The Senlis Council has an agenda, and it's big on commercializing the poppy crop for medicinal reasons. The reality is that unless there is absolute security, any legal poppy crop will become illegal in a heartbeat. There should be no doubt in anybody's mind. I think that too much has been made of eradication, because from my knowledge, not very much eradication really went on down there anyway. Canadian Forces do not do poppy eradication. No NATO forces do poppy eradication. Under the new Afghan counter-narcotics strategy, poppy eradication is but one part of that strategy and it's almost like the last resort part of the strategy. There are all these other strategies that I talked about earlier: alternative livelihoods, interdiction of the stuff on the roads, interdiction of labs, etc., are part of that comprehensive plan.
At the end of the day, in the simplest terms, if you want to look at the south of Afghanistan for about a four-year period after late 2001 and early 2002, there were very few international forces there, and even fewer Afghan security forces. What's happened is that the 8,000-plus NATO troops that Brigadier-General Fraser is commanding are standing where these guys had a free run, in a security vacuum, and they don't like it.
In the final analysis, we didn't start the insurgency down there; the insurgents started the insurgency. And until enough security is established in the region, there is no way to do development. We can talk about it all we want, but you have to have the basic security. That's a principle of counter-insurgency that has been known to military professionals for 50-plus years. That's what Field Marshall Templar did in Malaysia. He brought the people to secure areas. We can't do that these days. We have to bring security to the people, and that is a joint Afghan-international effort that is now going on down there. That's what's happening in Kandahar province.
And believe me, personally, Mike Capstick as a taxpayer and as a human being, I'd rather see 90% of the Canadian effort being expended on development as opposed to the conduct of military operations. Until we can shift that security situation in the south, that's simply not going to happen.