Thank you very much.
Of course in my opening comments I emphasized where I think Canada should be putting its weight, on trying to bring NATO along. I believe that if we take that lead, many countries in NATO, if not most, and possibly also the U.S., depending on how the election ultimately goes, will come around to the need for a really invigorated effort towards laying the foundation for an Afghan-led peace process.
I completely agree, when one talks about a UN envoy, one is talking about a third-party facilitator, an honest broker, who has the credibility and the trust that perhaps the parties themselves don't have. But to be successful, any peace process has to be owned by the participants.
On the point about the UN being part of the problem, no one can coordinate an effort to rebuild Afghanistan without a common vision. I think we all agree that's lacking. There isn't a common vision. There are very different views about the way forward. I believe the possibility of a common vision lies in getting behind a broad-based peace process.
In terms of Canada's military role, what disturbs me so much about the revised motion before the House is that it seems to fail in one of the strongest areas of the Manley report, and that is greater clarity about this mission. The revised resolution talks about training. We know from the Manley report that Manley, at least, thinks that training must include mentoring in combat. I can say a lot from the NATO training I do about how that's not necessary. I mean, obviously you can have that, but you don't have to.
The next subsection of the resolution says “providing security for reconstruction and development efforts”, but there's absolutely no clarity about how that security is going to be provided. Right now the counter-insurgency mission is justified on the basis that it's providing security. But it isn't providing security. In 2007, at least as many innocent Afghan civilians were killed by Afghan army and allied forces—that's us—as by the insurgents. That was because of the heavy reliance on aerial bombing in particular when the allied forces got into trouble.
Nonetheless, those that support the counter-insurgency mission say we are “providing security for reconstruction and development efforts”. To have a resolution that has that statement “providing security”, with no clarity as to how that's going to be done, delegates everything down to the military mission on the ground. These are political issues of the highest concern. They are not tactical-level questions.
I would ask what they mean by “providing security”. In my view, the Canadian military is in an impossible position. They can't provide security without ending the war, and they can't end the war by military means. That requires political intervention. In fact to suggest otherwise is to really hide behind the troops.
When I talk about a reorientation of the mission, I would like to see our focus on trying to get a real political process going, which all the NATO countries get behind. In the meantime, forces on the ground in the south would have to adopt a defensive posture—a purely and totally defensive posture—to hold ground so the Taliban doesn't take over, even more than they're taking over now, while negotiations get under way.
That's not easy. Hopefully we're ultimately looking at a new configuration of forces, much more Muslim-complexioned forces, for example, who might be willing to come in if a real peace process gets under way.