Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont.
I am pleased to rise today on behalf of the constituents of Fleetwood—Port Kells to participate in the debate on our government's motion to extend Canada's mission in Afghanistan to 2011.
Canada is in Afghanistan at the request of that country's democratically elected government and as part of a UN mandated NATO-led mission that includes 37 other countries.
Our goal is to protect Canadians by ensuring that Afghanistan never again falls into the hands of the Taliban and that it becomes a stable, free and a democratic society.
Unfortunately, terrorism is a 21st century reality in Canada and everywhere else around the world. It is a reality that we must face together as free nations if we want to remain free.
As noted by our Prime Minister, “Canada can choose to ignore terrorism, but terrorism will not ignore Canada”.
Afghanistan was, and most likely still is in some regions, a haven for terrorists. Al-Qaeda had training camps and bases in Afghanistan. It was the base from which it fomented anti-western sentiment and from which its allies planned and mounted terrorist attacks against the west.
It is in Canada's national interest to not let Afghanistan become a breeding ground for terrorism again. Afghans also deserve a chance at the values we enjoy: freedom, human rights, rule of law, and opportunity.
We must therefore not abandon Afghanistan. To do so would be to betray the interests of Canada and other western nations. It would also be a betrayal of the Afghani people. Afghans have been fighting for nearly three decades. First it was against the Soviets, who invaded in 1979, and then it was among themselves as different factions struggled to gain control of the country. More than one million Afghans died in the fighting.
By 1996 the Taliban militia had managed to secure its dominance over nearly 90% of Afghanistan. The Taliban brought a measure of peace to the country, but in exchange for this security, people paid a heavy price in the form of personal freedoms.
While many people had to accept the Taliban rule, millions fled their country. By September 2001, 2.5 million Afghani refugees were living under the supervision of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in neighbouring Pakistan and Iran.
The international community refused to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, instead viewing Burhanuddin Rabbani's government as legitimate even though it controlled only 10% of that country.
When in control of Afghanistan, the Taliban imposed a strict regime of Islamic law, barring most women from education and work. Women were not allowed to work even if they had starving children and no husband or male relatives to support them. The Taliban even prohibited women from participating in a UN program that employed widows in making bread for the poor.
Women were not permitted in public without being covered head to foot in burkas. They were forced to stay at home behind blacked-out windows. When travelling outside their homes, they could do only so in the company of a close male relative.
Men were forced to wear beards. There were bans on all kinds of light entertainment, including music. Religious police patrolled the streets. Those found guilty of infractions, such as failure to attend prayers, the display of photographs of living creatures or the possession of music recordings or videotapes, were whipped. Thieves faced public amputation of hands and feet. Women found guilty of adultery were stoned to death.
The women of Afghanistan were the most oppressed group of people in the world. Hillary Clinton, then U.S. First Lady, declared that “women...are being brutalized by the Taliban, once again in the name...of religion”.
In a 1999 report, Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, criticized the Taliban for widespread, systematic and officially sanctioned abuse of women. She accused the Taliban's Ministry of Vice and Virtue of deep discrimination against women and of being the “the most misogynist department in the whole world”.
Canada and its NATO allies are creating conditions where the Afghan people can build a safe and just society, where men, women, girls and boys can live and worship freely and work to achieve their full potential.
Obviously, there is much to be done. Afghanistan is one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world. Massive social disruption and loss of infrastructure resulting from 30 years of conflict will take years to address, and the harm to families and communities may never truly be healed.
That being said, things have begun to change in Afghanistan and the situation is already far better than it was under the Taliban. Where there was no true national government and no hint of democracy or legitimate governance, there is now an Afghan-drafted constitution that protects basic human rights.
Successful elections involving some nine million voters have taken place. An elected president now serves alongside an elected national legislature and regional councils.
Women who had been driven from public life and stripped of all freedom by the Taliban are now in government. Among the 351 members of the national assembly, 87 are women, some of whom visited with us here last week.
Real progress is evident in many other areas. Some 4.6 million refugees have returned to their homeland and almost 6 million Afghan children are attending school, six times as many as in 2001. Thirty-seven per cent of the students are girls. One-third of Afghanistan's 45,000 trained teachers are women.
The economy has tripled its performance since 2001 and per capita income has doubled during that same period.
The latest information suggests that 8 in 10 Afghans have access to primary health care, a tenfold increase since 2001.
Some 62,000 former combatants have been demobilized and close to 100,000 landmines have been destroyed.
At the same time, the security situation remains a major challenge. Afghan and NATO forces have pushed into Taliban sanctuaries to extend the reach of the legitimate Afghan government. As Taliban forces have faced defeat in open engagements, they have begun to rely more on terrorist style attacks.
In attacks with improvised explosive devices and suicide bombs, the Taliban and other illegal armed groups have killed dozens of civilians, and 92% of victims have been Afghans. Insurgent forces continue to use violence and intimidation to advance their cause, including attacks on schools.
According to a survey by the Asia Foundation, two-thirds of Afghans believe that their country is heading in the right direction.
Once again, the opportunists are on the rise, seeking anew to make Afghanistan a lawless place, a locus of instability, terrorism and drug trafficking.
We must remain focused on preventing Afghanistan from relapsing into a failed state, where human rights would be routinely abused and terrorists would find a safe haven from which they could strike at Canada and our allies.