Thank you very much.
Thank you for coming today, General Atkinson.
I share some of the point of view that my colleague from the Bloc Québécois has put forward, because you have indicated to us today that security has increased in the south region, and evidence we're getting from other sources would indicate exactly the opposite. However, I want to ask a couple of questions.
The U.S. forces with Operation Enduring Freedom, who are not part of ISAF, how do they operate within the Canadian Forces and the other ISAF nations there? How does that happen? I'm concerned about air strikes, I'm concerned that we have reports from Oxfam that tell us that four times as many air strikes happen in Afghanistan as in Iraq.
There is other information in the recent Oxfam report that was delivered to an all-party committee in Britain with other information that I think is applicable here in Canada. They indicate that there has been $15 billion in aid to Afghanistan since 2001, but life has not improved for ordinary Afghans. We know that Afghanistan is Canada's largest aid recipient. The Oxfam report raises a lot of really critical concerns about the whole notion of the military being involved with aid and the notion of the PRTs themselves, in fact.
We have the reports from our own Louise Arbour, a Canadian who has just recently been in Afghanistan, and she said that the rising rates of civilian casualities in Afghanistan are alarming. She said women are suffering disproportionately and continue to suffer disproportionately to men in Afghanistan, and despite the post-Taliban promises and commitments that were made, they're not making a difference.
So there's that question about U.S. Operation Enduring Freedom and how that relates to our ISAF. You mentioned the Kajaki Dam, which was mentioned to us before by General Howard, who did these briefings earlier. Is the Kajaki Dam secure now? Is electricity coming to Kandahar regularly without interruptions or are they still getting power in a very hit-and-miss way?
The final thing I want to mention is that the British committee of parliamentarians raised great concerns about the ANP and their report. We've heard, and I too have had great concerns about the ANP around the issues of lack of accountability, of corruption; it's well known. You mention they're finally being paid, and I think you said a week or a month. Who's paying them? Are we paying them directly or is that money still coming through the system in Afghanistan and many times not reaching the people who are meant to be paid?
Those are my questions.