I think it's a very complex question. I can give a brief answer, but it does not pay justice to the question and to the over 40 young Canadians who have lost their lives in Afghanistan.
There are certain areas in Afghanistan that are insecure. When I said I walked through the streets of Kabul as they were being controlled by tanks, I was being somewhat metaphorical. The streets I was on did not have tanks on them. I know people who live in neighbourhoods there, and there aren't tanks in those neighbourhoods. I gave that example not to dismiss the role of security, but to say there is another important side, and that is building bridges between people.
In much of Afghanistan there has been security. When the men and women voted, there were a lot of people out there running the elections who weren't protected by NATO forces. I knew a lot of those people; three of them were kidnapped while I was there. So they're not all being protected all the time. A lot of this is happening with civil society, volunteers, people who aren't protected, people who don't have armoured vehicles. So that's an important part of the reconstruction effort too.
I'm not really qualified to comment on the strategy for Kandahar. I feel I'm qualified to say that investing in civil society and economic redevelopment, as Canada has done, is very important and needs to stay important, no matter what military decisions are made. I believe the more we invest in economic rebuilding, the less we will have to rely on military intervention. But you can't just turn one thing off and another thing on. The world doesn't work that way.