Allow me also to thank you for having us this morning. This is a great pleasure for me. This is the first time that I have visited your committee.
As Christopher, my friend and colleague, stated, this is a very important issue for Canada. It is also very important for NATO: it is our main priority. As an aside, I would say that this is proof of how much NATO has changed.
My notes, about 50% of them, contain the same statistics that Christopher quoted on education, and infrastructure that has been built. Every week we receive two pages on development progress. In my office I have plans and maps. Five years ago I only had the Balkans. All of a sudden I have all of Southern Asia.
We have a very intimate relationship with the UN. That is security in the 21st century.
Let me make four brief points, please. I think it'll be more fun to talk together than have you listen to me.
There are three or four questions that we have to answer. First, do we still have a national interest in being there? Is the national interest that we had in signing up to this as strong as it was? I think it is absolutely clear that it is.
I did a little research five years ago, before the Taliban was removed from power. Afghanistan had become the sanctuary for extremist groups from at least 24 countries, all training in well-manned, well-funded terrorist camps. We can't ignore this. There was al-Qaeda, of course, with its 3,000 fighters from 13 Arab countries. There were extremist groups from Russia, Pakistan, China, Burma, Iran, Central Asia, and several countries of the Far East. All of them fought for the Taliban while carrying out their political agendas at home. Afghanistan was the Grand Central Station of terrorism, with extremists arriving every day and leaving better trained and more extreme.
These are the same people we're fighting today, and that is a point that we cannot forget. They would love to be back in power. This is 20:20 hindsight, and it has only been five years. That's a point that I continually make, certainly as a NATO spokesman. It's easy to forget, but we can't forget it. As NATO, we took on the mandate from the UN to help prevent that from happening, and that is what we are doing.
The second question is whether this is winnable, and whether we are winning. I think that is a critical question for the populations in the 37 troop-contributing nations. Certainly I can speak for them, because that's the question the public has asked. Can we do it? I think Chris has quite clearly indicated that on the indicators that matter, there is traction. People's lives are getting better. They have more money in their pockets. The level of access to health care is higher than in every country of Africa except South Africa, and that is saying a lot when you consider where Afghanistan started from five years ago. It's at 83%. My wife runs an NGO, and she tells me this is unheard of. The progress the UN has made in rolling this out is absolutely dramatic.
You've heard the other statistics. To put it in clear terms as to where we are now, our information is that there are 17,000 reconstruction and development projects under way as we speak, 1,000 of which are being carried out by NATO. Billions and billions of dollars are being spent.
Focusing on security, we have built the Afghan National Army up from zero five years ago to 30,000 soldiers now, deployed and fighting all over the country. This is absolutely relevant for us because the Afghan national security forces are our exit strategy. There will be a long fight in Afghanistan. The Taliban will not be crushed to nothing in the next three years. There will be an insurgency issue for a long time to come, for all the reasons we've mentioned, like the narcotics issue and the border issue with Pakistan. But the Afghans need to be able to fight their own fight. When they can, we can step back. Until they can, we can't. That's the reality.
As NATO countries, we have now contributed tens of thousands of small arms, millions of rounds of ammunition, 110 armoured personnel carriers, and a dozen helicopters. We've put small teams into the deployed Afghan battalions to help them do their jobs. The U.S. has pledged, as you know, $8.6 billion to help develop the Afghan national security forces. This is our exit strategy. We are aiming for 70,000 in the Afghan National Army.
The Afghan National Police are a big weak point. Part of the attraction, if you want to call it that, of the Taliban is that they walk into ungoverned areas where there is no structure, no law and order, and no effective police. As a result, people say they don't much like the Taliban, but they like structure better than they like anarchy, so they'll take the Taliban because it's all they have.
So we need to help establish a local government presence, and that means police. The army moves to fight. That's not your community policing. This is something, of course, that the EU and the UN are working on, not NATO, but it definitely affects us as NATO.
So the first conclusion is that our efforts to help the Afghans build a better country and better future are paying off, but it will certainly take a sustained and well-coordinated long-term effort. That's what Chris is doing.
There is a high level of expectation among Afghans about seeing the benefits in a concrete way. They've heard of all the pledges of billions of dollars, and they want to see the results. We have to do our best to do that.
The second question is whether we have enough forces and whether the other allies are pulling their weight. I know this is a very sensitive subject here in Canada. Our answer at NATO is, in general, yes and yes. Taking into account the political realities in all of the 37 countries, yes and yes.
Do we have everything we want? No. You'll never hear a satisfied NATO official. But we have dramatically increased the combat power available to the commander of ISAF this year.
Since the Riga summit three months ago, we have added over 7,000 troops to the overall ISAF mission. Virtually all of these are what we would call uncaveated--in other words, they don't have geographic restrictions on their use. Most of them are devoted to the south.
Of course the U.S. has made the most substantial contribution, with the 10th Mountain Division, followed by the 183rd Airborne
The U.K. just announced another 1,500 troops on top of the extra 500 that they had added.
Those are the big-ticket items. You also have Norwegian special forces, and special forces from other countries that have not made this public, so I'm not at liberty to do so. The Danes will add more. The Germans will likely approve the deployment of six Tornados, with the 500 troops that go with them. We also have more UAVs coming online, and we have more transport aircraft and so on from different countries. The Australians are going to double their contribution to 1,000, with another 250 special forces and transport.
I list all of this to tell you that the yardsticks have moved dramatically in the last three months. The Canadian government has been a vocal, intense advocate behind closed doors with the allies to do more, and they have moved the yardsticks. Canada has earned a lot of credit in NATO for what it's doing on the ground. We have a bigger voice than we had when I joined the alliance. People listen when Canada talks, because we have paid where it counts. I think we are using that credit very intelligently to get what we want focused towards.
In terms of the reconstruction and development funding, as Chris said, the government's announcement yesterday is exactly what we need. Do we need more? Yes. We need more helicopters and more fixed-wing transport aircraft. We will keep pushing. But you heard Minister O'Connor and General Hillier both say that they're broadly satisfied with what is now on the ground. They have been pushing hard, so if they say it, it means something.
When I talk about removing caveats, restrictions, we got a commitment at the Riga summit. All 26 allies—in fact all 37—committed to the principle that if another ally is in danger anywhere in the country, if Commander ISAF calls, they will go. That is a critical demonstration of solidarity. I can tell you that the French deployed Mirage aircraft in close air support for Canadian troops just a few weeks ago. They killed a lot of Taliban to save our soldiers' lives outside of their area. So they have proven that they are willing to do it; that's good.
I'll skip all the things that Chris already said. Let me highlight three areas where we are obviously going to focus our efforts as an international community, or where we need to.
One is on governance, and as Chris said, it's absolutely critical.
Second is Pakistan. Until we deal with the issue of support coming across the border, we will be not getting enough traction. I know that the Canadian government, the American government, and many others are working very closely with the Pakistanis. They have to be part of the solution.
I think I saw that Minister MacKay offered the Pakistanis Canada's expertise in how to defend a long and dangerous border.