Foreign Affairs Committee on March 29th, 2007

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Thank you very much to both of you for coming and sharing your news with us. It's very interesting, let me tell you. This is a great debate. We can talk about a lot of issues: poppies, NATO--as you said--and everything.

I want to go on with what Dr. Rubin said here when he talked about change where it is needed. We have been in Afghanistan for a while now. NATO has been there for a while. I absolutely agree with you, sir, that Pakistan's role is critically important, and so is India's. These confidence-building measures are completely the right way to go, so that at the end of the day Afghanistan comes out with its interests intact.

I went to New Delhi for the regional economic conference on Afghanistan, hosted by India. I now understand that Pakistan is very keen to host the third one of these that will take place. What clearly came out of that was that the regional players surrounding Afghanistan--although they are not militarily there, because it's a NATO mission primarily, so their military hand is out of this region--all have a very keen interest in making Afghanistan stable, because they've become unstable. They are pouring a lot of money into reconstruction and everything, and that, to me, would be one of those main, strong catalyst points to move into this new strategy you're talking about--the reconstruction of Afghanistan--because everybody is talking about the economics, and you have just laid them out very clearly.

I would say that instead of really focusing on NATO and the security aspects and all these things, the regional players should be the ones to have a far greater interest in having a stable Afghanistan. Would you not say that we should work with them to move to the forefront of providing prosperity for Afghanistan?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Obhrai.

Dr. Rubin.

[Dr. Barnett Rubin]

Thank you.

At the Bonn Conference, the Iranian representative came to Mr. Brahimi, who was chairing it for the UN, and said to him, “I'd like to assure you that from now on, Iran will not interfere in the internal affairs of Afghanistan.” Mr. Brahimi said to him, “Don't speak to me as if I'm a child. It's not possible for Iran not to interfere in the internal affairs of Afghanistan, but what we want you to do is interfere in a way that's positive.” I think that is the idea that you are proposing.

Part of the motivation of the economic cooperation framework to which you referred is to create incentives for cooperation in Afghanistan on the part of the neighbours. That was part of the idea. Of course Afghanistan, as a landlocked country, absolutely needs that.

However, I would raise a note of caution. I think that experience shows that countries tend to put their security interests first. Certainly countries under military rule put their security interests first. I wouldn't say all the countries have an interest in stability in Afghanistan. They all have an interest in Afghanistan being stable and ruled by their friends. The second-best solution is for it to be unstable. The third-best solution is for it to be stable and ruled by their enemies' friends. That is the source of the problem.

At the moment, for instance, there are two different frameworks for economic cooperation in Afghanistan. There is a Pakistan-Afghanistan framework through Karachi, and there's an India-Iran framework, which goes through Iran and then up to western Afghanistan. Those are also associated with different ethnic groups in Afghanistan, because of the territory through which the trade passes.

I think it's very good to try to invest in its regional cooperation, and Canada has supported that and should do more, but I think that the confidence-building measures on security and fundamental issues of national interest are what will make the regional cooperation possible.

[Prof. Gordon Smith]

Adding very briefly, and maybe making even more explicit what Dr. Rubin has said, if you look back at the history of Pakistan's relations with Afghanistan, it's hard to say that stability and progress in Afghanistan has been at the top of Pakistan's agenda. I agree entirely with what Dr. Rubin has said. The most desirable thing from a Pakistani geostrategic point of view is that Afghanistan have a friendly government. The second is instability, which it has been prepared to live with. The third, obviously, as he said, are the enemies ruling Afghanistan.

I really think the critical thing here--and this takes one back into one's history lessons--is that how the British drew the Durand Line was guaranteed to make this an area of instability. If you read Margaret MacMillan's Paris 1919, you'll see this in a number of other areas as Britain drew boundaries. A lot of it was done to avoid the creation of strong powers and to put unstable situations out beyond where the empire ended.

[Wajid Khan, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Mr. Chair and gentlemen, this is very interesting conversation and information we're getting today.

Just yesterday or the day before, four ISI personnel were killed travelling in the region. I'm not sure if you're aware of that. I'd like your comment on that.

As well, while I was visiting Afghanistan, I met General McNeill, ISAF commander, and he had high praise for Canadian troops. He also complimented them and Canada for the success of the Medusa operation and for getting involved in 100 projects that are being built in Kandahar.

We hear that the people of Afghanistan believe we are an occupying force, but I can tell you a lot of people there told me that is not the case. So there's conflicting opinion on that. People in the United States, Canada, and everywhere else also sometimes say our governments are not delivering. I think we should take caution when we say that people in Afghanistan by and large do not accept the troops and think it's an occupation force.

However, I would also like your comments on our operation northeast of Kandahar on the Kajaki dam project. Some have viewed it as a military operation, but it is there to provide electricity to two million people--right now it's about 300,000. So securing, developing--all those things are going on, and I get a little concerned when people diminish the developmental work going on.

I'd also like you to comment on whether our expectation or our sights were set so high that we expected things to happen just like that in a country that has been bombed for 30 years. I think we need to re-evaluate our expectations.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Khan.

Mr. Smith or Mr. Rubin.

[Prof. Gordon Smith]

With respect to the deaths of these ISI members, I think what President Musharraf tries to do is a balancing act for him. At certain times he wants to be seen as being tough on terrorism and responding to the U.S. agenda. At other times he's dealing with his own domestic political problems. The ISI may or may not have some of its own elements at work. I think there are indications to think that it probably does, but it's very hard for any outsider to really understand how the ISI works.

Coming to your point on being perceived as an occupying force, let me put it this way. First of all, the numbers clearly indicate there are growing numbers who see this. They're not overwhelming, but there are growing numbers. But the longer conflict goes on, not suprisingly, the more fed up are the people who are living through that conflict. It seems to me--and this is one of the things we said in the report--it's important to try to bring the conflict to an end as quickly as possible

On the economic development side, I think what you said is absolutely right. You need long time horizons. You need projects that will take place over time. On the other hand, you also need to be able to show very quick results, particularly in the area in which our troops are operating in Kandahar.

[Wajid Khan, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

May I ask a very quick question?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

No, we're out of time. We'll come back to you on the second round.

Mr. Rubin, do you want to respond to Mr. Khan as well?

[Dr. Barnett Rubin]

Okay. If I'm not mistaken, the killing of the ISI officers took place in the South Waziristan tribal agency.

I want to be clear about the tribal agencies. It's not that the Government of Pakistan has no de facto control over them. The Government of Pakistan has no de jure control over the tribal agencies. They are not under the government administration.

The border problem is not where the Durand Line is or recognizing the Durand Line. The border problem is also that these tribal agencies are not administered territories.

Furthermore, the people who live in those territories say they're Afghans and they also say they're Pakistanis. They don't believe they only belong to one country, and yet they don't participate in the Afghan political system, except as fighters. It's actually a bigger problem there.

In South Waziristan right now, the area has a large number of fighters from the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan who are allied with al-Qaeda.

For the local Pashtun tribes, I don't know what their private opinions are, but many of them are organized militarily to support the Taliban and are now actually fighting against the Uzbeks from al-Qaeda because they have worn out their welcome.

The ISI is involved in this very complex conflict between pro-al-Qaeda Uzbeks and pro-Taliban Pashtuns. We don't exactly know who killed the ISI officers in that area, but of course Pakistan's actions are multi-dimensional.

As far as the Kajaki Dam is concerned, it's an extremely important project. I am glad to hear that Canada is helping to secure it. The lack of improvement in the electricity supply in the five years the foreigners have been there is certainly one of the top items on the agenda of Afghans when they complain.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Dr. Rubin.

We'll go to Madam McDonough.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

I want to say what a pleasure it is to have both of you here before the committee.

Particularly I think you've been calling on all of those concerned about the future of Afghanistan to not penalize or punish Afghanis for the involvement of the U.S. or the manner in which the U.S. has been involved. I'd like to pursue that a little bit further.

I had the opportunity on Thursday or Friday to participate in a full-day seminar on exit strategies for Iraq and Afghanistan. I was struck by an assertion made by one of the presenters that how you exit depends on how you entered. I'm trying to pursue it a little bit further, because I think you both touched on this a little. You made reference to Canadians' assessments or interpretations of what is happening there in relation to the American involvement. I'd like to pick up on two specifics.

Dr. Rubin, I believe it was you who pointed out that government expenditures amount to $13 per capita for the entire range of public programs and services.

[Dr. Barnett Rubin]

It's revenue.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

I'm sorry. It's revenue.

Whether or not you talk about it in terms of revenue or what they have to work with in terms of improving people's lives, it is clearly the case that people are in very desperate conditions.

You will know that Canada's commitment militarily in terms of the dollar amount is weighted nine to one on the side of military commitments versus the humanitarian, diplomatic, and developmental initiatives. If that is the case, can you address the issue of humanitarian aid, the resources targeted to improving people's actual standard of living, and the more robust engagement around diplomacy? There's very little that goes into actual diplomatic engagement, and so on. Do you think a shift in that balance is not necessary if we're actually going to come anywhere close to achieving the stated objectives of the mission?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Madam McDonough.

Dr. Rubin or Mr. Smith.

[Dr. Barnett Rubin]

I wouldn't conceptualize the problem as an imbalance, because you can always correct the imbalance by pulling out your troops. I think the problem is that Afghanistan needs more--and more effective--development assistance. Canada has actually been one of the best donors in terms of the way it gives assistance. It has supported the Afghanistan reconstruction trust fund and has even put a certain amount of money, $10 million--I'm not sure whose dollars, but somebody's dollars--directly into the treasury of Afghanistan as a sign of support for the reforms they have undertaken in the finance ministry. But if you can do more, that will certainly be welcome.

If I can just say a word about the exit strategy, there are different scenarios, as one can imagine. But there's a basic problem, which is that we have no reason at the moment to believe that the current territory of Afghanistan possesses enough economic resources to pay the cost of maintaining its own security. In fact, that territory became a state because it was a state subsidized by the British empire to protect the frontier of India, not to provide services to Afghans. That is why it has never developed the capacity to do so.

If Afghanistan is to be stable, either some kinds of continuing subsidies are needed or we have to somehow reconfigure the region so that there are a lot more regional resources and cooperation that enable Afghanistan to produce much more than it has in the past and support itself. Plus, we need to lower the costs of maintaining security by lowering the regional threat environment.

Those are the components of any exit strategy from Afghanistan. But it is very difficult to imagine a situation in which Afghanistan will not in some sense be subsidized by or dependent on the international community in the foreseeable future.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Smith.

[Prof. Gordon Smith]

I wouldn't propose to give this committee an exit strategy from Iraq for the United States, because I'm not sure at all what it is. Afghanistan is going to be tough enough, as Dr. Rubin has just said.

I've been impressed over the last year or so by how much we have increased our development assistance into Afghanistan as a whole, but particularly focused on the Kandahar area. I think you know that when one makes this nine-to-one comparison, the military is a very expensive thing to have and to use and to equip. The ratio of the military budget to the CIDA budget is probably in the order of five to one all the time, in any event. So I don't think the answer is transferring resources from the military to development. I also think that we're not doing badly on the development side. I think the international community has to do more. That comes back to what I was saying earlier about a lot of people not seeing this as their war.

But I do agree very much with what you've said about the need for more creative political approaches--at least, I'm not aware of them, let me put it that way--both to deal with Pakistan and to deal with the issues of whether it's possible to split off al-Qaeda from the Taliban and the more far-out people in the Taliban from others who just kind of go along. There is a big diplomatic content that seems to be in again. Dr. Rubin can comment on this. The United States, which is the natural leader, is so preoccupied by the war in Iraq that Afghanistan barely comes onto centre stage. That's too bad, because we need U.S. leadership.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

We'll go to Mr. Goldring for five minutes, please.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

I thank you for mentioning Canada's contributions to date in a positive light, and their effectiveness too.

Of course we had our discussions in Washington and New York about what we can do about democracy and how that is interpreted, because there can be many interpretations. But it's all about good governance. You comment in your report about good governance and the weak point there being the judiciary. With the complexities of involvement throughout Afghanistan, from the tribal areas to the remote areas, with regard to the judiciary as it's established and as we're trying to contribute to building and reinforcing, are there other models that could be incorporated? Should there be consideration for--I suppose I would call them “cultural models” or “tribal models” or more flexibility in our understanding? Should we try to contribute to a much more flexible judiciary that would be more acceptable to the mainstream of Afghanistan in the long term?

[Prof. Gordon Smith]

Yes, I think that's a really important question, and I'd like to answer it even more broadly.

I think that a lot of people, when they talk about democracy, human rights, respect for women...these are all important values for us, which we know and accept. But when you're dealing with a tribal society, they are light-years away. Even if people did nothing but read some of the popular books that are out, like The Kite Runner or The Bookseller of Kabul, and you get inside what a family is like, one begins to understand this.

One of the encouraging things I've recently learned is that there are more and more local councils being established. In some cases they are mixed, men and women. In the south, which is more conservative, there are women's councils and men's councils. Those were originally established in order to draw priorities for the delivery of aid.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

How would you categorize that or classify it, to give a description of it that overall fits what the direction should be? In other words, how do we explain this? We know of our western law and our western structuring, but how would you describe this as a model?

[Prof. Gordon Smith]

It's sui generis, I think.

I think that if we try to put it in western and western democracy terms, we will end up tripping over each other because it won't be credible.

The fact is, now people are electing--it may be the people who would otherwise just be chosen as the village elders, but they are being elected. Once you're elected, as I don't need to say to you, ladies and gentlemen, you become accountable. People will ask you what you've done.

The original purpose of electing these councils was to, as I say, deliver development assistance. But now what is happening, I am told, is they are becoming kinds of village councils to deal with things other than just the delivery of development assistance.

Again, on the legal side, we're not going to move to a court system that is comparable to our own rapidly, in any event, or maybe ever, at least as far as one can see. But there have been traditional ways of dealing with justice that haven't all involved chopping off a hand or something like that, which is totally unacceptable.

I think one has to be prepared to build on tradition and not try to just impose outside models.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Smith.

Dr. Rubin.

[Dr. Barnett Rubin]

I wouldn't like to leave you with the impression that Afghanistan has never had a judiciary and we're just trying to impose one on them. Actually the Taliban had a very effective judiciary. Whenever people in Afghanistan say something positive about the Taliban, that is usually what they compare unfavourably to the current situation.

The reason they can do that is because there is considerable legal capacity in Afghan society, but it is capacity to administer sharia as interpreted by the Islamic clergy, not to administer the state law, which also exists. But in the history of Afghanistan there have been governments that have created relatively powerful judiciaries based on state law.

Alongside the state law, there has also always existed customary law, which varies throughout the country and which has been used as the main mode of dispute settlement. And to some extent the formal, state-sponsored judicial system has acted as a whole as a court of appeal from this customary system when one party or another was dissatisfied with it.

So there is a problem, which is being debated among Afghans, of how or whether to integrate or recognize customary law within the formal legal system--not to give formal approval to things like resolving disputes by exchanging daughters but precisely to try to use the positive capacity that it represents while perhaps, as the Afghan constitution requires, curbing its abuses.