Thank you so much. It is always a pleasure to be back in Ottawa, where I lived for quite a few years.
I'd like to start by saying that there is not an exclusively military solution to the challenge of the Islamic State, because in the short term, military action may well be necessary to prevent the collapse of the central Iraqi government as well as the Kurdish regional government, but in the longer term, a political solution needs to be devised.
Military strikes by coalition forces, albeit necessary, provide recruits for the Islamic State, since civilian victims are inevitable. The essential political problem in Iraq has been the character of the rule by the previous government for at least, let's say, five or six years. The removal of al-Maliki as prime minister is definitely a step in the right direction. Still, a lot more needs to be done by the current Iraqi government in order to deserve allied support.
Simply put, the sectarian and exclusionary nature of rule by the central government in Baghdad makes a large part of the population in the areas controlled by the Islamic State receptive to a message of liberation, however misguided and brutal. They need to be convinced they would be safe if there were a return to central government control.
The military personnel of the Islamic State include many former Baathist officers who have proven to be very effective on the ground, certainly more effective than the bulk of the Iraqi army stationed in Mosul in the north of the country. Let's ask ourselves why three divisions of the Iraqi army simply melted away. In large part it's because they were not there. There are in excess of 50,000 ghost soldiers in the army, and this estimate is by the Iraqi government. Why did the ones who work there not actually fight or even sabotage their equipment before fleeing in the face of the enemy?
The challenge, therefore, requires a long-term political solution and a profound rethinking of the nature of rule by the Iraqi central government and a marginalization of sectarian gangs aligned with the government. They were the ones who, paradoxically, were brought up from the south to actually prevent Baghdad from being overrun. They were the ones who could be counted on to fight, and yet they exacerbate the problem.
We should also not forget that everything that is going on requires a sustained development and educational intervention. From these points of view, Canada should be very proud of the role that it has fulfilled so far.
All of this is happening in the context of our having failed to meet the challenge of preventing another generation of conflict, just to quote a book by David Malone, my friend who is now in Tokyo. The security-development nexus has to be taken into account without neglecting either aspect.
Thank you very much.