Thanks very much for having me. I'm only sorry I couldn't be in the room with you.
I'd like to speak fairly briefly because I think it really is important to leave plenty of time for questions. Basically, I want to make two major points.
One is that I feel very strongly, as somebody who has lived in Kandahar for the last five and a half years, that the role Canadians troops are playing here is absolutely critical. I know this has been an often difficult and painful debate in Canada, both in your fora and in the public, as to the value of what our troops are doing and things like that. Let me tell you, it's crucial that they be here.
We can talk about modalities, and that's what I'd like to get into a little bit in terms of how they behave on the ground, what the context is in which they are here. I might have some comments to make on that, but on the basic question of should they be here, yes.
The second major point is that my sense of the debate in Canada has been that it's kind of being phrased as a dichotomy, either humanitarian assistance or combat, less combat and more humanitarian, things like that. I actually think that's a false dichotomy, and I will go into that.
On the first point, let me simply say that I couldn't be here.... The members of my cooperative, who are all Kandaharis--one Kabuli, but otherwise all Kandaharis--would not be able to continue working on the.... We make skin care products, many of which are sold in Canada, including Ottawa very shortly. They wouldn't be able to continue to function--I think all of them would probably have to become refugees--if it were not for the presence of Canadian troops.
It's really important that you understand what's happening in southern Afghanistan, not so much as an insurgency--that is, an indigenous uprising by locals--but rather as a kind of invasion by proxy of Afghanistan by Pakistan using Afghans. Fundamentally, this so-called insurgency is being orchestrated, organized, financed, trained, and equipped across the border in Pakistan. So in a sense, what your troops are doing here is protecting Afghans from this invasion. Now, that's schematic. It is certainly true that the more Afghans are disillusioned with the government we have provided them, the more likely they are to be tempted to sympathize with this Taliban invasion, is what I would call it.
There are also issues of how troops behave, and that's where I think.... I do know the Canadian command has been thinking very hard about this, but I would urge continued thought. How much do you use air power in what is really a very nitty-gritty, village-to-village kind of combat situation? Air power is not a very appropriate tool for that kind of warfare, and unfortunately there have been unnecessary civilian casualties.
Also, there's been a lot of fear, and it's perfectly understandable in troops that are not very experienced. When they hit an improvised bomb or there's a suicide attack, they become very scared and often will fire almost at random. And it's not only Canadians who have been guilty of this. The Brits have done this at least twice in the last year. Americans did it in a terrible event in a different province, to the north end, east of here.
I would say there definitely needs to be further thought on the tactical battle practices, so that you don't think about the number of Taliban dead as being a sign of victory. If you kill three Taliban and five villagers, you've probably created 15 Taliban, because villagers who lose their loved ones are going to be more tempted to join the Taliban in order to take revenge, or because they have no other means of support, or something like that. So I think battle plans need to be thought out in a slightly more strategic fashion.
That brings me to strategic modalities.
That really gets to the political context in which this whole drama is being played out, which is unfortunately a context of an almost unshakable alliance between my country--the United States--and Pakistan. That is a totally contradictory alliance, because it is clear to me from the experience I have on the ground here that this so-called insurgency is being deliberately orchestrated by members of the Pakistani government. This is not rogue elements of the ISI; this is not the Pakistani government not doing enough to thwart the Taliban. This is an orchestrated movement by the Pakistani military establishment. When I find out that my government is providing $1 billion U.S. a year to the Pakistani government, supposedly to pay for anti-terror operations, I'm just speechless.
This is a role that Canadians in the political sphere have to play. If I were a Canadian parliamentarian, I would have some very serious questions to ask about my strong ally, the United States. My people are dying in this conflict, which is fundamentally being financed by the United States. That's a major political issue.
My second basic point is that this is not merely a dichotomy between humanitarian assistance and combat. What I mean is this. First of all, in southern Afghanistan, I don't believe humanitarian assistance is even particularly appropriate. Southern Afghanistan is not in a situation of humanitarian catastrophe but in a situation of developmental stagnation. So blankets and schools and even wells are not fundamentally what are needed here. What is needed is a much more difficult, complex, and long-winded effort to help rebuild a functioning economy in a region that is not utterly devoid of resources. What we do is make soap and high-level skin care products--which are selling out the second they arrive in shops in Canada and the United States--using the very valuable raw materials that exist here, such as pomegranates, almonds, apricot kernels, and all of this gorgeous stuff that is the mainstay of local agriculture.
That's one point, but the even larger point I would like to make is that I always hear governance being voiced as an afterthought. We talk about humanitarian assistance, development assistance, or combat, but no one really focuses on the issue of governance as the linchpin of the post-Taliban experience in Afghanistan. I submit that right now it's a free-for-all. The people ushered into power in this country--again, particularly by my government, and in particular at the provincial and local levels--are just raping the country. It is an absolute free-for-all. You cannot get any administrative task performed without coughing up money. In 2002 and 2003 I would hear from ordinary people that at least under the Taliban there was security, and people knew they could cross the town without being attacked by militiamen. Now I'm hearing people say that under the Taliban there wasn't so much bribery and corruption.
It is a terrible indictment of the post-Taliban experiment in nation-building that we are unable to put up a government that has a minimum of respect for its citizens, and as long as we are not able to do that, then ordinary Afghans are going to continue to desert this experiment for the Taliban. What I find is the support for the Taliban in southern Afghanistan is not ideological. It's not about Islam, anti-westernism, or culture; sometimes it's phrased in those terms, but it is fundamentally very practical. It is that people want a predictable life, one in which they know what the rules are and what they will be punished for and what they will be rewarded for. They want to be able to feed their families and put their kids in school. We have not provided that context.
It is time for us, as an international community, to take some responsibility for the public officials we have ushered into power. That means the diplomatic representation you have on the ground here, and even the military officers, need to take on the role of demanding accountability from the government as a more central part of their mission.
Secondly, I would say that even within this context of corruption, no matter how much development assistance you provide, it's going to be distorted, because it's passing through corrupt channels. So number one, people aren't receiving the benefits, and number two, they see how much of them are skimmed off by their government and believe that this is our policy.
Again, let me repeat, we are the ones who brought these people to power. The notion that the current Government of Afghanistan is chosen by the Afghan people is a fiction. There have been elections apart from the elections for president. They were a travesty. The governor is not elected. The mayor is not elected. Nobody who has direct impact on the everyday lives of people has been elected.
What I'm saying is that if you spend a fortune on development assistance and it passes through corrupt hands, it's only going to reinforce what is essentially a governing system that people are suffering from.
I think the last point I would make in this regard is that Afghans do not make a huge distinction between, let's say, me, a civilian foreigner who's working in the private sector, or an NGO person--so we would be about the same--and the Canadian army and the Afghan government.
Are you looking at the time? Is that what I'm seeing your hand going up for?
