Yes. I might note at the outset, with respect to polling, that the most recent polling introduces the element of risk and puts forward to Canadians that peacekeeping is now of greater risk. That doesn't seem to have diminished their support for it.
Peace operations is a more accurate term, yes, but for better or worse, peacekeeping is the UN term. As long as member states are using that term, we shouldn't abandon it.
With respect to this really important question about there being no peace to keep, that was really what I was trying to talk about. Building the peace is actually perhaps the most accurate way to describe what the UN multi-dimensional missions are trying to do now, because it's not a sequential process. It's not that the military tries to stabilize everything and then the peace process works. It has to work in tandem.
That really was the problem with respect to Afghanistan. For most of the time the UN was there, it had no mandate to work on a comprehensive peace process. Actually, it never had a mandate to work on a comprehensive peace process. Even when there was relative stability, there wasn't that opportunity to take advantage of it and to bring all the players in, because that's the story with Afghanistan.
I've heard General Fraser talk in past days about the frustration of the Taliban fighters going back to Pakistan for R and R, but Pakistan had its own security interests that had to be addressed, and it didn't do any good to lecture and tell Pakistan to stop doing this. There needed to be a comprehensive peace process that took into account Pakistan's concerns over India.
Zoé's comments about the regional complexities of Mali also hit on a really important factor. I would just like to quote one comment from the observations of the Secretary-General in the December report on Mali. With respect to this interrelationship of the counter-insurgency force and the UN mission, he said:
I commend the commitment of the States members of the Group of Five for the Sahel to tackling the threats to peace and security, terrorism and transnational organized crime through the establishment of a joint force. While it has the potential to contribute to an enabling environment for MINUSMA, only a multidimensional approach that addresses the root causes of instability will be effective in countering terrorism, including by improving governance and creating opportunities for young people while bringing those who are disenfranchised back into the fold of society. Consequently, the success of the joint force—
This is the counter-insurgency force.
—remains intimately linked to the full implementation of the [peace] Agreement.
To come back to the question, no, there isn't a peace to keep. There's a peace to build, and it can be done by a fully resourced UN multi-dimensional peacekeeping mission.