Foreign Affairs Committee on April 17th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Good morning, everyone.

This is meeting number 48 of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development.

I welcome everyone back. I say “everyone” with tongue in cheek. Madame Barbot and Mr. Goldring are here, and we'll wait for the others, but I want to begin on time this morning so that we can keep fairly close to the constraints we have.

We continue our study on Afghanistan and the briefings we have been receiving on Afghanistan.

In the first hour we will hear from the Conference of Defence Associations, Alain Pellerin, the executive director. He is a former colonel in the CAF and spent 17 years in Europe, including 10 years with NATO agencies. He brings to his testimony this morning extensive exposure to international negotiations, public policy, diplomacy, protocol, and problem solving.

Also from the Conference of Defence Associations we have Brian MacDonald, a senior defence analyst. Mr. MacDonald is well known to Canadians, as he is often consulted by national media to comment on different military issues. He's also a retired colonel in the CAF and currently consults on international, domestic, strategic, and business security issues.

From UNICEF Canada, we welcome home Mr. Fisher, who is returning from a brief holiday. We're very thankful that Air Canada got him here today. Nigel Fisher, president and CEO, has worked for UNICEF for over 20 years in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. He has advised the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He has served as the Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, specifically as deputy special representative of the Secretary General for relief, recovery, and reconstruction in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2005.

We certainly look forward to your testimony this morning. We welcome you for the first hour, and we'll have different guests in the second hour.

Perhaps you have attended our committees in the past and you've given testimony in the past. We'll have opening statements, and we'll then go into a round of questioning.

Welcome. The time is yours. We look forward to what you have to say.

[Colonel, Retired) Alain Pellerin (Executive Director, Conference of Defence Associations]

Good morning, Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen.

The Conference of Defence Associations is grateful for this opportunity to comment on the UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force, ISAF, an international force of more than 36,000 troops from 37 countries. This total does not include the commitment of an extra 700 Poles, an extra 500 Australians, an extra U.S. brigade of some 3,500, and the U.K. battle group of some 1,200. That will bring the total to over 40,000, all of whom will be deployed in the key southern and eastern provinces of Afghanistan. This deployment will also provide support for the work of the 25 provincial reconstruction teams, PRTs, across the whole country.

My recent 10-day visit to Afghanistan in late October and November, when I had the opportunity to speak with the Canadians there, provided me with a privileged although not unique perspective that I wish to share with you today.

That perspective allows me to report that the Canadian troops, both male and female, regular and reserve—as you know, some 15% of the contingent is from the reserve force—serving in Afghanistan believe in their mission. They believe they are making a difference. They believe that progress is being achieved. They believe in their leaders. They believe in the quality of their equipment, and they believe that they have been well prepared for their mission. Those are very important beliefs, because these troops are on the ground; they're the ones implementing the mission. They also believe that if they are withdrawn before the mission has achieved its objectives, all they have sacrificed will be put at risk.

We must also remember that the ISAF mission, which is a Canadian mission, is about a lot more than purely military operation. It is not just about killing the Taliban in the mountains—far from it. ISAF is also involved in the reconstruction of the formerly failed state that has slowly advanced to the status of a fragile state.

Such Canadian responsibilities include the PRT in Kandahar, which has a strength of about 250. That includes not just Canadian Forces but a number of RCMP officers, Foreign Affairs officers, and CIDA officers. Critical assistance in developing the governance capabilities of the elected Government of Afghanistan is provided by the strategic assistance team in Kabul—some 15 officers from DND, mostly military but some civilian. They work very closely with the Afghan government—in fact, they work very closely with each minister of the cabinet. That's a very important and unknown program. This is part of the tangible Canadian contribution that also includes very important assistance in the training of the Afghan National Army, and especially the training of the Afghan National Police.

Canadians understand that there are no quick fixes for the reconstruction of a fragile state. After 25 years of brutal war everything needs to be rebuilt. That being said, the situation is much better than it was six years ago under the Taliban, and better than it was over a year ago when the Canadian battle group was deployed in Kandahar. Progress is being made.

We in ISAF are not there as invaders—that's an important dimension to remember; we are there at the request of the elected Government of Afghanistan, and under a UN mandate. The people of Afghanistan are weary of war, destitution, and hopelessness. The majority of the Afghan people want us there. Recent BBC and Asia Foundation polls conducted before Christmas indicate that 80% of the citizens support the presence of the coalition soldiers in Afghanistan. They want the economic and social development progress that is taking part in much of the country to spread to all parts of the country, including the south and east.

They fear what would happen to them if our search for an early exit strategy places its emphasis upon exit rather than upon strategy and leads to the callous abandonment of a fragile but growing state that is still too weak to stand up to its oppressors. They especially fear the return of the Taliban and its partners in crime, drugs and terrorism.

Ladies and gentlemen, our presentation will deal with four topics: criteria for assessing the ISAF mission's effectiveness, the ISAF concept of operation, assessing the success of the ISAF operation, and finally assessing the consequences of a premature withdrawal of ISAF.

The CDA believes the ISAF mission and Canada's considerable part in it will be considered to have been effective and successful if and when the campaign of terror being waged by the Taliban and their extremist allies fails, security is restored to the point that ordinary Afghans enjoy personal liberty and freedom from fear, the Afghan army and police become effective in ensuring security, the country's market economy begins to flourish, central Afghan government control spreads throughout the country, human rights are respected, a significant infrastructure development program is under way, and the elements of a made-in-Afghanistan democratic system of government spread to all parts of the country.

It is obvious that achieving the foregoing is a phenomenally complex and difficult undertaking. Nevertheless, the CDA believes the absence of any one of the above criteria would put the successful completion of the ISAF mission in doubt. It is also important to remember that it is better to help Afghans do it imperfectly than do it ourselves. In essence, our approach should be an Afghan face at an Afghan pace.

Next I will discuss the ISAF concept of operation. The mission of the NATO ISAF is to conduct military operations in order to assist the government of Afghanistan in establishing and maintaining, with the full engagement of the Afghan national security forces, a safe and secure environment that will allow the government to extend its authority and influence and thereby facilitate Afghanistan's reconstruction and establish regional stability.

From its inception, this mission has consisted of five phases. The first one, phase one, was assessment and preparation, including operations in Kabul. Phase two was geographic expansion, which is now completed. Phase three is stabilization; phases four and five are transition and redeployment.

In October 2003 the UN Security Council authorized the extension of the NATO mission beyond Kabul. In October 2004 stage one of the expansion to the north was completed, with stage two in the west following in September 2005. Stage three of the expansion—to include the south--was completed on July 31, 2006. Remember that: 2006, less than a year ago. Stage four—to include the east—was completed on October 6, 2006.

Currently the Canadian Forces and seven other nations, as part of the ISAF Regional Command South, are engaged in the early stages of the stabilization phase, whereas in the ISAF Regional Command West and ISAF Regional Command North the Germans, the Italians, and the Spaniards in particular have progressed further into the stabilization phase of the operation.

I would now ask my colleague, retired Colonel Brian MacDonald, a CDA senior defence analyst, to provide you with his assessment on whether the ISAF operation is a success and on the dangers of a premature withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Thank you.

[Colonel, Retired) Brian MacDonald (Senior Defence Analyst, Conference of Defence Associations]

Thank you, Colonel Pellerin.

Ladies and gentlemen, a conventional mantra has been that there is no military solution in Afghanistan. In our view, a far better way of phrasing that would be to say that there cannot be, without the military-provided security, any chance of development. And we have noticed in this past year that there has been an extension of the area in which the Afghan citizenry feel that security has been improved.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which is a highly respected international institution, conducts each year its Afghanistan opium rapid assessment winter survey, and that has just been published within the last month. It covered structured interviews with the headmen of 508 selected villages across Afghanistan in 236 of the districts, and thus provides a useful grassroots database of opinion at the village level.

The winter survey reports that the security situation was rated by these grassroots village headmen as either very good or good in 23 provinces and as very bad or bad in eight provinces, including those of the southern region. In late 2006, then, some 75% of Afghanistan's provinces felt secure. The challenge for ISAF is to extend that area of felt security even farther, and with security comes development.

That same UN Office on Drugs and Crime survey asked about whether or not external assistance activities were reaching their villages, and the village headmen reported that 451 of the 508 villages had in fact received external assistance in some 828 separate activities. Of these activities, 54% were provided by the Government of Afghanistan; 24% by United Nations and international organizations; 17% by NGOs; 4% by USAID; and 1% by others.

The assistance activities took the form of medical activities, some 50%; infrastructure activities, 20%; agricultural activities, 13.5%; education, 11%; and employment, 4%.

We can also turn from the grassroots perspective to the macro level of looking at changes in the gross domestic product, the investment, and the exports of Afghanistan over the past five years. When I draw these statistics from the recent report of the International Monetary Fund, which was tabled about six weeks ago, it showed that over the past five years the average GDP growth rate was in the order of 15% annually; the growth rate in the investment of capital formation was in the order of 40% annually; and the increase in exports from Afghanistan, not counting the export of heroin or opium, was growing at a rate of about 20% annually.

The IMF report commended that despite a difficult security environment and persistent expenditure pressures, Afghanistan's performance during the first six months of the 2006-07 fiscal year was in line with the program. The authorities met all of the end-of-September 2006 qualitative and quantitative performance criteria and indicative targets, the structural performance criterion, and most structural benchmarks except for those related to the state-owned banks.

Other evidence may be found in the report of the Canadian Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Defence, and International Aid, which has been tabled before you and does not, therefore, require further comment from me.

We conclude from our examination of data at both the micro grassroots level and the macro international organization level that significant progress has been made and is continuing to be made. We nevertheless need to go a great deal further than that. Nonetheless, there has been a successful track record.

This leads me to my second point, which is the assessment of the danger of ISAF's withdrawing prematurely. This is the question of what would happen if we were to withdraw. Here the question I think centres upon the capacity of a fragile state to provide the security needed to allow future development to continue along its past success path. And here again is another crucial problem, and that is the balance of financial resources between those possessed by the Government of Afghanistan on the one hand and those possessed by the anti-government forces on the other.

The International Monetary Fund report that I have already cited shows that the domestic tax and non-tax revenues of the Afghan government amounted to about 4.5% of GDP in 2003, and are projected to rise to only 6.8% in 2007-08. This has been supplemented, of course, by grants from the international community, which would raise the central government's revenue base to about 9% of GDP in 2003, and about 14% in 2007.

Clearly, this is a very weak financial resource base. In developed countries, we would normally expect to see central government expenditures between 40% and 55% of GDP. In third world countries, developing countries, we would normally expect to see it somewhere in the order of 20% to about 25% of GDP. In comparison to those benchmarks, the actual revenue base available to the Government of Afghanistan is quite small.

Set against this are the financial capacities of the anti-government forces, particularly those coming from opium and heroin production. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime reported that in 2006, the export value of opium and heroin to neighbouring countries amounted to about $2.7 billion, of which the farmers got about 20%, or about $0.5 billion, with the drug traffickers getting the remaining $2.14 billion, or about 80% of the total value.

This was followed up by another study done by the World Bank and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, entitled Afghanistan's Drug Industry: Structure, Functioning, Dynamics, and Implications for Counter-Narcotics Policy. It estimated that the trade at that point had increased to about $3 billion, accounting for 92% of global production and for about one-third of the total economic activity of Afghanistan. It traced a process of consolidation taking place in the drug business, and it also looked at the effects of this in terms of the ability of the drug traffickers and their allies to bribe and corrupt public officials and to fund the hiring of soldiers for the Taliban and the forces that are engaged against us.

The executive director of the UNODC stated on March 20 of this year, in a briefing to the United Nations Security Council, “In the south—the vicious circle of drugs funding terrorism, and terrorism supporting drug lords is stronger than ever.” In other words, opium cultivation in the south of the country is less a narcotic issue and more a matter of insurgency, so it is vital to fight them both together.

At the CDA, we believe that this great disparity in financial resources between the drug traffickers and their allies on the one hand, and the revenues of the national government on the other hand—a ratio of 6.8% to 33%—is such that if ISAF were to withdraw, it would result in a complete overthrow of the Afghan national government. The country would be quickly pitched back into civil war, with a decline into regional warlord control at best, and the coming to power of a new Taliban structure at worst, depending on the moneys to be provided by the drug traffickers. In our view, Afghanistan would evolve from being a narco-economy to being a neo-Taliban narco-state, with the prospect of the return of human rights abuses and perhaps the al-Qaeda training camps, and the destruction of everything that we have stood for and sought to achieve in our program of assisting the reconstruction of a formerly failed state.

Thank you, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

I thank you both.

Mr. Fisher, please.

[Nigel Fisher, President and Chief Executive Officer, UNICEF Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ladies and gentlemen, I much appreciate the opportunity to appear before this committee today. I speak to you from personal involvement with Afghanistan for over a decade, both with the UN Department of Peacekeeping and with UNICEF. You may be interested to know that besides having been deputy special representative of the Secretary General in Afghanistan, I was also at the same time the designated official responsible for the security of all UN personnel in the country.

Assistance to Afghanistan should be a high priority for Canada today and for the foreseeable future. It's in our self-interest to invest in Afghanistan’s security and reconstruction. Canada’s military role is important and absolutely necessary at this time, but it is not sufficient. An increase in non-military development assistance to Afghanistan is absolutely essential.

In my ten minutes, I will offer some brief introductory observations on a menu of priority issues for Canada in Afghanistan today, but respectfully suggest that Canada strategically focus its attention on a limited number of these, including important reconstruction and development priorities, so as to be able to achieve results that are demonstrable to Afghans and Canadians alike.

Issue number one is NATO and the Canadian military. NATO troops with Canadians in a central role in the south are very much needed in Afghanistan at this time to engage and contain the Taliban, but Canada has to be realistic about its military objectives. This is guerrilla warfare, and ultimate victory on the battlefield is unlikely. Militarily, we are buying time to allow other pieces of the reconstruction puzzle to be slowly put in place: institutions of good governance, security sector reform, economic and social development, human rights, and respect for the rule of law, all of which have to be visible and tangible to ordinary Afghans. They must see that there is an alternative to predatory government and to Taliban extremism.

Issue number two is the Taliban and others. Should there be any negotiations with the Taliban? The Taliban are not one solid, unified entity, nor are other groups, such as Hizb-I-Islami. So the answer is yes: talk quietly to those who are willing to talk. The Karzai government has had some success in this regard, especially during the period 2002-2004, and some Taliban have come in from the cold. There is space to exploit the traditional tensions within the Taliban movement, between their national aspirations to power on the one hand and their transnational alliance with Islamic extremists on the other. Efforts need to be made to prise away those who are not hard-core radical extremists

Issue number three is governance. It's important that Afghanistan have an effective government of integrity, which is seen as such by Afghan citizens. Thus, building the institutions of governance and supporting Afghan-led development are important. Discriminating Canadian support can help strengthen institutions and leaders that will truly represent Afghan aspirations, while frankly helping to weaken those with a history of predation and human rights abuses. Canada can further help to extend government-led development programs, like the national solidarity program, or the micro-finance investment support facility, designed to ensure that Afghan government resources visibly reach ordinary Afghans around the country. When Afghans see some benefits accruing from their government, they will support it.

Issue number four is human rights and the rule of law. For most Afghans outside the south, insecurity is not about the Taliban. It's about the daily intimidation, extortion, and abuse visited on ordinary Afghans by local commanders, warlords, and their forces. If Canada and the international community do not invest in establishing the rule of law and institutions of accountability, which diminish the power of those who abuse ordinary Afghans, neither we nor the current Afghan government will have credibility in the eyes of the country’s citizens.

Despite some recent progress, by any indicator, Afghan women and girls are the worst off in the world. They suffer from the highest maternal mortality rates, insecurity of person, abuse, and discrimination. Canada has long made gender equity a cornerstone of its development philosophy. An application of that philosophy is much needed in Afghanistan today.

Issue five is counter-narcotics. The parallel narco-mafia state is flourishing across Afghanistan, but the level of commitment of the international community to counter narcotics in the country is absolutely derisory. Destroying crops without providing alternatives is a recipe for disaster. The international community either has to invest billions in on-farm and off-farm income generation alternatives over the next 15 to 20 years—because that's how long it will take—or bite the bullet and find a way to channel Afghan narcotics legally into the pharmaceutical industry and health systems around the world; otherwise, the underground narcotics economy alone will overwhelm any hope for a democratic, peaceful, law-abiding, pluralistic, and prosperous state.

Issue six is social and economic development. As we like to repeat, security and development are two sides of the same coin. Tangible social and economic reconstruction will act as a catalyst for increasing security and political stability. At the most basic level, ordinary people need to see some positive, tangible change in their lives at community level. Let me briefly take the two examples of education and health care.

There is a huge popular demand for education in Afghanistan. Six years ago, under Taliban rule, a few thousand children attended secret home schools in Afghanistan. With UNICEF, I was directly involved in the first massive back-to-school program in 2002. Today over 5 million children, 34% of them girls, attend almost 9,000 schools, many of which are still desperately short of facilities and materials. Education of girls is one of the best long-term social and economic investments that any country can make, and that includes Afghanistan. Despite Taliban violence and threats and despite explosions like the one that killed four children, boys, earlier today in a Herat primary school, Afghans want a better future, and education holds the key. Around the country in the 34 provinces, there are already over 8,000 community shurahs formed specifically to look at security and protection of schools, and many of those involve traditional religious leaders and local leaders. Surely we have an obligation to support such courage and hope.

In terms of basic health care, Afghanistan has the highest child and maternal mortality rates in the world, so investment in health care in Afghanistan can yield huge immediate and long-term benefits. UNICEF experience in Afghanistan supporting the fledgling national health services indicates that measurable returns on investment are possible. Examples are reduced child mortality rates from vaccine-preventable diseases or improved maternal health care services. These are all fields in which CIDA has invested through UNICEF and others. The international community has at its disposal the knowledge to significantly reduce child and maternal mortality in Afghanistan. We need the sustained financial resources to put that knowledge into action on a massive scale, and at a time when CIDA is under scrutiny to show the impact of its programs, a scaling-up of Canadian investment in basic health and education in Afghanistan would indeed produce measurable results.

The final issue is Afghanistan and its neighbours. May I just note in passing that Afghanistan's neighbours, Iran and Pakistan in particular, have to be drawn constructively into the process of peace-building and reconstruction in Afghanistan.

In conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, after three decades of conflict and predatory leadership it would be surprising indeed if Afghanistan were at peace; it should not be surprising to anyone that it will take decades at best to achieve it. Therefore, Canada should retain a long-term commitment to Afghanistan's future well beyond 2010. It is in our strategic interests and certainly in the interests of peace, order, and good governance in Afghanistan. There is no quick fix, and it is premature to talk about an exit strategy.

Canada needs to be clear and realistic about its military and reconstruction objectives, and it does need to articulate a much clearer Afghanistan strategy, consisting of three broad areas: first, military operations and security sector reform; second, good governance; and third, economic and social development.

We would also argue for a significant increase in Canada's investment in reconstruction and institution-building in Aghanistan, and Canada—as yet only halfway towards its stated goal of committing 0.7% of its gross national income to overseas development assistance—can well afford that increased investment.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Fisher.

Thank you to all our guests.

We'll go to the first round of questioning. We'll have six-minute rounds, and one round may be all we'll have.

Mr. Patry.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be sharing my time with my colleague Mr. Wilfert.

We're going to ask our question, and we'll let our guest answer it.

Mr. Pellerin and all the other gentlemen who presented here this morning spoke a great deal about NATO's International Security Assistance Force, of ISAF. This is the first NATO mission outside of Europe. You talked about security, development and drugs.

The approach of the current and former Canadian governments was the 3D approach. For my part, it's my impression that ISAF is not progressing and will not progress in the near future, that is the next two or three years.

Geopolitics are very important in that part of the world. Just think of Pakistan, India, Iran or Russia, for example. My question is very simple and yet very important.

Don't you think that right now, it wouldl be important for the international community to show a bit of diplomacy? An international conference should be held that would include members of the P5, China, the European Union, India, Iran and so forth. I get the impression that for the time being, no progress is being achieved, and that without diplomacy, there will be no progress in the near future.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Patry.

Mr. Wilfert.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for coming, gentlemen.

In terms of policy and solutions, it's been said this is the most under-resourced operation since the Second World War. For example, the ratio is 1:1,000 in terms of peacekeepers, compared to Kosovo at 20.5 or Bosnia at 19.

There clearly seems to be a lack of coordination among the NATO members there. Obviously they all have different mandates in terms of their ability to exercise on the ground.

The question is this. Is this war winnable, given the strategy that's presently in place?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Wilfert.

For the remainder of the time, we'll go to our guests.

Mr. Pellerin.

[Col Alain Pellerin]

With regard to the first question, I do not accept Mr. Patry's statement to the effect that there is no progress being achieved. In this regard, I would say that we have to take into consideration the entire country. If you read the commentary in the newspapers or listen in the House of Commons, you get the impression that we're concentrating on the Kandahar region, in the south, where there is a military dimension.

As Col. MacDonald mentioned, in the other regions, that is 75% or 80% of the country, a great deal of progress has been achieved. We have to remember that the Taliban were in the south, where we are now, and that there is more drug cultivation in the south than in the rest of the country.

For example, the Germans sent 3,000 troops to northeastern Afghanistan where there are no Taliban and where the drug problem is less significant. When it comes to ensuring the necessary reconstruction, development and security, it's much simpler for the Germans than it is for us in the south. I think that there is progress throughout the country. We demonstrated that and Col. MacDonald demonstrated it as well with his figures.

With regard to Mr. Wilfert's question,

I agree with you that there aren't enough boots on the ground. If you look at counter-insurgency operations in the past, for instance, Malaysia is always a good example that's mentioned. Northern Ireland is another example where on average you had between 20 and 25 soldiers to a population of 1,000, whereas in Afghanistan and the south, you'd probably find it's 2.5 or 3 soldiers to 1,000. At the end of the day, I believe it means the counter-insurgency operation will be successful, but it will take longer because there aren't as many boots on the ground as there should be.

That being said, if we look at the number of countries that are involved now in the south, there are eight countries. The Brits will increase their force by another 1,400, the Americans will increase by 3,500, the Poles will send close to 1,000, and the Australians will double their size. There is a commitment at least by some nations to do more where the real problem for NATO is, and that's in the south.

I would suggest that if we are not successful in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar and the eastern provinces, then the NATO mission will fail. It's why it's important to address it and to address it successfully.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Pellerin.

Does anyone else have any very quick comments in regard to the questions?

Mr. Fisher, very quickly.

[Nigel Fisher]

I would just say that I think there's been a lot of progress with ISAF, on the presence there internationally in the last few years. You look at the relative security in two-thirds of the country. You look at the fact that, from my perspective, development and reconstruction activities are going on in the south, often hampered, but the presence of the ISAF and NATO force is very important. And if you look at the growth in economic activity, social activity, there have been a couple of elections, and there are more hostilities in parliament these days than there are in two-thirds of the country. I think that's a pretty good sign.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you. We understand that quite well.

Madame Lalonde.

[Francine Lalonde, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

I will be sharing my time with Ms. Barbot.

We found that if the United States withdrew from Iraq, it's highly likely according to analysts that the Mujahidins would move toward Afghanistan.

The Soviet Union, which came to the rescue of a government it wanted to support, deployed a lot of soldiers in Afghanistan—at least 80,000—and spent a great deal on infrastructure, schools, etc. And yet they were chased out, and the CIA contributed to this, through a vast movement of the Mujahidin, which as a matter of fact enabled Osama bin Laden to gain some experience.

What evidence is there that NATO could resist this geopolitical context?

[Col Alain Pellerin]

My colleague may also want to add a few words.

There's no doubt that there's a very great difference between the intervention of the Soviet Union in 1979 and the presence not only of NATO but of 70 countries that are participating in the reconstruction of the country. A mandate from the Security Council governs their presence in the country. There is still a lot of—

[Francine Lalonde, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

I'm talking about resources.

[Col Alain Pellerin]

Close to 80% of the population supports the presence of the coalition. You're saying that's not the case, but the figures prove it.

[Francine Lalonde, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

There are so many studies that provide contradictory figures that it's hard to believe this.

[Col Alain Pellerin]

Col. MacDonald can tell you about the figures that were drawn from the surveys. Some credible polls, for example that of the BBC and the Asia Foundation, indicated that before Christmas there was support to the tune of 80%. You can't compare the two because the Soviet presence, which was countered by the Americans and Saudi Arabian money, led to a war that was unsustainable.

The war continues in the southern and eastern parts of the country, but 75% of the provinces are relatively stable. There's no doubt there are problems, but there is some stability. Our presence has the support of the population. This country has been at war for almost 25 years. The public is fed up with the war. They want some stability and the coalition wants to give them that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Merci.

Mr. Fisher.

[Nigel Fisher]

I think if you look at the roots of the military presence as currently now in Afghanistan, there's one big difference from the Russians: the Russians invaded. The troop presence that's currently there came out of the Bonn agreement, and there were Afghan parties there, everybody except the Taliban. So many of the Afghan parties still have an interest, however tenuous, in the current peace and stability in Afghanistan and in the growth of stability in Afghanistan.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Fisher.

Ms. Barbot, you have two minutes.

[Vivian Barbot, Bloc, Papineau, QC]

We have doubts about that of course, but let's suppose that 80% of Afghans support the alliance. However, the other part of the equation is the Canadian population. We know that the public is less and less supportive of the fact that our Canadian troops are still over there. This is particularly the case in Quebec, which will soon start to see bodies being flown home.

In that context, and given that the mission has already been prolonged to 2009, what tangible results can the government show the people? We're often told about Afghan women who can go to school and I have no doubt that some of them do that. However, in a context where we can't even manage to get rid of the Taliban who keep coming back, how can we present serious results to the public that will go on beyond a few months?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Ms. Barbot.

Mr. Pellerin.