The Canadian contribution is quite significant in Afghanistan. Moving towards institutions that are built and the security that people feel in half or more than half of the country are tangible results.
There is a huge gap that I'm trying to bring to the attention of everyone here. That is the lack of a political process. I'm saying that everything else you do to improve development is good and to improve coordination is very good. To increase troops? There is a question.
I'm saying that without having stability and security, which you can achieve through a political process, the investment might be at least partly wasted. We are losing Canadian lives in Afghanistan. There is $1.2 billion, at least until 2011, being spent with the generous support of the Canadian government, taxpayers' money.
But there is still a counter-insurgency focus, and that focus is going to fail us. Even Manley's report is telling us how we can win the military intervention. It's a military track that we are focusing on only to achieve peace, and I'm saying that you are fighting war on terror in Afghanistan in the wrong way. Isolate the terrorists and bring the Afghans to the political mainstream; for that there is no process.
Karzai announcing and everybody else announcing is not a process. That's not a track. That's a call for surrender. It didn't work in the Communist era. There was a reconciliation in the last years of Soviet-supported government, and it's not going to work now. It's just an invitation: come and join us. It's not asking what are the issues and how can we resolve them, back-and-forth shuttle diplomacy, track-one and track-two documentation.... This is the process that is missing.
The winning side of the civil war is also spending all of its energy protecting themselves from the fear, if the Taliban comes, of what will happen to them: “We are all going to be destroyed, so let's keep the power, let's have wealth, let's keep our positions in the military, in the intelligence.”
Both parties are using their energy for destruction, those who are not terrorists. That's why I'm trying to say the Canadian package is missing an important component. I feel morally obligated to tell the Canadian public that you might lose more of your sons and daughters, more of the many, but the approach without having a political track is not going to bring stability and reconstruction and good governance. Why? I know what assertion means. I'm a researcher. But I do have enough evidence to give me the confidence to make this statement.