Mr. Chairman, thank you for that welcome. I've been called many worse things than bookends, that's for sure, so thank you for the opportunity to be here.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for your invitation to appear here today. But I have to tell you that it is difficult for me to see where I can be of service after seeing how Canada's mission in Afghanistan has evolved since the beginning of the year. As you are well aware, the report of the independent panel on the mission was tabled in January and a good deal of debate ensued. As a result, you voted in favour of extending our mission to 2011. This decision to extend the mission sets a very precise timeline which will certainly help the Canadian Forces in our planning. Your decision was followed by the NATO summit in Bucharest last week, where member countries undertook to deploy about 1,000 additional troops in Kandahar. That increase will certainly improve security in the province by preventing the Taliban from launching any offensives.
Having said all of that, but also having just returned from a trip to Afghanistan, where I spent five days on the ground, I had the chance to discuss the situation with many of the key players and leaders and engaged men and women there and to travel significantly in the region around Kandahar City. I had a chance to see, if you will, what is sometimes described by our folks as Taliban country and to talk to almost every one of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and airwomen, and to almost all of the civilians who are engaged in that mission there.
Let me just give you four points of view from what I saw, and that would be my assessment, over time, of the progress with the Afghan national security forces, the visible development, and the main threats against our men and women. I'll also just finish up with a little something about our men and women.
Let me just say I am one of the few people who have had the great privilege to engage in this mission, really, from very early on. I'm one of the folks, because of my responsibilities, Mr. Chair, who gets to see it continually, consistently, and who gets to see all parts of it over a longer period of time. As perhaps you know, my first engagement started back in 2003. I spent a lot of time there in 2004 as the commander, and since we've re-established operations in Kandahar province itself, I've been back 20 to 25 times since August 2005.
Let me just tell you what I saw in the last 18 to 19 months in Kandahar province and use that as a bit of a measuring stick, which is what we do. When I went into Kandahar province in October 2006, we were at the tail end of Operation Medusa, during which the Taliban tried to isolate Kandahar City. They wanted to cut off Highway 1, which is the main highway that goes around Afghanistan, and they wanted to show NATO or, more importantly, show the Afghans that NATO could not stand up to them. Fighting had taken place for about seven or eight weeks in some intense combat involving our soldiers.
When I arrived in October 2006, the area of the Panjwai, Pashmul, and Zhari districts outside of Kandahar City was a combat zone. There was a lot of destruction. The roads were in poor repair. The only people who moved were the Taliban or our soldiers. We did not have any Afghan National Army soldiers or battalions with us; there were very few police with us, and most of those who were we did not trust. The number of people living there, from the population of that valley area--the triangle out there that normally has a population of about 45,000 to 50,000--was almost zero. They had all departed.
I was back again at Christmas. Not a whole lot had changed, except that we had taken the initiative away from the Taliban and they truly now were retrenching or trying to leave the area. We were seeing people come back into their homes in the morning time, but mostly they would still leave at night, and they'd come back in and try to repair a few things--maybe repair a wall, repair an irrigation ditch--and get ready for the future.
I was back again last spring several times, throughout the summer and early fall, at Christmastime, and then back again three weeks ago, and what I saw was this. Now in that valley, 45,000 to 50,000 of the people have moved back into their homes. They have repaired the damage that took place almost completely. They've actually gotten along with new construction, and that new construction is pretty small by some of our standards. Building a grape-drying hut is a big thing to a family who depends on drying gapes for their livelihood.
They're back in. They've rebuilt, with our assistance--and I mean a whole-of-government assistance--some of the schools in the area that were destroyed completely. I particularly went and saw one at Ma'sum Ghar, and now in that school there are three shifts of children going to school every day because that's the way they can get their education. Traffic back in the area--economic traffic, in particular--has grown enormously, kids are out waving on the streets, and men are actually working in the area. In fact, we have about 400 of them working for us now, building a road that they desperately need.
What was most striking as I stood there, in fact, with Minister MacKay at Christmastime was this. When we had looked out over that valley a year ago, it was completely dark at night. Now you look out over that valley and you see clumps of lighting--yes, the electricity is not all on throughout the place--and the valley actually looks almost like a normal lifestyle that you would see in Afghanistan, and that's an incredible change over just 18 months. They're back there, they're working, they're growing their crops, they're doing all the things necessary to earn a living, and they're getting their children on with the education they want them to have so they don't repeat that cycle.
That's just what I've seen, and I've seen that many times now as I've gone back and forth, and we have many measurements that go against that.
The Afghan national security forces....
For me, one of the most important benchmarks is the improvement in the Afghan national security forces. As I mentioned, in 2006, our forces conducted Operation Medusa with no meaningful support from Afghan forces. Currently, our forces and the Afghan National Army (ANA) regularly conduct operations together in Kandahar province. Canadians work in partnership with three infantry battalions, or kandaks, a combat support battalion and a service support battalion, and they provide a mentoring service at their brigade headquarters.
We have six operational mentoring and liaison teams with an Afghan National Army that has three battalions to manoeuvre in and around Kandahar and help provide their security. We've been working with one of the battalions for just over a year, the others less. They are not up to their full strength. They are certainly not up to the operational capabilities they'll need. They don't have all the equipment they must have to be able to do the essential work, but they have come a long way from the zero start we had 17 or 18 months ago in Kandahar province itself, and every day we work with them to improve the operations they can do. The improvement is significant, and we see them leading operations routinely now and conducting operations with us. Canadian troops never conduct operations alone.
For the visible development part, I can tell you there's nothing more visible and nothing more important than roads. When you talk about trying to change an economy from growing drugs to one that grows something that's legal, you don't need roads to take opium and get huge returns on it. You don't need roads to do that, because you can take out an immensely valuable crop worth millions of dollars on a mule train. If you want people to replace that crop with rice or watermelons or wheat, you need to build a transportation system to take 10,000 tonnes or so.
Standing on Route Summit, which traverses those districts immediately to the west of Afghanistan, where a large number of people live, and standing on the causeway, both of which we helped them build to connect that road, Route Summit, into the main transportation network, and being there just three weeks ago and watching 400 Afghan men working under our sort of security with the Afghan police and Afghan army participating in that, to build, rebuild, and pave Route Foster--all three projects were done at the request of Afghans for their livelihood, well-being, security, and their economic vitality--is to see very visible work of which they are very proud and which they protect. Of course, we believe it gives us long-term progress to be able to switch from a drug economy, to be able to get the terrorists away from those sources of money, and at the same time to improve security for the people who live there.
The direct threat is still very real. The mission continues in a positive direction, but that threat remains, especially obviously in the south part of Afghanistan and especially, from our perspective, in the west and north of Kandahar City itself. The Taliban have given up the direct engagements, by and large. Occasionally they will hit us in small ambushes, but now, because of the losses they have taken because of our successes, they prefer to engage in indirect attacks, with improvised explosive device attacks against us, with suicide bombers and small ambushes.
They don't care who they kill. Yesterday they targeted a vehicle in Kandahar City, international forces, and did not cause significant damage to that vehicle. But while they were executing that attack, they killed eight Afghans and wounded, severely in some cases, another 22. We deal with those threats in a variety of ways. There is no silver bullet.
It's imagination. It's ingenuity. It's tactics. It's leadership. It's equipment. It's intelligence. And it's joining up operations, making the best of our characteristics and the best of the Afghan security force characteristics.
For example, in IED attacks we put a lot of emphasis on before the blast, how our intelligence can predict what's going to occur, how we can get surveillance in using a variety of methods to prevent things from being put in, how we can spot the signs that are going to lead to that kind of attack.
During the attack itself, if we can't pre-empt or prevent it, we put a huge amount of emphasis on protecting our soldiers and the Afghans with whom they work, whether it's the kinds of vehicles, the enhanced route-opening capability, or upgrades in the LAV III. I know there are some folks here from General Dynamics Land Systems. I'll tell you the LAV III is an awesome vehicle, and our soldiers love that vehicle. We have improved it to the maximum extent we can.
Then post-blast, when it does occur—and you know they do—we do a thorough analysis. Within two hours we have an assessment team on site, and we pass those lessons around the theatre and pass those lessons back here.
We are keeping the initiative from the Taliban. We're denying them sanctuary and those secure lines of communications and areas from which to operate in Zhari, Panjwai, and Arghandab districts. We're having success with the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police, and we're doing all those things to help Afghans get on with their lives and be able to live a life free from fear. We're doing those things inside a whole-of-government approach; whether that's capacity-building for the police, where our police OMLTs work with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to help improve the training of the Afghan National Police, or working with the ANA, we're taking this approach.
Let me conclude and give you the option to ask me questions and focus on any area you would like.
Our men and women in this mission are Canada's greatest citizens, I believe. Now, I should be saying that, because I'm their Chief of Defence Staff, but I actually believe it.
To go and meet those two and half thousand young men and women is to go and leave with a source of inspiration, a source of pride in our country and the incredible young Canadians, many of them 20, 21, 22 years old, who wear our flag on their left shoulder, who represent our country in Afghanistan in just an incredible manner, and who really are the credentials of Canada.
They represent me, they represent you, and they represent every other Canadian around the country when they go off and do that mission. They need to know that they have your support, the support of Canadians throughout the nation.
I'll close by saying that the outpouring of support across the country over the past weeks, months, several years, has actually allowed these young Canadians to believe they are not alone. When they're 10,000 kilometres away from home, and they're on a dirty, dusty, dangerous trail, and somebody is shooting at them; when they could be forgiven for thinking that they're all alone, that they're all by themselves in this, the outpouring of support in the variety of ways that we have seen over these past months convinces them that the country is with them, that Canadians support them in what they ask them to do for our country.
I'll close there, sir, and I'd be delighted to get any questions. Merci beaucoup.
