I would simply say, from a strictly military perspective, our mission remains the same--to help Afghans build a country of their own that they want in a democratic political process, with all the positive characteristics that can come from that, including removing the terrorists' base and increasing the security and stability for people who live there.
We are doing a significant amount of combat operations, because the security threat in the short term is the main obstacle to building that country. But to say that's all we are doing is absolutely incorrect. We are doing a whole variety of development in the south--Canadian Forces with Foreign Affairs and with CIDA. We're building bridges, building a road, delivering medical assistance to village after village after village, and helping build schools. We're working with the Governor of Kandahar and his tribal councils to help them develop efficient processes and procedures to deliver to the population what they want to deliver to them. We're helping train and equip their police force. We're helping to build the type of capacity that the police force can use then to actually sustain security once their army is built to a level and the Taliban are reduced to a level such that we can get a cross-over so they're running the security part of it.
We're doing all of that while the combat operations carry on. There are hundreds of other organizations and countries spending money to do that also, so what I talk about there is only a small part of the overall piece. And the effect of it cannot be underestimated.
Part of the CIDA money has gone into inoculations of children, which is something that we take for granted here in Canada, where our children are inoculated against the basic diseases of life as a matter of course. We don't even stop to think about it. This is the first time this has ever occurred in Afghanistan. In part as a result of $2 million of CIDA funding, five million children have been inoculated against polio, which is a main killer in that country. When you see the little kids running around--55% are less than 14 in that population, so their average age is slightly younger than the age of those of us who are sitting around this table--and see the visible diseases and parasites on them and then realize what those basic programs are doing for the people, not only in Kandahar but also around the rest of Afghanistan, you realize it's not just about fighting.
The fighting is necessary if the Taliban continue to destroy that process, and we're engaged in it to help them. The Taliban are the cause of the fighting, and the other Afghans, the vast majority of the population of the country around all of Afghanistan, in the south in Kandahar, want us there to help them rebuild.