I'm not aware of that report, so I can't really comment on its significance.
We welcome debate about the insurgency and about drug policy, but the United Nations is not going to countenance any move to make opium poppy cultivation legal in Afghanistan or anywhere else. It simply has not worked in conditions where the rule of law is absent. And the biggest priority in Afghanistan today is to establish the rule of law, not to apply policies that have only worked in mature democracies, mature societies, where the rule of law has been established for some time.
What concrete measures should we be undertaking with Pakistan? Well, many. We should share and debate assessments of what is happening on both sides of the border. We should ask Pakistan for specific actions with regard to specific leaders or structures that are of concern to everyone. We should update UN Security Council Resolution 1267 to reflect the current reality of Taliban leadership. This is the list by which Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders are subject to a certain number of sanctions. We should provide additional support—and Canada has an important role to play here—for the issue of refugee returns on both sides of the border to create pull factors in Afghanistan and an enabling environment in Pakistan, and thereby help bring this challenge under control. And, of course, we should address the regional context, which includes not only Pakistan, but also Iran, India and many other countries.
We should also pursue confidence-building measures between the two countries. The United Nations has been particularly active trying to reinforce political dialogue between the two countries, and one of the agenda items we are interested in supporting is this idea of cross-border jirgas to allow civil society in both countries literally to ventilate their views on what it will take to bring security not just to Afghanistan but also to the region as a whole.
What is the role of Iran? On the whole, it's extremely positive: $250 million of assistance delivered in a principled and timely manner to rebuild roads, to support education, and to bring electricity to the city of Herat. The United Nations, with 59 other countries, is a prominent donor that has done a great deal to support Afghanistan's transition.
Detention is an area of major concern for the United Nations. Conditions in Afghan detention facilities run by the national directorate of security are relatively good; they are monitored extremely closely by the ICRC and the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. Our mission is getting more and more involved in this area, and we have made conditions of detention one of our priorities in the human rights monitoring mandate we have.
There is more work to do on the Afghan prison system. The national prison in Kabul, Pul-i-Charkhi Prison, has been partially renovated and standards there have improved greatly, but there is a great deal more to do at the provincial level. I'm proud to say that the corrections adviser at the UNAMA mission in Afghanistan is a professional from the Correctional Service Canada, and we are making progress on these fronts. Obviously we won't achieve the results we want overnight.
James has mentioned the OEF, and there was a reference earlier to slow development. Obviously development has not been as rapid as anyone would like. Stick a microphone in front of any Afghan and they will respond in a predictable way: they would like more. Many of them have lived outside of the country and have seen what a better life is like, and they want it at home.
But slow with regard to what? We are slow in bringing Afghanistan to the standards of living we see in western Europe and North America. Those are distant objectives, but we have been rapid in bringing economic growth from the level at which Afghanistan began as a country suffering for too long from economic depression and decline.
So I would take issue with the German report and with anyone who maintains that nothing has been done. It's very difficult for us as westerners to understand what life is like with $150 per annum per capita and how much better life could be with $300 per annum per capita. But we must not trivialize the sort of progress that has been made, and the fact that it has not just been made for a select group in Kabul who are benefiting from government office; it has been made for the bulk of the population, thanks to programs sponsored by the government and funded by countries like Canada, programs that have reached the length and breadth of the country and up to two-thirds of rural communities—and 80% of the population is rural. This is the centre of gravity of the Afghan population, and we have already made a difference there.
That is why people in Afghanistan are continuing to invest their hopes in us. They will not do so indefinitely--we need to show results on the regional front domestically--but for the time being we do have a story that we are proud to tell. It is important to recognize, frankly, what has been achieved if we are going to justify the further investments that everyone is now being encouraged to make.