Thank you, Chair.
I think you've seen the problem that many of us have with the government's direction. It's all about them; it's not about the people of Afghanistan, and that's sad. It's out of the play book this government has been using in committee.
You've outlined some problems that we have to confront. We have to look at some of the concerns you have about strategy, which Ms. Chayes referred to. I want to say, to start, Ms. Chayes, that I do have some problems with what you said, and maybe you want to correct it.
You talked about the government we have given them. If that's the case, I think that's a problem right there. If you look at the history of Afghanistan or other countries, the problem starts when you start to impose a governance model on them. I guess if you're saying that, then I think, bang on, I would agree with you, that's been the problem. In fact, that's how we got the Taliban, some would suggest.
I'm going to move on because I have some questions.
The other thing is that when we look at Pakistan and address their role here, I couldn't agree with you more. We all know of the instability that they're presently going through, and that's a huge issue.
I want to turn to the fact that, Ms. MacDonald, your organization has really done some groundbreaking work on the whole issue of the economy within Kandahar, and that the approach, the tactic, the strategy we've been using hasn't been working. In fact, I have been reading reports where, right now, police chief posts in the poppy-growing districts are sold to the highest bidder for as much as $100,000 for a six-month tenure. Guess what the salary is. It's $60. So the competition is pretty obvious. You'll go to the corruption model over the governance model, which is what Ms. Chayes was talking about in terms of concerns about governance.
On strategy, we know that the U.S. and the British governments are talking about bringing more troops back in, deploying back into Afghanistan. I'm very concerned that this will simply bring back the counter-insurgency model times ten. We're already doing that, and I think that's the failure right now in the south. I'm hearing that in some of your reports. Notwithstanding your notion that we need to remain there, I would agree, but it's how we remain there. We've talked about pulling out the counter-insurgency forces.
Now that we have the Brits and the Americans possibly redeploying and bringing back the counter-insurgency model, I would like to know from each of you, very briefly, what you think the effects of that will be, the effects of bringing back more British and American troops into the south, using the strategy of counter-insurgency.