Madam, what I would say is that we establish the stability and the security required in the area so humanitarian assistance can be delivered to people who so desperately need it. We can't do that without helping the Afghan National Army, the Afghan National Police--their country's legitimate security institutions--to actually start taking on the security burden themselves.
You can't do that by standing around an aid deliverer and helping them move down a specific road. What you have to do is remove the Taliban threat to that region so that the aid communities, the aid organizations, can get to where the people live, do it with a relatively low risk, and be able to help them get their lives back together, rebuild their families, rebuild their communities, and become part of a sustainable province.
We do it directly, ourselves, immediately following an operation or close to where violence is occurring. So during Operation Medusa, for example, Canadian soldiers from the provincial reconstruction team were in the immediate vicinity of where the Taliban were attacking us. They were concentrated solely upon helping people in that area who had been driven from their homes by the Taliban attacks and by the Taliban occupation of that area. They were solely focused on making sure they had food to eat, water to drink, or an opportunity to move away from the area of violence or move back into their homes when that violence had subsided.
Parallel to that, CIDA has developed a longer-term program to make sustainable development a reality in a more secure area, and at the same time, numerous international agencies work in the area because some security has been provided. There is a cost to doing that, but from the military perspective, we believe the security really will cost what it costs. Without it, none of the humanitarian assistance will be delivered. The Taliban will control the area, they won't permit it to occur, and they certainly wouldn't permit it to occur if you were trying to deliver it to female adults or children.