Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Gentlemen, thank you for being here.
I just want to touch upon something that's been bothering me. We never hear from my colleagues or the media that the school children who are blind and deaf in southern Afghanistan, in Kandahar, came down for a picnic at Camp Nathan Smith a couple of weeks ago. That is a huge success story. Nobody talks about the 100 projects that are taking place as the military moves forward and the development they did in Kandahar. And I don't hear about the security for the Kajaki Dam, which will be providing electricity to possibly two million people. Of course the UNICEF gentleman, Nigel Fisher, talked about the progress.
These things have to be looked at on an incremental basis. Afghanistan is larger than Iraq, with 30 million people, and we have limited resources. A tremendous job has been done. Nobody talks about the judges who have been trained—75 and 95 and 20. There is a lot of progress going on. And there's the cooperation between the jirga on the Afghan side and the jirga on the Pakistan side. There is some communication.
There are of course some concerns, and you addressed those concerns—the regional actors—but there has been a new development. I'd like your comment on that. There's a new united national front that has come up. Are you aware of that? And if you are, what is your view? There is also a former defence minister, Mohammad Qasim Fahim, and Yunus Qanoni and Mustafa Zahir, Zahir Shah's grandson, who were trying to bring about a prime minister's position. So I see it as very positive, because they're thinking of democracy. I would like to receive your comment on that.