It is true that there has been a decline in security in recent months.
It's true that security, by many measures, has deteriorated. That's a fact measured in the statistics and shown, for example, in the complexity of the ambushes being staged. Whether that means that Afghanistan has reached a state of chaos, though, does not necessarily follow. If we look at the ability of the Afghan national security forces to manage the election registration, for example.... The last election was an ISAF-managed election; this one is an Afghan-managed election.
One of the objectives of the insurgency is to undermine public opinion, and that is working, but it is not leading to chaos, because we're seeing a resolute response from the Afghan national government.
I think Canadian Forces, if not the best-equipped forces in Afghanistan, are among the very best-equipped forces in Afghanistan. The tragedy is that as we arm and equip and protect our people, insurgents continue to develop more insidious IEDs, improvised explosive devices. They're bigger and more complex in terms of the number of people involved in triggering them.
There are couple of things that I think we have going for us. One is the increase in troops in Afghanistan, the increasing number of American troops. Two, the use of helicopters and UAVs to have more eyes on where Canadians are working will be a positive. But we will continue to face that challenge. The insurgency is a very determined insurgency.