Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this report today.
I will start by saying that since we first started our debates on Afghanistan, the Bloc Québécois has been disappointed over and over. Things did not get off to a bad start. After the September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, everyone agreed that something needed to be done; we needed to take action. The international community needed to join forces to fight terrorism.
Shortly after the 2001 attacks, all eyes turned to Afghanistan, because everyone agreed that terrorist training camps, al-Qaeda and the Taliban made for a very dangerous mix for western countries, and we needed to take action.
I remind members that this was the first and only time until now in NATO's history that article 5 was invoked. Article 5 is a NATO provision that states that if one of the 28 NATO countries is attacked, it will be considered an attack on all the countries. The day after the attacks of September 11, 2001, on American soil, NATO rightly invoked article 5, which forced all the nations to join forces to help the Americans eradicate this terrible evil.
In the beginning, we agreed. We told ourselves that the UN had held discussions and agreed that the United States had a legitimate defence and that they could counterattack. There was a period of about one month when George W. Bush asked Afghanistan to hand over al-Qaeda leaders or else the Americans would launch a military attack. One or two months after the September 11, 2001, attacks, the United States intervened in Afghanistan. The war was not a difficult one. It was not very long. But the United States and Canada felt that we needed more than a whirlwind war to get the job done. In fact the war was far from being over; it was just getting started. In the end, it was more of an insurrection than an actual war.
There is nothing very complicated about an insurrection. People who think the Taliban is cowardly because it does not engage in full-frontal attacks on NATO tanks have a misguided interpretation or view of what fighting is. The Taliban can certainly not compete with conventional arms like NATO's tanks, bazookas and firearms. So they resort to an insurgency where anyone can attack NATO forces. For example, a 15-year-old child may approach a soldier and blow himself up. Tensions are high, and no one knows where the next strike will come from.
So the Bloc Québécois became disillusioned. We supported this measure in the beginning, but when Parliament was asked to extend the mission until 2009, we added some conditions. The government did not agree to those conditions and the mission was extended until 2009.
So the mission continued. As 2009 approached, the Conservative government began suggesting that the mission should be continued until 2011. We were somewhat disappointed, because in the end, the Liberal Party—which had been saying for a year that it did not want to extend the mission, that Canada had done enough and that the mission should end in 2009—decided to get into bed with the Conservatives and to extend the mission again, this time until 2011.
We objected for the same reasons as the first time. There was no exit strategy, or any fundamental strategy as to where we were headed with Afghanistan. What benchmarks would be used to measure the success of the mission? All they were offering was a day-to-day approach. Just find the Taliban and kill as many of them as possible. Then we would see.
The longer this insurrection went on, the less sure we were of the results. That is why, in late 2008, we decided that the mission should not be extended until 2011. We did not agree with extending it until 2009, and we agreed even less with extending it until 2011. Unfortunately, the Liberal Party agreed with the Conservative Party, which is why we are still in Afghanistan today.
I would also remind the House that the title of the American mission in Afghanistan was “Enduring Freedom”. The Americans were the first to go in. When they decided to send some of their troops to Iraq, they asked for NATO support. NATO became involved and in 2005 it began playing a systematic role in Afghanistan. Initial efforts were directed at trying to stabilize the capital, Kabul. They then continued counter-clockwise, in other words, they began in the north, and then headed west, south, and then east. That is where the problems really began.
I should point out that some 40 nations are involved in Afghanistan, each with its own chain of command. On top of that, there is some confusion about the chain of command. The Americans have always said that they would command their own troops. For example, take what is going on in eastern Afghanistan, where the Americans said that they would take charge of the fight against terrorism, which is happening in the eastern part of the country. So there was a NATO chain of command and an American one. That caused huge problems. Not to mention that the 40 nations all had their own exemptions because their legislative bodies said that their troops' participation in Afghanistan was contingent on certain conditions, such as not leaving camp after 8 p.m., or rules of engagement that varied from country to country. In the end, the situation got so complicated that Afghanistan is now in a state of chaos and confusion.
These are serious problems. I have often attended NATO meetings, where I have suggested that troops be rotated through Afghanistan. I mentioned the four points of the compass earlier. It is much less dangerous in northern Afghanistan right now than in the south. Why are Canadians always the ones based in the south? Why does NATO not have some kind of rotation scheme? Those based in the south are sure to suffer losses, and it will cost more. So there should be a rotation to ensure that the bulk of the burden is not always borne by the same countries. But that idea has always been rejected out of hand. I am sure that the Prime Minister has asked for this too, but has also been turned down.
Speaking of the cost of the mission, the Parliamentary Budget Office estimates that by the end of 2011, the mission will have cost $16 billion. That is more than $1 billion a year. I can tell the people who ask me how much the conflict in Afghanistan is costing Canada that it costs between $3 million and $4 million a day. Why does it cost so much? Because we are still not sharing the cost with NATO. That is another major problem. Each nation is responsible for its own troops there. It costs much less to have troops in the north than in the south.
It is going to cost us a lot. However, the greater cost is in the loss of human life. So far we have lost 131 soldiers. I think this is a very dear price to pay. Just go to the funeral of one of these soldiers to understand the human cost. It is not just the soldier that is lost. His comrades dissolve in tears at the sight of the coffin followed by the family members choked by emotion. It is almost unbearable to be in those churches during a military funeral. That is the toll we must pay and I do not think we can keep it up much longer and not just because of our lost soldiers and the expense, but because we are far from certain that we will succeed in Afghanistan for the reasons I have just mentioned.
There are all manner of aggravating circumstances with respect to Afghanistan. I will start with the first, which involves the Canadian Parliament. We have a problem in the Canadian Parliament. We had to fight tooth and nail to be briefed on what was happening in Afghanistan. I remember that the minister at the time told us he could not brief us because we could not be told in advance where they would be the next week. That would be giving away their position to the enemy. That is not what we wanted. We wanted to know what had happened in the previous two weeks. Was progress being made in Afghanistan?
We were given all kinds of briefings like the following: we were shown a C-17 aircraft arriving in Kabul, we were shown its cargo which consisted of crates, and we were told what a beautiful aircraft it is. That is not a briefing. Similarly, we were shown a bridge and told that it had taken one month to erect and that it connected the two shores. That is not what we wanted to know.
Have Canadian MPs, elected by the citizens to be their representatives, been kept informed? I say the answer to that question is no. We have not been given the facts and we are still not getting them. We ask for all kinds of additional information and the people in Canadian intelligence, a division of national defence, give us the nonsense I just mentioned. We are not told if we are making progress. We are not told if victory is close at hand. We are not told if people are happy in Afghanistan. Has the quality of life improved for the Afghan people? The answer is no. It is not the Canadian government telling us this. MPs are forced to obtain information from all kinds of other sources. We are forced to consult others to ensure that we get the straight goods.
I have to constantly tell the defence committee that we are members of a Parliament that makes decisions about the mission, that decides how much it will cost, and that must bear the burden of the loss of soldiers.
First of all, not only should we be consulted but we should be kept well informed. And yet, that is not happening. I call that an aggravating factor.
There are other aggravating factors. Pakistan is an aggravating factor. Even recently, the American army fought in the east against people who came from Pakistan. When we receive delegates from Pakistan, members of Parliament from Pakistan, I always tell them that it is true that their government seems to be taking the situation seriously. I remember that Musharraf told us that he had lost some 800 soldiers in one year. His problem is not necessarily his political will to put soldiers on the front lines, it is also his problem with the ISI, Inter-Services Intelligence, the Pakistani intelligence service, which gives arms to the Taliban and helps them to such an extent that the Pakistani delegation told us the other day that the ISI is a government within the government. There are certain problems, and Pakistan is certainly an aggravating factor. I am not saying that the Pakistanis are not making any effort, but there is a segment within Pakistan that is not helping the cause of the alliance troops, because everyone knows that the attacks are coming from Pakistan. When things get too hot, the attackers retreat to Pakistan, so the Americans have started attacking certain places in Pakistan using drones, because the Pakistani government does not seem to be addressing the problem in that country.
We may not solve the problem militarily—I will talk about this later—but it is significant that the Americans are intervening directly in Pakistan and are not even telling the Pakistanis what they are doing.
Poppy cultivation is another aggravating factor. How can we prevail in a conflict when we take away people's means of survival? There have been discussions at NATO. My colleague spoke earlier about the importance of infrastructure and the importance of growing different crops. Poppy growing must be replaced with something else. But it takes more than infrastructure and different crops. It also takes a market.
A few years ago, I witnessed discussions where Afghanistan was guaranteed a share of the European Union market. It is all well and good to substitute another crop for poppies, but if farmers produce cucumbers, tomatoes or melons, the domestic market in Afghanistan will not be enough. The European Union, the United States and Canada should perhaps make an effort to welcome Afghan products. If we want to substitute something else for poppy cultivation, infrastructure will not be enough. There will have to be markets.
But we must realize that the poppy trade is currently feeding the insurgency in Afghanistan. There is a problem, and we must address it. These are aggravating factors in the current crisis. So are civilian deaths. How can we win?
I hear my colleagues saying that we must win over the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. But does it help us when we kill civilians? Afghans have lost friends and parents in other conflicts. I am willing to believe that the allied forces now are not occupation forces. The Russians were occupation forces because they truly wanted to take over the country. The allied forces are not occupation forces, but when we needlessly drop bombs, when the lives of young men, young women and children are lost, that does nothing to help us earn the trust of the Afghan people.
In their own surveys, Afghans are saying that security has deteriorated since 2001. That shows that it was better under the Taliban than the current regime. That is a very aggravating factor. The government is corrupt. There is disappointment after disappointment. An election was just held, and its legality and legitimacy are being called into question.
The other day, at the Standing Committee on National Defence, I talked about Mr. Karzai's fellow candidate, one of the bloodiest warlords who ever lived in Afghanistan. Western democracies close their eyes and allow such things. This cannot be tolerated very long.
Afghans understand that there is a major problem when President Karzai brings one of the worst warlords in the history of Afghanistan into his fold. There have been some ballot boxes in which the number of ballots was some four or five times the number of names on the list of voters. There were some problems. Some people added ballots to the ballot boxes.
So this is an extremely difficult situation and we are again stuck between a rock and a hard place. We supervised the vote at arm's length, but would it be possible to hold another one if necessary? There are all kinds of aggravating factors. The government is corrupt. What has happened to the billions of dollars the international community has given to help the people?
I recall hearing that a ton of stone to build a road might cost $8. Yet when people went to buy it from the warlords, they demanded $80 for a ton of stone to build a road. Clearly, there is a problem there.
We have to review the situation and take a more diplomatic approach. Afghanistan's neighbours need to get involved. We are all affected by what is going on in Afghanistan. We have to talk to Iran, China, Russia and the countries bordering Afghanistan, who are in the thick of the events, because they can have an influence.
It would probably be a good idea to have an international conference in order to refocus. We have to continue providing reconstruction assistance and protecting what has been rebuilt and we have to enhance the diplomatic side of things. Everyone knows that this conflict will not be won by adding more soldiers. The Russians once had 150,000 soldiers there. Now there is talk of a build-up to 120,000 soldiers. The Russians did not resolve the situation in Afghanistan and they left disappointed and defeated.
It was important to the Bloc Québécois to take part in the debate today. The Bloc will continue to keep a critical eye on this mission and will continue to support the soldiers who are under orders and doing excellent work in Afghanistan.