is just wrapping up, and it's a groundbreaking economic impact research project that we're undertaking for the Afghan Ministry of Finance. It's being funded by the British government. Donors, including Canada, have pledged in the Afghanistan Compact to meet several commitments, including increasing the use of Afghan staff and Afghan business, but to date no one has ever attempted to actually measure how much money is entering the local economy.

We now have produced the first benchmark comparisons of the donors, which will be tabled next week at the donors' Afghanistan Development Forum by the Afghan Minister of Finance.

I'd like to make four quick points regarding the situation in Afghanistan and Canada's role.

First, Canada is making a difference. This is the right place for Canada to be, but we must be prepared, as Mr. Sedra has said, to commit to the long term, and there are still areas where we can improve.

First and foremost, Canada is making a difference, and success stories abound. Earlier this week the Minister of Development and IDRC hosted a meeting in Ottawa that gathered all the major Canadian NGOs operating in Afghanistan. To sit in that meeting, you would think we were talking about a different country from the country we read about in the papers every day. The message that these organizations that are operating in Kabul and Kandahar and elsewhere are bringing to the table is a uniform one, and that's that every day, Canada's investment is producing a tangible and direct and positive impact on the lives of Afghans. Whether it's microcredit, health care, justice, or private sector development, CIDA money and Canadian agencies are making an impressive difference in Afghanistan.

Our own project, the procurement marketplace that I mentioned earlier, is a remarkable success story too. We initially set a target of increasing local spending in Kabul by $5 million. I'm happy to report that after nine months we've been able to redirect $46 million into the local economy, for example, by helping the U.S. Army buy its water in Kabul as opposed to Dubai. This means thousands of new jobs for the people of Afghanistan. And if I could be a little cheeky, it would also place us as the sixth largest donor in Afghanistan in terms of direct economic impact—bigger than the Netherlands.

CIDA's overall impact in Afghanistan is another success story. I mentioned the report that we've produced for the Afghan Minister of Finance on the economic impact of donors. It will show that among the donor community, CIDA has one of the largest impacts on the local economy per dollar spent.

Unfortunately, these success stories are not being heard, and they're being overshadowed by political controversies.

This is the right place for Canada to be. Canada's relative influence in Kabul is unique, and I can say this as a former diplomat. This influence is multiplying the impact of our investment.

Unlike most other post-conflict missions, Canada is one of the lead players in Kabul. This is partly due to the size of our commitment, but it's also due to the effectiveness of the three-D approach and the leadership of such people as our former Canadian ambassador, Chris Alexander, who has now left the foreign service to work for the UN; General Hillier; and General Andrew Leslie.

If you believe that Canada has a unique value-added to bring to the world and to bring to development, this is the place where we are influential enough to deliver that value. We will not have a bigger impact elsewhere. But as Mr. Sedra said, we must be prepared to be there for the long term, to see this impact turn into lasting progress.

Nation-building is, by definition, a quagmire. Peace, order, and good government cannot be built in a single fiscal year, or even several. It is a painful process. It's going to suffer setbacks. It's going to cost money. It's going to take time. It's going to take generations. If we leave too early, there will be consequences and our investment will be lost.

The recent events in East Timor are proof of this. I was part of the UN mission in Timor that saw it through to independence in May 2002, and I'm afraid to say I was part of the crowd that rushed to the airport like a “fall of Saigon” the day after independence to leave Timor. Now the international community has been forced to return to Timor with more people and more money to replicate the work they had done in 1998 to 2002. General Leslie has warned that Canada will need to be in Afghanistan for 20 years. I believe the job we have set for ourselves will require the international community to be there in some form for much longer. Frankly, if it was going to be easy, we wouldn't be there now.

Canada can take steps to enhance its impact in Afghanistan. The three-D approach—development, diplomacy, and defence—must continue to move forward. Recent plans to co-locate civil servants and staff from CIDA, DND, and DFAIT in the same place in the next few months should be applauded. But it must also be noted that this was done by the British government in the early days of post-September 11. In fact, at the end of September 2001, the British government brought together the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence, DFID, all together in one room, and we're doing that now. Likewise, the appointment of David Mulroney at DFAIT and Stephen Wallace at CIDA as the lead coordinators in Afghanistan will make a big difference in rationalizing and improving Canada's impact. This too should have happened a long time ago.

It is important to note that CIDA, DFAIT, and DND are not large bureaucracies with large resources and large numbers of people to put towards Afghanistan, like, for example, USAID, the Pentagon, and the State Department. However, I'd like to emphasize that there is an advantage to being small. When you're small bureaucracies, you can coordinate faster and better, and you can be nimble and quickly able to react to a shifting and dynamic environment in Afghanistan. But—and this is the big “but”—if we don't coordinate, if we're not nimble and fast, then we're simply just small.

I would also like to encourage Canada to increase its use of Afghan goods and services in the delivery of its aid in supporting our military operations. Canada has a good record to date, in terms of its economic impact, but it can still increase local procurement and the channelling of assistance through Afghan agencies.

In conclusion, I would like to say that this is the right place and this is the right time for Canada to make a difference in the world. We are on the right track, and we must be prepared to see this through to the end. It will take a long time, but our efforts will be worth it.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Gilmore and Mr. Sedra, for your introductory comments.

We'll go to the first round.

Mr. Patry.

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

Merci beaucoup. Thank you very much. I'll share my time with Mr. Wrzesnewskyj.

First, Mr. Sedra, I must say that you were very straight, talking about Afghanistan, talking about corruption at all levels of government, including the police. But at the end you were a little bit positive, in the sense that you mentioned that it doesn't mean if there is that much corruption that the Taliban will win the war in a sense, because it's more located down south.

But my question is concerning Pakistan. You mentioned Pakistan. There is a lot of oppression in Pakistan. Even President Musharraf sent more than 80,000 troops over there. Seven of his soldiers died over there in the FATA, or in Waziristan itself. You know much more than me about that. They didn't succeed over there. They are out over there.

Knowing that Pakistan cannot control that area, and the Brits were unable to control that area many years ago, my question is, is it not time, if we want to have Pakistan changing its opinion, because in a sense Pakistan's friends are the Taliban—? Musharraf, as a military man coming there from a coup d'état has much more affinity with the Taliban than he has with the secular oppositions at any time. You don't feel it's time that the international community tries to get a real conference about the geopolitical area, including mainly India, Russia, China, the P5, and the European Union, things like this, because it doesn't seem that we're going to find any solution if we don't go that route?

Merci.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Patry.

Maybe we'll go to the answers first, very quickly.

We'll have Mr. Gilmore and then Mr. Sedra, if you want to make some comments.

[Scott Gilmore]

I agree. Pakistan is the elephant in the room, and it is an intractable issue. We, frankly, will not see long-term stability while we have a split policy, as the international community, regarding the way the Taliban insurgents are treated on one side of the Pashtun-speaking belt versus the Afghan side.

I believe that until we resolve that issue we are going to continue in the situation we are in right now. And it's not an easy issue to solve. The Afghan government, I believe, will need to be given more encouragement to split the Taliban. We lump all these various insurgents, from those who are just merely disgruntled to those who are religious fanatics, under one rubric--the Taliban--and that's simply not the case.

We need to be able to split them, to come to terms with some of them and isolate others. And I think that will be the solution, because we won't be able to get Pakistan to crack down the way we'd like.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Gilmore.

We'll go very quickly to Mr. Sedra.

[Mark Sedra]

Yes, I would agree with Mr. Gilmore and the comments in the question.

I think, certainly, that Pakistan has deployed troops to the FATA, the NWFP, and North and South Waziristan and has taken a number of casualties. But it's clear that they could be doing more. All reports are that the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service, is providing clandestine support for the Taliban. Everyone knows that the Taliban leadership shura is based in Quetta in Baluchistan. Certainly, there is a lot more scope for Pakistan for action.

I would also reiterate what Mr. Gilmore said about splitting the Taliban. There is work that can be done in Afghanistan to try to bring under the umbrella the moderate Taliban. There's a need to reach out to the Taliban for perhaps some negotiation. President Karzai has alluded to this.

The fact is that there is a national reconciliation program under way in Afghanistan to try to bring in some moderate Taliban. It has brought in about 1,500 people. And I think more resources and attention should be brought to this process, although it's very controversial.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

All right.

We'll go to Mr. Wrzesnewskyj.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Sedra, you said that Afghanistan will require intensive involvement for up to a decade. Do you have any cost projections on that?

[Mark Sedra]

No, I couldn't give you an adequate figure. However, I would refer you to the Securing Afghanistan's Future report, a report I was actually involved in, an Afghan government report released in 2004, which was basically a recosting study to determine the cost of the reconstruction process.

It determined that it would cost $27 billion over five years, from 2004. I imagine this figure is probably still somewhat accurate today, although that doesn't take into consideration costs associated with international troop deployments and any unforeseen circumstances that could arise.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

One could assume that this is a minimal number. That was in 2004. The investments, to a large degree, have not been made.

[Mark Sedra]

Yes.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

That was just for reconstruction. What about ongoing—? For instance, Mr. Gilmore said this is going to take generations. He put a much longer timeframe on this, but I think he was referencing a different type of Afghanistan that, hopefully, we'd have in a generation.

What about the actual security component? When you start adding up these numbers, what kinds of numbers are we talking about? Is it $27 billion just for reconstruction, and of a certain type, in major centres. Or is it just highways? What are we really talking about? Are we talking about $27 billion? Are we talking about $100 billion when you include the military and security components? Are we talking about half a trillion over the next 20 years?

Before you make commitments, and especially before you put some of your best in harm's way, you'd like to know what the costs, eventually, will be.