Thank you very much for those questions.
First of all, we have chosen a side. We've chosen the side of the government. The Government of Afghanistan asked us to be there; the people of Afghanistan asked us to be there. We're not neutral with respect to the terrorists, so yes, we have chosen a side.
The other thing is that in the south and in the east—but I'll talk about the south because we're in the south—there's a serious insurgency going on. We have to do two things at the same time: we have to try to suppress the insurgency and we have to try to make the lives of people better. We have to do both operations at the same time.
As for those people who suggest that somehow, if you pull the military out and just leave the NGOs there, life will go on and all these development projects will go on, I cannot accept their suggestion.
In the north that may be possible. In the west it may be possible, where it's relatively quiet and where NGOs can operate relatively quietly. But in the south, until the insurgency is brought under control we have to maintain—NATO has to maintain—substantial military forces to suppress and hopefully eliminate the Taliban. But at the same time we have to get involved in humanitarian efforts.
When you look at the humanitarian efforts, the Government of Afghanistan itself sponsors a number of projects through the country, including in the province of Kandahar, which we talked about. They have projects and the United Nations has projects going on in Kandahar province, the United States' aid programs have things going on, our military has projects going on, Foreign Affairs has projects going on, and CIDA has projects going on in the thing.
The job of our military and security component is to try to protect all of those agencies. They're not just protecting the Canadian aid program; they're trying to protect all the aid programs. They're trying to bring the insurgency under control.
From my point of view and in my assessment, we are making progress. What the Taliban most recently—in the last month or two—have tried to do is isolate the city of Kandahar. They came in from the west, they tried to go in to the south, and they were going to try to isolate Kandahar city. They made the fatal mistake of concentrating, and between 500 and 1,000 of them concentrated to the west of the city. That's what Operation Medusa dealt with.
We and our NATO allies were quite successful in dealing with them as a threat so that they will not threaten Kandahar city, in any sense of blocking it or cutting it off. What they reverted to is their typical tactics, suicide bombers and IEDs or mines put under roads. That's what they've reverted to, because they have found out they cannot defeat us militarily.
We're continuing, and all the NATO nations are continuing, to try to suppress the Taliban, but at the same time we have to conduct humanitarian operations.
I don't know if I answered every one of your questions or not.