Afghanistan Committee on Nov. 17th, 2010

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Under what conditions? We're having a very interesting discussion here, and I'm taking some positive things from it. I'm not arguing; I'm trying to understand. You said that the communities are vulnerable. I don't know what those words actually mean to you. I know what they mean to me. Communities are vulnerable and you empower this more local decentralized natural governance that should be occurring within Afghanistan.

Isn't there a requirement for there to be some national army or police force? That's virtually a rhetorical question. I believe there is. Is it better for it to be international forces, or is it better for it to be Afghans who are trained to do those jobs, perhaps trained by international forces?

[John Siebert]

Certainly there should be an Afghan national security apparatus that includes police and military.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Who should train them?

[John Siebert]

They could be trained by the current international forces. They are pretty good at what they do in their own country. They may not need training, but the important point is how you get to a stable, national context in which the national police or military presence can be generally accepted. There are always going to be spoilers. That happens in every conflict resolution or peace-building process. But there needs to be a widespread national, stable context, and that can come only through negotiation with the Taliban and the insurgents.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Could you describe the difference between the special envoy and the ambassador that currently exists? What is the difference?

[John Siebert]

The special envoy would have a broader international mandate, a regional mandate. I happen to know what an ambassador does, because I was in the diplomatic corps when I was quite young and quite foolish. I know how that functions, and there are myriad operational activities that need to take place within the country.

There is no doubt that an ambassador and political staff within an embassy in Kabul would play a role and relate to this international envoy, but the international envoy's mandate would be different and broader and relate to Canada more directly.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Maybe we can explore that in subsequent questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Mr. Dewar.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and my thanks to our guests.

I'm going to start off with some numbers, because we had a bit of confusion in the House today on what we've actually done. There have been some concerns raised since the government decided to extend the military mission and cut back on the civilian mission. In fact, there was a plan being put forward to the government up until two weeks ago that would have put the emphasis on the civilian mission over the military one. It was worked on for two years, they have a copy of it, and it's available to anyone who wants to see it.

The numbers are interesting: the government is going to reduce the development budget from what the bureaucracy had proposed. The bureaucracy had proposed a civilian-only mission of $550 million over three years, and now that is going to be cut to $300 million. Now, of course, we are going to have $1.5 billion for the military.

Today in the House we had the minister initially say that we had trained 3,000 teachers. According to the government's own report, it's actually half that. She then said we trained only 158. We don't know how many people have been trained. Mr. Obhrai is now the new parliamentary secretary for CIDA, so maybe he can mop this up for us. What we do know is that the government is going to cut the budget for the civilian mission drastically.

The interesting point here is that there is a focus on training troops. We will have 134,000 troops trained—we know that—up until this fall. That's the number that has been thrown around. The original goal back in 2006 was to train 134,000. The new number that has been floated around is 171,000, which the Pentagon said—before Canada chipped in to help—it was going to have trained within a year. You don't have to be a Nobel Peace Prize winner in mathematics to figure this out. We will have a sufficient number of troops trained already, 134,000, the 2006 number. Even if you agreed that you needed another 40,000 troops, these troops, according to the Pentagon, would have been trained already by the United States.

If we need more “guns and butter”, as the economists say, do we need more training of troops? If so, where does that come from, or do we need more civilian resources, diplomacy, transitional justice, and development?

I'm asking a bit of a rhetorical question here. But according to your brief and your read on the government's own report card, they haven't made headway on reconciliation. However, you're saying that there is a way to do this.

How much money do you think should be invested in reconciliation? If you don't have a specific number, you could provide us with some of the initiatives on the ground that could be costed in the near future. Most of us want to debate this in the House, and we would have liked to vote. Alas, we're left with this forum to substitute for that one. Do you have some intelligence on how much we can do on reconciliation, or any numbers associated with it?

[Mike Hogeterp]

I'll be candid. We certainly don't have numbers at our disposal, nor is it the appropriate place of the church to do so. Nevertheless, there are some fairly clear recommendations in the brief that you'll see that we think can well be costed and, in an incremental way, build what we think is a strong reconciliation process at both local and national regional levels.

At the local level, that process would begin by partnering on the ground with civil society organizations with a credible track record. Who are those people? There's a range of them. The International Centre for Transitional Justice, which Canada has indeed supported in the past, is one of them. It has in-country staff in Afghanistan, some of the best analytical minds and the best survey minds that are available.

The Chr. Michelsen Institute has also produced very significant reflection on conciliation processes in Afghanistan—an excellent analysis that I encourage this committee to look at. Also, there are grounded indigenous NGOs. They are certainly struggling. Nevertheless, there is an organization called the Liaison Office, formerly known as the Tribal Liaison Office, which has done some excellent analysis and on the ground research.

These folks, in consultation and collaboration, would be able, I believe, to help establish a credible approach on the ground, in concert with the broader civil society engagement in the political negotiation process that John has been speaking to.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I appreciate that.

I think the numbers that were provided by government prior to basically breaking its promise on ending the military mission had been very substantive. I mean, we had, in the document that was going to Treasury Board, $37.5 million for DFAIT for programming that would conceivably have DFAIT involved in diplomacy. They actually marked their priorities in this paper, which we haven't heard about since they decided to flip-flop on this, that they would actually talk about promoting regional diplomacy. There was money attached to that.

I think you were referring to Ahmed Rashid's recent article when you mentioned that the pathway to peace in Afghanistan is through Islamabad. But it's also through India. I think this regional approach has fallen on deaf ears, certainly with this government.

I'm curious to know what you think the benefit is of Canada pushing a regional approach, and are we actually going to see some movement on diplomacy? And to be fair to the government, its own report card says it's stuck on reconciliation and diplomacy.

Again, I think it's important for people to know that this is a regional equation. Could you give us a little bit more on the need for having a regional diplomacy approach?

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Mr. Dewar, your time is up.

We're going to have to go to Mr. Obhrai.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair, the NDP has asked me a lot of questions here as he was questioning. So my issue coming out here is, do I actually answer Paul Dewar, or do I talk to the gentlemen who have come here?

I think we'll leave you to ask me questions in the House and we'll respond to all the accusations that you are making. I'm out here, so let me talk to these good gentlemen who have come over here and try to understand their point of view here.

Let me first start by saying that the Canadian Council of Churches and yourself have indeed an excellent experience working for development purposes and for governance all over the world. You do carry excellent credentials on that, so nobody is challenging your credentials or anything. But I want to follow up the line that my colleague Jim was following here.

I'm finding it quite strange why you have good experience in all these things, and basically your experiences are mostly based in countries that allow civil societies to come and do these things. But Afghanistan is an extremely different challenge. It's a Muslim country with their own rules and their own view of things and everything. You face tremendous challenges even putting your foot down into Afghanistan to get onto the ground over there without security or anything out there.

Let me say, I have visited all the regions around there, and you have to know the local politics out there. You have come along and you have stated quite clearly in many of your things what would be the ideal situation. There's no such thing as an ideal situation. There are local politics on the ground; there are local issues on the ground. You come and say let's talk to the Taliban, and Mullah Omar has just said he's not going to talk to anyone.

You have come along here and said that India and Pakistan should get the hell out of Afghanistan. You seem to forget that this was part of the region--all of these countries and all at one time--and they have their vested interests. For you to come along and say they should pack their bags and go--it's not going to happen.

So taking all this into account, the challenges that we are doing around here.... Forget about the development here.

And I'm trying to understand from you guys, all right? I'm not criticizing. I'm just saying that the politics and the situation of Afghanistan is very, very different from where your threats lie in Africa, in Latin America, and all the other countries that have a rule of law.

So in understanding all of these things here, when you bring all these things here, I wish you the best of luck, but I can tell you from the government's point of view here, we do take into account the local sensibility, the local sensitivity, the local regional politics into play.... Paul just said refered to the regional approach.

Canada has invested quite a lot. If you will look at the Manley report, we had signature projects that we have been working on out there for many years that are now coming to an end. So coming to say that the development aid is cutting down or something is not right. The whole Government of Canada approach now is going after 2011. The NDP keeps screaming to get the hell out of there. I don't know who the hell is going to provide security if we get the hell out of there. I mean, the matter is not resolved.

Just before you go on this thing, you have called for a UN special envoy. Canada believes that we have....

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

You have one minute left, Mr. Obhrai.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

So I just laid out how these things are. It's a challenge, but you know what? As you answer others, you can always go back to answering my questions--the things that I raised--when the Liberals ask you a question; you don't have to answer specifically NDP questions.

[John Siebert]

To the extent that I heard a question?

I take your caution about the difficulty and complexity, in that it is a Muslim country and there are things that we don't know. What we have tried to do is partner and work with Afghans in country and also Afghans who now live in Canada--whether they're Canadian citizens or more recently arrived--to ask how it is that we can support civil society in an appropriate way.

How do we balance the very difficult set of questions about civil human rights on the way to a negotiated settlement with Taliban and other insurgents? We don't have a direct answer, and it will be Afghans who need to resolve those things ultimately.

I just say, in response to the comment about development aid, that Canadian development organizations or international arms of Canadian.... For example, CARE Canada, who were providing development assistance before the Taliban, during the Taliban period, and since the Taliban period, have commented that it has been most difficult post-2001, because there's been too close an identification of security forces and delivery of aid.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Rae, please. I believe you're next on my list.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

I appreciate the brief and I appreciate a lot of the information and research that you provide us with.

One of the difficulties in any reconciliation that people are now talking about a lot more is the fact that whatever one thinks of the interventions by the United Nations and by NATO and the Bonn conference, the London conference, the Paris conference, there have been some very clear commitments to women's rights, to human rights, to the principles of the rule of law, which have not always been observed in the years since 2001. We certainly know they weren't observed before 2001.

How do you reconcile those things? Everybody wants peace. I think everybody recognizes how very difficult it is to imagine how an exclusively military solution could be achieved in the current context. There's internal peace within Pakistan. There's peace and reconciliation between Pakistan and Afghanistan itself. There's a question of the role that other regional powers will play, not just very benign powers like India, but also other powers that have a clear interest in the region, like Iran.

I will come back to the nub of this question. One of the pressure points I'm getting is from a number of women's groups, both inside Canada, who are Afghan diaspora organizations, as well as from organizations that we met with in Afghanistan, saying whatever you do, don't trade our rights away in the hope of a reconciliation with the Taliban. The Taliban's record on women's issues is not exactly good; their record on human rights is not exactly good. So the question then becomes how do we proceed? I'm a little concerned that the sense not simply be that the fault's entirely on the side of the west and Karzai as to why there isn't peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan.

I know that's not your point, but my point is that you have to understand some of the hurdles as to why we've had such trouble getting to the table. I think this is one of the reasons it has been so difficult to imagine what a reconciliation that is ultimately going to work is going to look like.

[Mike Hogeterp]

You've heard testimony at this table from both CARE Canada and from the ambassador. Both of them were quite articulate on this point. One particular passage that I reviewed this week from CARE Canada is very instructive; that is, their concerns about the vulnerability of women's rights and so forth are addressed or at least mitigated in an incremental way by careful consultation with local-level elders. That kind of grounded village-by-village-based approach is what we're hoping would be part of the increment of the generational project towards peace that we're talking about. Human rights and peace are a long-term endeavour, and protection of women's rights in that context through a careful deliberation with those local-level elders is a way to entrench those things and create a momentum.

[John Siebert]

I'd like to add that Islam is not monolithic, and there are experiences in many Islamic countries where the role of women and women's rights are viewed differently from the predominantly rural, very conservative Taliban or village elder type of person. So part of the solution is not in our hands, either as NGO, church, and civil society organizations, but it can be in the hands, quite properly, through a dialogue within the Islamic world, which already is engaged, whether it's Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Indonesia, where there are very different experiences.... We can't look elsewhere, other than our own experience and our own paralysis. Frankly, that's how I feel about that question. I feel paralyzed.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Well, yes, but the difficulty is, Mr. Siebert, we're not negotiating with Islam. Afghanistan is an Islamic country. The point is that within the context of Islam and within the context of a country, from a religious perspective, that is still quite conservative, very significant advances in human rights have been made in the last decade.

[John Siebert]

In certain parts of the country.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

They have been made in certain significant parts of the country, yes, and certainly, in terms of the formal constitution, undeniably so.

The difficulty we have, and I think it's something one really has to wrestle with a little harder, is that the people with whom one is trying to reconcile are a group that has had a consistently profoundly negative view of the role of women in their society and the role of human rights in their society.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

We'll have to have a question.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

That is a real problem as we go forward in trying to actually get to a reconciliation. It's not easy to reconcile with somebody whose views it's hard to say are actually compatible with modern notions of human rights, the participation of women, and equality of people. It's not easy to do that.