Foreign Affairs Committee on Nov. 8th, 2006

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Bernard Patry]

Good afternoon.

Pursuant to Standing Order 122, we are having a briefing on the situation in Afghanistan.

We have as witnesses today, from Project Ploughshares, Mr. Ernie Regehr, senior policy adviser--welcome, Mr. Regehr--and through video conference from the University of Calgary, Mr. David Bercuson, professor, director of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies. Welcome also, Mr. Bercuson.

I want to point out that we also have with us today a group from the Teachers' Institute on Canadian Parliamentary Democracy sitting in our committee. Welcome to you also. We're very pleased to have you with us this afternoon.

We'll start with Mr. Regehr. You have 10 minutes for your introductory remarks. Please, Mr. Regehr.

[Ernie Regehr, Senior Policy Advisor, Project Ploughshares]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the opportunity to be here.

As you know, Canadians are deeply ambivalent about Canada's role in Afghanistan. It's not the first time Canadians have questioned the decisions and political priorities that send soldiers abroad and into harm's way. The criticism sometimes extends to the military leadership that commands and directs these operations, but we understand such criticisms to be in the context of deep respect for, and of honouring, the extraordinary service commitment and sacrifice of the soldiers who serve in our name. The same respect is due and is paid to civilian workers, government diplomats, and non-governmental workers who share in the risks and the courage that are central to these complex operations.

Our organization has joined this public debate over Afghanistan on that same basis. I have to add that we do it from our vantage point in Canada. I have not visited Afghanistan, and thus, like most Canadians, must rely on the reporting of others: news media, the UN, NGOs, research groups with people on the ground there, and of course on our own government.

That introduces the first of three points I want to make.

We Canadians depend on thorough and extensive reporting by the government. It is especially welcomed that the Minister of Defence and the Chief of the Defence Staff have recently visited both the defence committee and this committee. It needs to be much more frequent and to include a much clearer and more forthright Canadian perspective on the progress toward meeting the objectives of the mission. Reports on Canadian activities and roles and logistics are obviously very important, but we also need assessments that confirm that those at the highest levels of Canadian leadership have a keen awareness of what is or is not working, to build confidence that their decision-making is guided by that awareness and by a specifically Canadian assessment of what the situation requires.

In looking at the testimony of the minister and the Chief of the Defence Staff, I'm struck by two things: the testimony involves relatively little in the way of assessing the overall situation in Afghanistan, and when such assessment is offered, it is sometimes significantly out of step with the reporting we hear from other sources.

On the key question of the strength of the insurgency, Minister O'Connor told the defence committee that of Afghanistan's 34 provinces,“the insurgency is a great challenge in maybe six or seven. In the remaining provinces you have, in Afghan terms, relative stability.” At this committee the figure was increased to nine or ten--that is, you said that there were 20 or 25 relatively stable provinces--but at the end of September, the report of the UN Secretary-General describes an upsurge in violence, and describes the insurgency as covering “...a broad arc of mostly Pashtun-dominated territory, extending from Kunar province in the east to Farah province in the west; it also increasingly affects the southern fringe of the central highlands...”. If you look at a map, that swath of insurgency seems to be closer to including 15 to 20 provinces than the 9 or 10 that were mentioned.

In addition, the Secretary-General said, “At no time since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001 has the threat to Afghanistan's transition been so severe.” The International Crisis Group, in November's second report, paints an even bleaker picture, as does the Council on Foreign Relations.

My point is not that the minister is wrong and all the others are right; rather, the point is that we are in need of serious Canadian assessment. If Canada presents different conclusions than the others, then let's have an explanation for the difference.

There is a sense of urgency in many of the reports one now sees, not only on the insurgency but also on the Afghan economy and reconstruction efforts, both with huge implications for the insurgency. I think part of the Canadian ambivalence can be attributed to a sense that we're not really getting the full picture--or, worse, a feeling that the Canadian leadership is shielding us from the full picture because they fear that Canadian support will further decline if the full gravity of the situation is divulged.

Something as simple as biweekly or monthly reports and assessments presented to this committee and the defence committee, for example, would go a long way toward building a culture of greater accountability and of informed discussion.

The second point I want to make is on staying the course or changing the course, and it comes as much as a question as an argument about the switch from Operation Enduring Freedom to the International Security Assistance Force.

The two operations have been based on two very different rationales. OEF was formed literally for the defence of the United States, based on article 51 of the charter. There has been no UN mandate involved, and the objective was to seek out and attack those who were thought to have been implicated in attacks on North America. The ISAF operation, on the other hand, depends on another paradigm entirely, namely the security and safety of the people of Afghanistan. The switch from the defence of the intervenors to the security of the host population suggests a switch in military focus away from attacks on suspected adversaries in their strongholds towards building up and supporting Afghan security forces, military, and police in areas where the government already has a foothold, is supported, and is demonstrating the advantages of extending governmental authority.

The minister and the CDS focus a lot on the importance, as the minister says, of “suppressing the insurgency”. There's almost a sense that this military suppression, in an OEF style, is a prerequisite to progress elsewhere. Well, that's not a promising scenario, given the resurging insurgency. Military defeat of the insurgency, according to those who think it is possible at all, will take at least four things, that is, more ISAF troops, effective Afghan security forces, a break in funding from the poppy industry, and the cooperation of Pakistan. None of these is happening at a pace to make an early difference.

I just came from a meeting in which we were talking about security in Africa, and somebody made the point that since the early days of decolonization, there have been exactly one and a half insurgencies in Africa that were successfully defeated by military means. And it's that pessimism about the course of action we're on that is driving the search for other options, for alternatives. There are suggestions along the lines of pulling out the direct military pursuit of the holdouts to refocus in support of training and provincial reconstruction efforts, substantially increasing non-military aid, reviewing the strategy objectives and tactics of the NATO-led ISAF, and reopening the political process in pursuit of a more inclusive and representative political order for the entire country.

My third and final point, Mr. Chair, focuses on the suggestions for a new political process. The International Crisis Group identifies factors that were repeatedly pointed out to them as driving people to oppose the government. Those factors included, first, political disenfranchisement--the sense of favouring one group or tribe while leaving others out of decision-making power structures--and second, resource quarrels. These are particularly severe over land and water, and they are exacerbated by returning refugees. The third is corruption, a large-scale sense of ransacking the state and donor resources. The fourth is the lack of opportunities and economic development. The government having oversold the benefits that democracy would bring, there's now a skepticism about it. The fifth is abuse by local and international security forces. This mainly involves mistreatment by local police and army but also includes mistreatment by international forces in roughhouse raids on houses, some illegal detentions, aerial bombardments, and so forth.

In other words--I'm coming to the end--and to conclude, it's clear that the challenge coming from what we loosely call the Taliban does not seem to be focused on irrational fanaticism as much as on very basic and familiar grievances, the kind you find in any conflict.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Bernard Patry]

Thank you very much, Monsieur Regehr.

Now we'll go to the University of Calgary, Mr. David Bercuson.

Mr. Bercuson, please.

[Prof. David Bercuson, Director, Centre for Military and Strategic Studies, University of Calgary]

Thank you.

I'm afraid my remarks are going to differ somewhat from the prepared sheet of paper that I sent earlier today, because I was under the mistaken impression that today's session was going to be about foreign policy in general as well as, of course, Afghanistan. So what I'm going to do for this first few minutes is say a few things about the mission as I see it. It won't take very long to do that, and then we'll have the usual question and answer period.

First, let me begin by asking, who is the Taliban? We know the Taliban very well from the period in which they governed Afghanistan prior to 2001. One question that I think is unanswered today for many people is, is this Taliban that we are engaged in combat with in Afghanistan the same Taliban that ran the Government of Afghanistan and that allowed al-Qaeda to use Afghanistan as basically a training ground, a marshalling yard, and so on, for the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and subsequent attacks?

My answer is that it doesn't really matter, because even if the people we are confronting in southern Afghanistan are a loose coalition of religious extremists, poppy farmers who don't want their fields to be destroyed, local smugglers, warlords, and so on, there is no question whatever in my mind that the central organizing principle of the military resistance is being established by the Taliban themselves, by the religious extremists, who are in great number across the border in Pakistan, who clearly supply the direction and the funding for the insurgency that is going on. To say that this is not the Taliban that we knew so well before is somewhat naive.

I think the mission is doable. What is the mission? The mission is to support the government of Hamid Karzai in such a way that the Taliban cannot disrupt the government and its efforts. Whether those efforts have been totally successful or not is not for me to say—I haven't been there—but I think that the Taliban are definitely trying, through armed action, to disrupt the attempts of the government to establish links with the countryside; to disrupt the efforts of NATO and other organizations, both governmental and non-governmental, to rebuild the countryside in order to allow the power of the central government to flow. The mission is doable and it is necessary, I think, to protect Canada's national interests. It is not in our national interest to see a Taliban government re-emerge in Afghanistan, and I don't think we should kid ourselves that that is exactly what will happen—a government run by religious extremists and for religious extremists—should this mission fail.

We need to keep remembering that the mission has two components: one is military and the other is reconstruction. The military mission is necessary to protect the reconstruction mission. The reconstruction mission, in the long run, is only possible within the larger context of military protection.

Can the reconstruction mission succeed? I definitely think so, but it will not succeed if it is going to be attacked constantly by the Taliban and by their supporters. The fact that Canadians have been killed building roads, trying to build schools, trying to bring supplies, and so on, is proof positive of the fact that the Taliban, the jihadis--whatever you want to call them--will do whatever they can to disrupt the reconstruction mission. The reconstruction is simply not going to be possible without the establishment of some form of security.

The establishment of security is not, in itself alone, enough to make this mission succeed. I think everyone realizes this. I think NATO realizes it. Certainly our government realizes it. There must be extensive efforts to rebuild the country. There must be extensive efforts at social reform and so on, consistent with the mores and values of the local population. But quite clearly, it doesn't really matter what religion you are, corruption is the same for all religions and all peoples, and all peoples recognize it. There needs to be established, obviously, a workable and incorruptible, or as incorruptible as possible, government in that country. That can only be done through reconstruction, but it's not going to happen without military security.

The military challenges are great. We must always remember that in one form or another, this is a war over there, whether you call it a small war, an insurgency, or asymmetric warfare. But the fact that people are trying to use violence to disrupt our mission means that it is a war. Our soldiers are being attacked; aid workers are being attacked. It's a war.

In any war, the other side has a will and an intelligence of their own. They will use whatever they can and be as resourceful as they can to get around whatever forces and technology you're going to try to apply on the battlefield in order to have your mission succeed.

We must remember that in Canada we have a military that is transitioning essentially from a peacetime military to one in action, a military in combat. Lessons needs to be learned. Sometimes those lessons will be very hard and will involve the loss of life, until we learn how to operate in that area.

I think it's very important for us to continue to point out that NATO simply does not have sufficient troops on the ground to do the job.

Now, I haven't been to Afghanistan, but I think I understand what fighting an insurgency of the kind we are fighting over there requires. It requires a combination of different types of forces—special forces, regular forces, and so on—and different types of technologies, and it certainly requires mass. There's no question that mass, or large numbers of troops, has a quality all its own. Until we have the kind of mass that is necessary to defeat the insurgency, the insurgency will continue. This is a major challenge to NATO. It's a political and a military challenge.

The political challenge is that if NATO does not succeed in Afghanistan, then in my opinion the future of NATO is very cloudy.

I think a united NATO needs to confront Pakistan and try to convince the Pakistani government, in whatever way is necessary, that this double game they are playing can no longer continue. That is an essential ingredient for a military mission to succeed.

But if NATO does not succeed in Afghanistan, then its future as a security organization will be very cloudy. I think that Canada will suffer if NATO's effectiveness is eroded, for reasons that I will get into in just a few minutes.

I think that we made a commitment. There was a vote in Parliament regarding that commitment. We should keep that commitment until February 2009, when the first rotation into 2009 ends, or possibly one more rotation in 2009. At that point, we should seek to ramp down our forces, and we should seek to move them elsewhere in Afghanistan, if they're going to stay, to a less hostile place, and fundamentally hold our NATO partners' feet to the fire.

If you think this is an important mission for NATO, then by 2009 Canada will be able to say we have done our part; it is time now for someone else to do some of the heavy lifting in Afghanistan, while we give our forces time to rebuild and rejuvenate. I think it's dangerous if in Canada we believe that we will be in Afghanistan for ten, twenty, or thirty years. We don't have the military resources to do that. The government has plans—and I think they're commendable plans—to rebuild the Canadian military from where it was in the early 1990s. You can't do that when you're constantly in combat operations in a place like Afghanistan.

We have to give Afghanistan the kind of effort that we promised our NATO partners we would give. When that effort is completed—we're not going to win the war in Afghanistan on our own—I think it will be time for us to let other NATO partners do some of the heavy lifting in that area.

Why is NATO so important to Canada? Because we need, and have always needed, offsetting influences to the presence of the United States. The United Nations simply doesn't do it for us. As a security defence organization, the United Nations has become a total and abject failure. We saw these failures through the 1990s, with the civil wars in Bosnia and elsewhere. Now we're seeing the kind of situation re-created in the Security Council that is going to be very much like what we saw during the Cold War years.

It's very obvious—and we can get into this in a question and answer period—that the interests of Russia and those of the west are diverging, and that the interests of China and many areas and those of the west are diverging. You can see that in the way we approach the Sudan and the way China approaches the Sudan. We will have deadlock in the Security Council very shortly, if we don't have it already. That means the United Nations as a security organization is not going anywhere.

We either work with NATO or we are left to fall back on virtually complete reliance on the United States of America. I don't think that's in Canada's interest. I think a strong NATO going forward in the future--a politically transformed NATO, a NATO that becomes a global security alliance of democratic countries--is the sort of thing Canada ought to work for, but if NATO fails in Afghanistan, that's not going to happen.

I think that in a whole variety of ways it is in our national interest and does serve Canadian values as we see them in the world for us to continue the mission as it is now until 2009, but at that point I think we need to start evolving the mission into something else.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Professor Bercuson, and thanks to the modern technology that makes it possible for you to be with us here today, even though you're in another province far away.

Thank you also, Mr. Regehr. It is not your first time here, and you're always welcome here. Thank you for your testimony.

We will go to the first round. I would suggest that our first round be a seven-minute round. Is that what you mentioned, Mr. Patry?

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

Yes, I mentioned it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Wilfert will be first, and then Mr. Martin. You can organize your time. The time is yours.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Chairman, I thank both of the presenters.

Having been to Afghanistan in May, I would say that the mission certainly has changed. A somewhat interesting comment about the role of this mission is that, yes, it is reconstruction and it is military, but it's also diplomacy.

Professor, you talked about diplomacy, in a way, regarding Pakistan. There's no question that the eastern border is very porous. There's no question that Pakistan needs to, as you say, deal with this issue of doublespeak. The double game that they have been doing can't continue.

On the issue of negotiating, I'm not sure who we'd negotiate with, because if I were Mullah Omar in the Taliban, I wouldn't want to be in negotiations with anyone. Obviously they're in it for the long haul; they're hoping that Canada and other states will eventually leave because of public opinion, and you don't have to look too far in history to see nations that have intervened in support of a government and eventually didn't stay for the long haul.

Can you talk a little more about your view, Professor, on this issue of Canada's role? You say the military is changing; you're saying that after 2009 we should ramp down our approach and go, and if we're going to stay, we should go to less hostile areas. What about the issue of Pakistan? What kind of leverage would NATO have in dealing with Pakistan, given the fact that we continue to get assurances, yet nothing happens?

Then I have a quick question for the other gentleman.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Wilfert, we're going to take the question from Mr. Martin as well, and then we'll get the answers.

Go ahead, Mr. Martin, very quickly.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you both for your testimony.

The Taliban of 2006 is not the same as the Taliban of 2001. We went into Afghanistan for our own security reasons, not to rebuild the country. Is Afghanistan the primary source of terrorism in the world? If yes, why? If it isn't, then which country is the primary source of terrorism?

My second question is for you, Professor Bercuson. The Minister of Defence said the Taliban can't beat us in a conventional war, and he's correct. They're just going to use IEDs. We say in medicine that a slow bleed kills. My fear is that the slow bleed will kill our troops and drive us out without our having any fundamental impact on the ground that will be any different from the situation today. We see Taliban controls increasing and not decreasing, and so far we're losing the war.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Wilfert has a question for Mr. Regehr as well. Is that correct?

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

That's correct.

When you talk about political inclusiveness and disenfranchisement, etc., what process would be put in place to deal with this if in fact we could negotiate with whomever what the process would entail?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Professor Bercuson, go ahead.

[Prof. David Bercuson]

The first question concerns what NATO can do about Pakistan.

If we had a united NATO.... We're going to see after the Riga conference, coming up later this month, whether NATO has the will to pull itself together—26 nations moving in the same direction—or not. If it does, then I think—and this is going to sound very hard—that Pakistan has to be confronted with the possibility of military action along its borders, which is the stationing of enough troops along the borders to be able to turn back insurgencies coming through from Pakistan.

I would say you need to put military, economic, and diplomatic pressure on Pakistan. Pakistanis need to know that if we're fighting a war in Afghanistan, and Pakistan is the weak link in the chain, we simply cannot allow that weak link to continue. It's as simple as that.

That's my answer with regard to Pakistan. If that's the case, I think it's more likely than not that the Government of Pakistan will back down and give us more help than they're giving us at the moment.

As far as the second question is concerned—can we be defeated by an insurgency?—I agree with the defence minister. I don't think they can beat us in a conventional war. They will use what they can to defeat our technology, our training, our morale, and our centre of gravity, which is Canadian public opinion. That's what they will do. I think that if the mission remains politically important to us and is politically doable, we need to continue doing it.

Can IEDs be defeated? They can be defeated, just as any other weapon can be defeated. One of the things we're finding out in Afghanistan is that the enemy is adopting tactics, strategies, etc., that are being pioneered elsewhere—in Iraq, Lebanon, and so on. I think we need to learn lessons from these other insurgencies much more quickly than we are. We need to close the loop from learning to decision-making, and I believe that, given time, we will.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Professor Bercuson.

Mr. Regehr.

[Ernie Regehr]

First, in response to who to negotiate with, one of the characteristics of the insurgency is that it is most intensive in an area that is ethnically and geographically defined. It's not divorced from particular populations and from a particular geographical region where it's concentrated. In other words, it's not centred in fanatics who roam willy-nilly throughout the country and have bases throughout the entire region. It's focused.

Within the region where it is focused, there's a broad range of leadership. It takes people who know Afghanistan a lot better than I do to identify that leadership. But there is political, municipal-level, ethnic, and traditional leadership in those areas. I think there's a broad range of people with whom to discuss, people who in fact identify the grievances that drive them into the hands of the Taliban.

So I don't think the point is to search out the Taliban leadership and make it even stronger by making it the centre of negotiation. I think it's to search out the people who have grievances against the government, who are disenchanted with the government, and who, for a lack of other political housing, go to the Taliban as the umbrella under which they express their dissidence. I think it's this kind of non-Taliban leadership, which expresses grievances, that you want to go to in the negotiations.

Can you win or lose? A basic rule of insurgency is that guerrillas win if they don't lose; governments lose if they don't win. In other words, all a guerrilla force has to do is avoid losing, and it wins. It meets its objective. But if a government is not decisively victorious, it loses.

As I was saying before, on the African continent, of a great many insurgencies against governments, the governments don't win.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Regehr.

Madame Barbot.

[Vivian Barbot, Bloc, Papineau, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Gentlemen, thank you for being here today.

The more we talk about it, the less we feel we understand what is going on in Afghanistan. Perhaps you could help us gain a better understanding of the situation.

We are discussing the possibility of winning or loosing. This is all very well, except that we have now reached the point where we are wondering why we are in Afghanistan in the first place. The public is saying that the main reason why we are over there is in order to help the Afghan people and to bring the country back into the fold of democracy. However, we are finding ourselves in a very serious situation of being at war against the Taliban, an enemy that no one seems to be able to identify.

The government of Canada, that we have tried to question several times on this matter, is telling us—and ministers have also said so in committee—that except for the southern and the eastern parts of the country, the rest of Afghanistan is on the right track.

A well-known journalist, Céline Galipeau, is presently in Afghanistan to do a feature story. She is saying that the northern part of Afghanistan is controlled by the so-called war lords, the Mujahidin, well-known for their corruption. The North is not receiving the aid that has been announced and crime is increasing at an alarming rate. According to Ms. Galipeau, the North feels let down by the international community and is facing a major crime problem that is getting more serious every day. So the picture of a southern region that is under assault and riddled with enormous problems does not seem to be substantiated by this journalist.

My question is addressed to both of you. What is the present situation in Afghanistan and how are we doing regarding the reconstruction of the northern part of the country?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Ms. Barbot.

Professor Bercuson.

[Prof. David Bercuson]

I haven't been there. All I can say is this. Afghanistan is clearly a mess, and it ought to be a mess, because it has been a place of constant warfare, insurgency, tribal conflict, Soviet invasion, etc., for decades and decades and decades. I don't think anyone should be surprised by the fact that in Afghanistan today we'll still find corruption and warlordism and all sorts of nasty things going on, and I think it's probably clear that we're going to find these things going on for the next 50 years.

But what is it that we're trying to achieve? We're trying to give that government, which was selected by the people of Afghanistan in votes that were held in front of international organizations that passed international scrutiny, a chance to begin to come back on the road to recovery. I have no doubt--I've read reports of journalists who have been there, I've talked to people who have been there--that people are impatient with the pace of recovery. I can certainly understand that. But we have to focus on what our particular mission is. We are a small country. We don't have very much in the way of resources. We need to focus on what it is we need to do. We need to play our part in the military role to establish security so that the reconstruction efforts can start and succeed, and we need to do what we can with regard to the reconstruction efforts. That's what we need to do. And we need to do it for a period of time that we can sustain, which is not forever, and I don't think it's for 20 years and I don't think it's for 10 years. That's all we can do.

As far as the Afghans themselves are concerned, I think that given time and given security, they will fix their own country. It's in their own interests to do so. I don't know that there's very much more that really can be said about it.

If we are expecting Afghanistan to turn into a liberal democracy overnight with a complete lack of corruption, I think we're expecting far too much and we're setting the bar far too high. If that's what our measure of success is, we'll never succeed. I think that's an unreasonable expectation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Professor Bercuson.

Mr. Regehr, did you want to respond to Madame Barbot?

[Ernie Regehr]

I will briefly. A great tragedy will unfold if the insurgency in the south acts as a magnet and increasingly draws security forces into that vortex, and as a result, other parts of the country grow gradually less protected and less secure, and the reconstruction, which had a chance to move in those areas of the country where the government began with basic support, are undermined because of the lack of security.

And in the south where the magnet for counter-insurgency operations.... Barnett Rubin of the Council on Foreign Relations, for example, makes the point that in fact the focus of military energy there has energized the insurgency, and it's a counterproductive operation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Regehr.

Mr. Obhrai.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Thank you very much to the witnesses here today.

I am not going to ask a question. I'm just going to highlight something that is happening and answer some of the questions. Tomorrow afternoon, I leave for New Delhi in India to attend the Second Regional Economic Cooperation Conference on Afghanistan.

This conference deals with the players around Afghanistan. Every country has been invited; plus the G8 countries are going in there. The blueprint for this conference has a massive economic reconstruction plan, including a pipeline coming in from northern Turkistan all the way through Afghanistan into Pakistan and India. They have a massive project for highway construction going on. They have a massive electricity program. These modules were set up for the reconstruction of the whole of Afghanistan by the surrounding countries, whose vested interests—as you said, Professor—can only go up one level, but they have to take it. The countries in that region have decided that Afghanistan's security and reconstruction are far more important for them.

They are also going to have a business conference in that part of the world, parallel to this reconstruction conference, to get private businesses to go there. Canadian businesses are invited to go in there to invest in the opportunity areas.

These things are happening, but they're not coming out. I was not aware until I was told to lead this delegation. When I looked in depth at what has happened since last year, I was quite surprised at the amount of work that has been done in Afghanistan,

As the professor said, a massive war has been going on there. It's not going to be an overnight thing, but yes, the point is that there is goodwill within the surrounding regional countries. There is not one country in the whole region surrounding Afghanistan that does not believe that reconstruction is the most important aspect. They don't have military there. Iran doesn't have a military there; China doesn't have a military there. But they're all part of the reconstruction going on over there.

Now, in reference to Pakistan, we have been engaged—including me—with Pakistan for the last three weeks. Today, unfortunately over forty Pakistani soldiers lost their lives in a suicide bombing, so it is also dawning on Pakistanis that they had better go after this menace, because it has now come home to roost. Today they lost their soldiers and said yes, we're going to fight this menace at our porous border.

So things are changing, yes. We have a challenge, yes. There are things out there that are not very right at this time, yes. The Karzai government is weak, but there is goodwill from all these surrounding countries, including Canada, to work towards building this reconstruction.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Obhrai.

Were you and Mr. Goldring splitting the time?

Mr. Goldring, do you want to ask your question very quickly?