Thank you, Mr. Sorenson.
I have a relatively short statement. I'll go through it quickly.
My views on Afghanistan that I'm bringing to you today have been formed by my relatively unique experience working on Afghanistan, both inside and outside of the Canadian government.
I'm currently the executive director of Peace Dividend Trust. It's a not-for-profit foundation founded by a group of diplomats, entrepreneurs, and aid workers whose sole and unique focus is to work with the UN and other international agencies in New York, Afghanistan, Sudan, and other peacekeeping missions to make peace and humanitarian operations more effective, more efficient, and more equitable.
Prior to this, in 2002-04, I was the deputy director of the South Asia division at Foreign Affairs, where, you could say, I was present at the creation, so to speak, of the three-D approach to our work in Afghanistan. In that role my primary focus was on the coordination of the efforts of the Department of National Defence, Foreign Affairs, and CIDA in the establishment of our embassy in Kabul.
PDT has two projects in Afghanistan right now. Both are focused on the problem that only a very small portion of the money that the international community spends on Afghanistan is spent in Afghanistan. There is a massive lost opportunity to use the operational spending of the donors and international agencies to drive economic recovery through local procurement in the hiring of Afghan staff. This is supported by the emerging consensus in the development world that economic growth is the foundation of peace and stability.
Our procurement marketplace project, which was originally funded by CIDA and is now also funded by the U.K. and the United States, has a simple task. We match the procurement needs of the coalition forces, international agencies—including Canadian agencies—that are currently being filled outside of Afghanistan, largely in Dubai, to local Afghan businesses, and we train Afghan entrepreneurs to bid on international contracts.
This may sound mundane, but I assure you, by increasing local spending, it has a massive economic impact; it creates jobs. Boys who would be planting IEDs are working in factories and paying taxes to the struggling Afghan government.
Our second project is just wrapping up, and it's a groundbreaking economic impact research project that we're undertaking for the Afghan Ministry of Finance. It's being funded by the British government. Donors, including Canada, have pledged in the Afghanistan Compact to meet several commitments, including increasing the use of Afghan staff and Afghan business, but to date no one has ever attempted to actually measure how much money is entering the local economy.
We now have produced the first benchmark comparisons of the donors, which will be tabled next week at the donors' Afghanistan Development Forum by the Afghan Minister of Finance.
I'd like to make four quick points regarding the situation in Afghanistan and Canada's role.
First, Canada is making a difference. This is the right place for Canada to be, but we must be prepared, as Mr. Sedra has said, to commit to the long term, and there are still areas where we can improve.
First and foremost, Canada is making a difference, and success stories abound. Earlier this week the Minister of Development and IDRC hosted a meeting in Ottawa that gathered all the major Canadian NGOs operating in Afghanistan. To sit in that meeting, you would think we were talking about a different country from the country we read about in the papers every day. The message that these organizations that are operating in Kabul and Kandahar and elsewhere are bringing to the table is a uniform one, and that's that every day, Canada's investment is producing a tangible and direct and positive impact on the lives of Afghans. Whether it's microcredit, health care, justice, or private sector development, CIDA money and Canadian agencies are making an impressive difference in Afghanistan.
Our own project, the procurement marketplace that I mentioned earlier, is a remarkable success story too. We initially set a target of increasing local spending in Kabul by $5 million. I'm happy to report that after nine months we've been able to redirect $46 million into the local economy, for example, by helping the U.S. Army buy its water in Kabul as opposed to Dubai. This means thousands of new jobs for the people of Afghanistan. And if I could be a little cheeky, it would also place us as the sixth largest donor in Afghanistan in terms of direct economic impact—bigger than the Netherlands.
CIDA's overall impact in Afghanistan is another success story. I mentioned the report that we've produced for the Afghan Minister of Finance on the economic impact of donors. It will show that among the donor community, CIDA has one of the largest impacts on the local economy per dollar spent.
Unfortunately, these success stories are not being heard, and they're being overshadowed by political controversies.
This is the right place for Canada to be. Canada's relative influence in Kabul is unique, and I can say this as a former diplomat. This influence is multiplying the impact of our investment.
Unlike most other post-conflict missions, Canada is one of the lead players in Kabul. This is partly due to the size of our commitment, but it's also due to the effectiveness of the three-D approach and the leadership of such people as our former Canadian ambassador, Chris Alexander, who has now left the foreign service to work for the UN; General Hillier; and General Andrew Leslie.
If you believe that Canada has a unique value-added to bring to the world and to bring to development, this is the place where we are influential enough to deliver that value. We will not have a bigger impact elsewhere. But as Mr. Sedra said, we must be prepared to be there for the long term, to see this impact turn into lasting progress.
Nation-building is, by definition, a quagmire. Peace, order, and good government cannot be built in a single fiscal year, or even several. It is a painful process. It's going to suffer setbacks. It's going to cost money. It's going to take time. It's going to take generations. If we leave too early, there will be consequences and our investment will be lost.
The recent events in East Timor are proof of this. I was part of the UN mission in Timor that saw it through to independence in May 2002, and I'm afraid to say I was part of the crowd that rushed to the airport like a “fall of Saigon” the day after independence to leave Timor. Now the international community has been forced to return to Timor with more people and more money to replicate the work they had done in 1998 to 2002. General Leslie has warned that Canada will need to be in Afghanistan for 20 years. I believe the job we have set for ourselves will require the international community to be there in some form for much longer. Frankly, if it was going to be easy, we wouldn't be there now.
Canada can take steps to enhance its impact in Afghanistan. The three-D approach—development, diplomacy, and defence—must continue to move forward. Recent plans to co-locate civil servants and staff from CIDA, DND, and DFAIT in the same place in the next few months should be applauded. But it must also be noted that this was done by the British government in the early days of post-September 11. In fact, at the end of September 2001, the British government brought together the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence, DFID, all together in one room, and we're doing that now. Likewise, the appointment of David Mulroney at DFAIT and Stephen Wallace at CIDA as the lead coordinators in Afghanistan will make a big difference in rationalizing and improving Canada's impact. This too should have happened a long time ago.
It is important to note that CIDA, DFAIT, and DND are not large bureaucracies with large resources and large numbers of people to put towards Afghanistan, like, for example, USAID, the Pentagon, and the State Department. However, I'd like to emphasize that there is an advantage to being small. When you're small bureaucracies, you can coordinate faster and better, and you can be nimble and quickly able to react to a shifting and dynamic environment in Afghanistan. But—and this is the big “but”—if we don't coordinate, if we're not nimble and fast, then we're simply just small.
I would also like to encourage Canada to increase its use of Afghan goods and services in the delivery of its aid in supporting our military operations. Canada has a good record to date, in terms of its economic impact, but it can still increase local procurement and the channelling of assistance through Afghan agencies.
In conclusion, I would like to say that this is the right place and this is the right time for Canada to make a difference in the world. We are on the right track, and we must be prepared to see this through to the end. It will take a long time, but our efforts will be worth it.
Thank you.