Foreign Affairs Committee on Nov. 8th, 2006

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Thank you.

Mr. Regehr, you mentioned that you thought there was a lack of assessment and the government is out of step. You made the comment that there should be negotiation with the Taliban. It's highly unlikely that a negotiation could be carried forward, because what would you really negotiate? Returning to the country of old? Returning to the abysmal human rights and to it becoming a renewed threat to the world?

I would think that the door would be open for discussions, but it takes two people to be able to have a dialogue of any type. Given that and looking at what came with the papers today, there's $300 million worth of projects here. There is a balanced approach to the governance of security, and depending on what area and region, as to how much can be accomplished in difficult areas—because my understanding is that many of the schools that were built were blocked in and destroyed right afterwards—you have to approach the country overall.

Given that scenario and looking at the worthwhile projects that have been done in governance and the operation of the government, perhaps you could advise us on what you feel could be done to better the work that has been accomplished. What areas are not being supported with assistance in the civil society? What more could be done in that area?

[Prof. David Bercuson]

Well, I have a very different answer from the one you probably are looking for.

If the Taliban today constitutes a loose coalition that has as its core the religious extremists and other elements, whether they be criminal, political or whatever, I think the military force we have in that area should be focused basically on eliminating the hard-core Taliban and using politics and economic incentives, etc., to try to split away from the hard-core Taliban those other elements who really don't care one way or another, politically or religiously, who runs the country. I think that can be done in a variety of ways, including using economic aid, reconstruction, and so on, to try to lure those people out of the overall umbrella that the Taliban has created for them.

I don't think there's any getting around the fact that you must challenge, and you must militarily defeat, the hard core of the Taliban before you can accomplish anything else. It's absolutely vital that they be taken out of the picture.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Professor.

Mr. Regehr.

[Ernie Regehr]

I'm in some agreement with Professor Bercuson. This is the point I was really making in response to the earlier question. It's a caricature to say we should talk to the Taliban and negotiate going back to the.... There's a broad range of dissidents, and as Professor Bercuson has put it, splitting some of those out from the Taliban is the point. That is the point I was making earlier as well.

On the business of the assessment from the minister and the Chief of the Defence Staff, I don't know if I'm the only one who finds the tenor of their description of the situation in Afghanistan to be fully in accord with what is coming from a lot of other sources. I made the point that to have a serious and informed debate on the likelihood with which we can achieve that military objective that Professor Bercuson is talking about, of militarily defeating determined insurgents, we need to have a frank recognition of the nature of the situation. I think some of the reports from independent groups such as the International Crisis Group, including the Secretary-General's report, paints rather a more pessimistic picture than I took from the minister and the CDS.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Regehr.

Madame McDonough.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman

Thank you to Mr. Regehr and Mr. Bercuson for appearing before the committee. I want to briefly ask a question to each of you and then leave the time for you to respond.

I have to say I very much welcome the questions you raised, Mr. Regehr, about what seems to be an enormous gap between the information from those who really are delving into what is happening and the kind of simplistic line between good and evil: the Taliban on one side as evil and the good forces we represent on the other side, including, I guess, the Northern Alliance, the drug lords, and the warlords who make up the Karzai government and so on.

I'm wondering if you could comment further. You're probably aware that the UN envoy to Afghanistan from post-9/11 until 2004, who was involved in the organization of the Bonn conference, actually stated, “One of my own biggest mistakes was not to speak to the Taliban in 2002 and 2003”. He went on to say it was not possible to get involved in the conference at that time but he considered it “a very, very big mistake” for there not to have been aggressive outreach to do that and to generate a comprehensive peace process.

I will raise my question with Mr. Bercuson and then leave time to respond.

Mr. Bercuson, I have to say I'm very surprised to hear you urging what is so widely recognized as not working: really, escalating further the cycle of violence, more chaos, more killings, more fanaticism, and more Taliban. I hear you urging that we need more people doing more of the same and somehow we're going to get a better result.

I'm sure you're aware there are many NATO countries that wouldn't go near that aggressive combat search-and-kill mission because they feel that's exactly the result it would produce. Yet I hear you saying that we need more of it. I wonder if you can elaborate further on the evidence that doing more of what's not working is going to produce a better result.

[Prof. David Bercuson]

Sure. Let me take the second part of your question first.

Again I caution that I haven't been there; I haven't seen the ground over which Operation Medusa was fought; I haven't read any of the after-action reports, or the war diaries, or whatever. But just reading between the lines from what I know about military operations in general, had there been a large number of troops, let's say a mobile brigade, that could have blocked off the escape routes of the Taliban forces across the border into Pakistan, then, to put it very bluntly, there would have been a much higher destruction of the enemy than apparently occurred.

Those forces are not available. NATO simply does not have the kind of mass in the southern or southeastern area of Afghanistan that it requires to do the heavy fighting that is necessary to defeat a Taliban insurgency. So I'm not saying doing more of the same, I am saying doing something a little different, which is to bring to bear sufficient troops to be able to do the job properly.

As far as our NATO allies are concerned, you're pointing to a major problem. I'm not sure that they don't want to “increase the cycle of violence” in Afghanistan, so much as each of those that have significant caveats have them for a variety of political reasons—some of them internal, some of them having to do with the politics of the European Union, some of them having to do with the current government in the United States, who knows? I don't know. But what I do know is that if they are not prepared, if NATO is not prepared to save this mission, to do whatever is necessary to save this mission, then NATO's aspirations to be, in a sense, a force to protect democracy around the world is dead. NATO is either going to save itself or it isn't.

In Canada, we will be able to say we did everything we could. It's very, very important that we be able to say that, not only if NATO succeeds, but especially if it fails: we tried our best to save it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Professor.

Mr. Regehr.

[Ernie Regehr]

Thank you.

I think the point you're referring to about the envoy Mr. Brahimi's comment about the failure to speak to the Taliban raises what the fundamental situation is there.

Is the fundamental situation there a government that has basic support over all the country and is being frustrated by fanatic spoilers generally, or is it a fundamentally divided society in which significant parts of the country feel they are excluded from the political order? Which of those scenarios is the case? The evidence is increasingly there—and Brahimi confirms it—that the latter is more the case. That's a case that requires negotiation. There has never been an insurgency in which the government's first response was, there is nobody to negotiate with, they're all embodiments of evil, and how can we negotiate with them?

The Government of Uganda today is negotiating with the Lord's Resistance Army, the personification of a level of evil that is spine-tingling. They found that after 20 years of trying to deny it, they are now in negotiation in Juba and Khartoum. Talking is essential, and these wars don't end without it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Regehr.

Mr. Van Loan, you have about two minutes, according to the clock on the wall, so take 30 seconds.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Thank you.

My question is for Professor Bercuson, who has been quite clear on NATO and the challenge it has as we go through a NATO transformation.

The countries that aren't stepping up to the plate, and you've been quite clear on how well Canada has stepped up to the plate.... We're obviously at a critical time for NATO. Are there other things that Canada can do to encourage the partners in NATO to either step up with greater commitments or to lift some of the caveats that are there for some of those domestic reasons? Are there things you can think of that we can do?

In addition, some would look at NATO and say that over the past number of years, when you look at the Balkans and you look at Afghanistan, NATO has stepped up its game a fair bit. Is it really as dark and grim as you say? If they don't step up this time, is it really the end for NATO?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Van Loan.

Professor Bercuson.

[Prof. David Bercuson]

To answer the last part of your question first, I think in the long run, yes, it will. I think Afghanistan is a defining moment for NATO. There's a lot of discussion amongst practitioners, scholars, etc., about what NATO's future is. I think for the first 10 years or so after the end of the Cold War, no one was sure what NATO was going to do, if it had any role at all to play.

I think that in the long run, if NATO succeeds in Afghanistan, it ought to be able to—and it ought to—reach out to democracies around the world, to Australia, to India, to countries that are democratic and believe that sometimes a democracy will need armed security for its protection, but also to countries that are prepared to transform NATO into a social, economic, and political organization. That can all happen, but it won't happen if NATO fails in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is the first out-of-theatre mission for NATO, and if it does not work, as I said, we're looking at disaster.

What can we do? Aside from trying to twist arms and talk, which I assume our foreign minister, defence minister, and Prime Minister are doing, we are saying there is a deadline to our heavy participation in this fighting, and it is 2009. That's it. After that we're moving to a quieter area or withdrawing from Afghanistan because we need to build our forces elsewhere. That will hold their feet to the fire. There is nothing that can hold a person's feet to the fire other than having a fire and having somebody holding their feet to it. It has to be done.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Professor Bercuson.

Go ahead, please, Mr. Regehr, very quickly.

[Ernie Regehr]

I will say one thing, and that is that we really need to exercise caution when we make the Afghanistan mission about NATO and about what's good for NATO. It's what's good for Afghanistan. I know that Professor Bercuson isn't ignoring that, but shifting the emphasis to saying that this is about NATO and its survival, and saying we've got to do whatever it takes for that to happen, does not guarantee good results for the people of Afghanistan.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Regehr. I would also suggest that it's what good for Canada and what's good in the fight against terrorism, and our responsibilities for that.

We are going to suspend for a minute or two to allow this group of guests to leave and allow the new ones to come in.

Thank you so much, Professor, and thank you, Mr. Regehr.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Order, please.

We have to apologize already. I don't like to begin with an apology, but we do know that the bells are going to start ringing, I believe, at 5:30.

We really do want to hear from both of you today. We're pleased to have with us both Linda Jones, technical director of international operations of the Mennonite Economic Development Associates of Canada, as well as Mr. Roland Paris, associate professor, public and international affairs, at the University of Ottawa.

I know that you did have an opportunity to sit in on our previous hour. The discussion this afternoon continues on the briefing or on the update on Afghanistan.

We welcome you to our committee. We'll give you a few moments for your presentations, and then we'll go into the first round.

The floor is yours, Madam Jones.

[Linda M. Jones, Technical Director, International Operations, Mennonite Economic Development Associates of Canada]

Thank you.

I'm here witnessing on behalf of MEDA, Mennonite Economic Development Associates. We're a non-governmental organization that has been implementing sustainable economic development programs internationally for over 50 years. We are known as leaders in micro-finance and enterprise development, covering the gamut from investment fund development to capacity building at the community and individual levels.

Perhaps more importantly to this discussion, we have worked in many transition and conflict-affected countries; for example, Romania, Uganda, Tajikistan, Haiti, Nicaragua, Angola, Pakistan, and Eritrea, and we have experienced the power of Canadian civil society to build bridges and bring hope to people who have undergone chaotic and often violent change.

MEDA has been working in Afghanistan for almost three years now. I personally have gone to Afghanistan three times. We have supported a number of organizations that are implementing micro-finance programs. We've collaborated with local organizations, such as the Afghan Women's Business Council, a national organization. We've conducted consultancies for the UN, MISFA, and international NGOs in the area of sustainable private sector development. We have carried out exploratory missions for our own programming.

Recently we received approval to launch a CIDA-funded women's economic empowerment project in early 2007. Through this program we will reach down to village women, integrate them into mainstream markets, and enable them to be active agents in advancing the well-being of their families and communities. I have had the privilege of meeting rural women in Parwan province and I can assure you that they are eager to be in work and they are grateful for Canada's support.

During MEDA's three years in Afghanistan, we have also seen the tremendous impact that Canada's development contribution is having on the rebuilding of the nation.

As you may know, there are two large multilateral programs that receive significant support from CIDA. One is the micro-finance investment support facility for Afghanistan, which I'll refer to as MISFA; and the other is the national solidarity program, NSP. They have received $50 million and $30 million respectively from the Canadian people.

MISFA, the micro-finance investment facility, currently has well over 200,000 active clients, with $36 million in loans outstanding and a phenomenal repayment rate of 98%. Under the MISFA umbrella, MEDA, my organization, has supported Women for Women International in setting up its micro-finance program--training loan officers, designing appropriate loan products--and is currently transferring management to local staff. This one small program of MISFA currently reaches 6,000 female clients, typically with five to eight children each, enabling 30,000 to 40,000 people to be lifted out of deep poverty and to participate in the creation of a stronger and more stable and secure future.

Joyce Lehman went to Afghanistan with MEDA and then joined MISFA as the chief operating officer. She recently became adviser for the micro-finance industry in Afghanistan through the USA-funded ARIES project. She e-mailed me on the weekend from Kabul and said that Canada has been the largest donor for MISFA, which is one of the major success stories in the country. The plea is that donors such as CIDA continue to support the sector for another two to three years to give the micro-finance institutions time to establish themselves as sustainable Afghan institutions, with Canada having played a key role in the establishment of the sector.

As we have all seen, I'm sure, from the recent award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Foundation, a reliable micro-finance industry can have a profound impact on reducing economic hardship and freeing communities from crime and strife.

The other large multilateral initiative supported by Canada, the national solidarity program, has established a country-wide network of democratic and inclusive community-level structures, the community development councils. These councils give citizens a voice in Afghanistan's development.

A primary motivation--and this is important in terms of negotiation--for participation in the CDCs is that they have access to donor funds for projects that have demonstrated popular support in their area. This venture has enabled remote villages, for example, to construct schools, operate health clinics, rehabilitate irrigation works, improve roads, and so on.

On a trip that I took to the hamlet of Chawalkhel in Wardak province, I was proudly shown one such project: a large new boys' school that served all the families in the district. A chief regret of the men and women with whom I spoke was that there had not been funding for a girls' school as well. This was not an effort to pay lip service to my western views. One of these women was widely admired for having risked her life to teach village girls underground during the Taliban regime. There are many such stories in Afghanistan.

While these multilateral initiatives are absolutely critical, it is also necessary to underline the importance of the more limited direct role that Canadian civil society has played and can play in Afghanistan's reconstruction. Recently efforts have increased to involve Canadian executing agencies and private sector players in the development agenda. MEDA is proud that, through its women's economic empowerment project, we will be able to contribute to this process. At MEDA, we have observed how important direct contact--citizen to citizen, NGO to NGO, business to business, educational institute to educational institute--is for the growth of local capacity and the empowerment of individuals, businesses and national civil society.

As a not-for-profit, MEDA has opportunities for engagement that expatriate employees of multilateral programs and other nations do not have. Typically, for example, embassy and UN staffers spend their day in the office, go home to the guest house and travel in armoured vehicles, with no opportunity to interact with Afghans outside of these contexts. As a MEDA staff person, I have been free to move around, unarmoured, unprotected, and to engage with Afghan people. I have travelled to rural areas, and I have heard the requests for support from householders and women's groups. I have chatted amiably with roadside vendors as tanks patrolled the streets. I've eaten in a women's room in a provincial restaurant, and as the veils were removed, I have listened to the stories of women from every walk of life. And I have walked through the streets of Kabul with a distressed father to a pharmacy to purchase medication for his sick child, explaining to him, the pharmacist, and others in the shop that I am a mother of five from Canada. The engagement of Canadian civil society on the ground and the implementation of our development programs make a significant contribution to peace, prosperity, and the building of democratic rights and freedoms in Afghanistan.

MEDA is delighted and honoured that we have the opportunity to be heard by this committee. Based on our organizational experience in Afghanistan and around the world over the past 50 years, we would like to make the following recommendations:

First of all, we would suggest that Canadian dollars can be effectively used to build bridges between Canadian and Afghan individuals, groups, institutions, businesses, and other agencies. If our efforts concentrate on military intervention alone or on publicly funded programs, we miss the chance to engage directly and to be messengers of hope for a better and more stable future.

Second, by working directly with the private sector, we are laying the foundation for sustainable development. When the donor dollars disappear and the executing agencies no longer run programs, if the private sector has been strengthened, then development can continue.

Third, we believe there would be great benefit if Canadians in general were more aware of the results of CIDA's programming: MISFA, NSP, bilateral programs. If the press could be encouraged to present on these outcomes as well as on the military actions and results, the efforts of Canadian civil society and of organizations such as MEDA that work on the ground unprotected, to contribute towards democratization and security through poverty alleviation and other important programs would be reinforced.

Fourth, we would ask you to reconsider the pressure that Canadian civil society is experiencing from the government to program in the most insecure parts of the country, such as Kandahar. We've been asked to take our programs there rather than to other districts; however, all areas of Afghanistan are facing challenges. If we can bolster districts and provinces that have a greater chance for success, we will have gone further in supporting sustainable processes for long-term stability. Then, as Kandahar becomes less risky, we will have good knowledge of the country, proven successes on which to build, and the capacity to move quickly to set up effective programs.

Finally, we strongly recommend that all of us leverage Canada's leadership and the international reputation we have as a builder of peace, democracy, and equitable, inclusive nations, and as much as it is possible seek non-military responses to development challenges, harnessing the creative energy of Canadians and Afghans alike to create the proverbial better world.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Madam Jones.

Mr. Paris.

[Dr. Roland Paris, Associate Professor, Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa]

Thanks for inviting me to appear before the committee today. It's a pleasure to be here.

I regret that I didn't hear the discussion with the previous witnesses. I was actually sprinting the entire length of Sparks Street, so I beg your indulgence as I continue to wipe my brow and recover from that unexpected run.

My message today is quite simple: the Afghanistan mission for NATO is in trouble and a new strategy is needed to turn the mission around. In spite of Canada's recent military successes in Kandahar province, the Taliban and its radical Islamist allies are operating more widely and more openly today than they were even a year ago, and they are continuing to enjoy the use of safe havens across the border in Pakistan.

The insurgency, which I'll call the neo-Taliban because of its diffuse character, has formed alliances with local drug traffickers and warlords in opposition to the government of Hamid Karzai. There is growing evidence from a variety of different sources that ordinary Afghans are becoming increasingly disaffected with their own government's inability to provide security and basic public services. If these trends continue, I fear that we and our NATO allies will be defeated in Afghanistan. Defeat, should it come, would come gradually, not on the battlefield but in the minds of ordinary Afghans, most of whom simply want security and opportunity for themselves and their families. If the legitimately elected government of Afghanistan and its foreign backers aren't able to provide such essentials, Afghans will look elsewhere. That is exactly what the neo-Taliban is counting on.

They are pursuing what appears to be a sophisticated political military strategy aimed at undermining confidence in the Karzai government through guerilla attacks on military and civilian targets, while at the same time offering ordinary Afghans a kind of alternative government in the form of religious justice, protection, and paid employment for those willing to join the neo-Taliban cause. It is in effect a strategy to win the minds, if not the hearts, of ordinary Afghans by forcing them to turn to their attackers for security and sustenance.

However, it is important to emphasize that the NATO mission is not a lost cause. Most Afghans want the reconstruction effort and the Karzai government to succeed, and the neo-Taliban still has only limited infrastructure within Afghanistan. The country has a functioning and energetic Parliament and an elected president. The economy is growing vigorously--even the non-drug elements of the economy.

An Afghan army is slowly being built, and although reports on its performance are mixed, certainly the consensus is that the units that have been trained are doing fairly well. NATO has shown that in a stand-up fight it can overpower the neo-Taliban and insurgent forces. So the problem isn't that our mission is lost; the problem is that our current strategy doesn't appear to be a winning one.

So what needs to be done? Permit me to make six suggestions as briefly as I can.

First, more foreign forces will ultimately be needed for Afghanistan. From the beginning, this mission has been hampered by a lack of international forces to help the Afghan government establish its presence throughout the country. We are dealing with the consequences today, as we belatedly enter regions that have been neglected for the past five years. So we are living the consequences of early decisions about under-resourcing this operation. In fact, for the size of the country and the population, this is the most under-resourced international stabilization mission since World War II.

Second, to put it quite bluntly, we need to suspend the poppy eradication program. It has utterly failed to reduce the size of the harvest, and worse, it is alienating poor farming communities, some of which now view the central government and NATO forces as aggressors, a perception that the neo-Taliban is strategically exploiting.

Third, we need to make police training a top priority. The police are mainly in the hands of local strongmen. They are undertrained, under-equipped, incompetent, corrupt, and accountable to no one. As the International Crisis Group has pointed out, in most districts Afghan police are viewed as a source of insecurity by the people rather than as a source of protection.

Fourth, we need to get serious about rooting out official corruption. President Karzai recently appointed a regional strongman with links to organized crime as the police chief of Kabul. And in the judiciary too, unqualified people are being installed because they are loyal to various factions. These are the kinds of decisions that are contributing to the erosion of public confidence in the Karzai government.

Fifth, NATO needs to build an Afghan army that can stand by itself. The retraining is going well, but it's slow. The current plan is to train an army of 70,000 Afghan soldiers, but this will almost certainly prove to be inadequate, because there are already roughly 70,000 international and Afghan troops in the country, and security remains a problem. Replacing the NATO forces with Afghan recruits will ultimately produce an army of similar size but with considerably less capacity. So Afghan forces will need to be larger if they are to stand on their own; and in order for us to leave, they will need to be able to stand on their own.

Sixth, the flow of insurgent fighters from their safe havens in Pakistan must be contained. The Government of Pakistan is not doing enough. At the very least, it is tolerating the existence of neo-Taliban operating bases on its territory. But there are also credible reports, including in the most recent issue of Jane's Intelligence Digest and from Seth Jones at the Rand Corporation, that Pakistani intelligence services are in fact providing material assistance and intelligence to neo-Taliban fighters based in Pakistan.

In my view, the international mission in Afghanistan can succeed if it reorients its strategy around these elements. But doing so would also require a renewed commitment to the operation from the alliance as a whole, not just from the few countries, including Canada, that have been willing to put their soldiers in harm's way.

If NATO chooses not to make this commitment, the alliance should begin planning a phased withdrawal from Afghanistan. This is, in my view, the stark choice we face now. It is the difficult decision that NATO must make over the coming months. Indecision is not an option, because making no decision means a continuation of the current strategy, and the current strategy appears to be leading us towards a defeat in slow motion.

I very much hope that NATO will not abandon Afghanistan, but it would be better to withdraw than to preside over a mission that lacks the strategy and resources that are necessary to successfully stabilize the country.

Thank you very much for having me here. I look forward to questions and discussion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Paris.

I'll just mention to the committee, again, to remember that we have votes at 5:30. We're going to try to keep the clock tight and stay as close to seven minutes as possible.

We'll go to Mr. Eyking.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank the witnesses for coming today.

I have two sets of questions, and they're mostly to you, Mr. Paris. I don't know if you were here to hear the previous witness, but there was a gentleman from Calgary who made a couple of statements, and one was about a deadline. He talked about withdrawal. He made it 2009 and said that we have to put that out there now, that whatever happens, we're going to be pulling out of there in 2009.

The second thing he mentioned is that NATO has to start playing hardball with Pakistan on the military side, which was interesting, and I'd like to hear your comments.

You mentioned the poppy crop, and that seems like a very challenging mission, trying to get these farmers to get off poppies and into something else. The Americans had the same challenge with Colombia. They went in and destroyed crops, and the crops just kept coming. Unless you have an alternative that can really make them the same amount of money, or a close comparison, it's pretty hard for these regions to have any other source of income.

So could you comment on those two issues?

[Dr. Roland Paris]

Yes, I heard three issues. I can try to do so quickly.

With regard to a possible deadline, the urgency now is not so much to be thinking in terms of deadlines as much as to encourage the Government of Canada to work with its NATO partners, other member states, to recognize the need to make this decision to go big or get out soon, to underline the urgency of the situation. I don't think the mission is crumbling. I wasn't suggesting that, but I think the trend lines are running in the wrong direction, and we don't have all the time in the world. A first priority is to use all diplomatic levers to emphasize to our NATO partners the need to make this decision, and to do that within the councils of NATO.

With regard to our relationship with Pakistan, I didn't have the benefit of being able to hear the comments of Professor Bercuson, if that was the person commenting. I don't know what he might have been suggesting with regard to the military side, so I'm not going to even venture to comment on that, although the situation in Pakistan is extremely complex and delicate, so any approach to Pakistan would need to be firm but nuanced too, and perhaps we can continue that discussion.

On the anti-narcotic strategy and the poppy crops, a number of experts argue that it's possible to develop some kind of mechanism to possibly even license or regulate the poppy trade within Afghanistan. I don't know enough about the economics of the poppy trade to be able to judge whether one or another of these proposals is workable, but what I do know from what I've read is that the current strategy is not just failing to reduce the size of the crop, it's working against us by alienating the very people who were trying to support the reconstruction effort in the Karzai government.

A starting point would be stopping eradication, because no policy is better than a policy that's self-defeating, and really energetically looking at various alternatives to the policy. One day, the Government of Afghanistan may be sufficiently strong to be able to prohibit poppy cultivation and the trade. That day is still far away, and right now our priority should be to create the conditions for peace.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Paris.

Ms. Jones, and then a supplementary to Mr. Patry or Mr. Eyking.

[Linda M. Jones]

In terms of poppy cultivation and economic development, you have to look at our farmers in Canada and say they could make more money from poppies or marijuana, so why aren't they growing it? Obviously if people have alternatives that will provide them with a living, they will pursue them. But I agree with Roland that now is not the time to be putting the kind of pressure we are on those farmers. These changes take time, and we have to work hard and together we have to be creative, but it can be done.

MEDA has worked in Peru, for example, on alternative livelihoods, and we have success there, but you just can't throw money at it and expect it to happen overnight.