Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine.
I want to pick up on the comments by the member for Halifax. She referenced an Oxfam report entitled, “Community peacebuilding in Afghanistan: The case for a national strategy”. I, too, think it is well worth the read. It is an excellent analysis of part of the way forward.
As many commentators have noted, the government has essentially photocopied the Liberal position on the future role of Afghanistan, and largely, so to speak, the political sizzle has gone out of the debate. I am hoping that the government actually responds positively to this motion so that we can enter into a substantive conversation as to where we go in Afghanistan instead of this eternal game of gotcha politics, which is really just playing with men's and women's lives, those of our own men and women and those in Afghanistan.
Until recently, this exercise in gotcha politics has largely characterized the debate. I hope we can move off that to this motion for change. It really is a motion for change.
It is conditional upon getting another 1,000 troops. I hope the government answers the questions put forward by the leader of the Liberal Party with respect to why 1,000 troops should make a difference, what the significance is in the number of 1,000, what exactly the troops will do, and whether an extra 1,000 actually will make a difference in Afghanistan.
To be truthful, my expectations of improvement are not all that high, given that historically Afghanistan has long been the place where armies go to die and treasuries get depleted. In particular, in regard to Britain in the 18th century, I think there were two occupations, which ended in a rather unsatisfactory conclusion and drained the exchequer of Great Britain. We also have the more recent example of the Russian invasion in the last 20 years, in the past generation. It, too, was a very unsatisfactory experience for the Russians. Now NATO is in Afghanistan and we have been there some seven years. Of course, the Americans have their own version in Iraq, where there is an insurgency which is very difficult to control and is in fact depleting their treasury.
Speaking of the NATO mission, the current mission in Afghanistan unfortunately has served to highlight some deep divisions among the NATO partners concerning the question of the appropriate role for the alliance in that desperate land. Despite the desperate state of affairs in that country, we still wish to believe that Afghans, like everyone else, wish to aspire to a greater sense of peace and security, much like other countries enjoy, and we are there because of that working assumption.
That hope is the basis on which I support the resolution going forward and that eventually we will improve the chances of the Afghan people realizing the standard of peace and prosperity. This is the main reason that I think this resolution needs to be supported going forward to 2011.
However, we should not be under any illusion that this is a war or an insurgency that can be won in a conventional sense, because the situation is a bit like a Hydra-headed monster. Once one element of the insurgency is dealt with, up pops another head. The unavoidable reality is that over the last three years the insurgency has increased. We have to ask some fundamental questions, which is the point of this debate, as to the best way to deploy our brave men and women in Afghanistan.
It is easy enough to talk about the 3Ds. We seem to talk about the 3Ds all the time. Over the past year certainly, and over the past seven years, the emphasis has been on the deployment of military forces to the neglect of the other two Ds. It has not been working as it should. I do not want people to get all defensive on me, but surely after seven years, which is, incidentally, longer than we were in World War II, we need to ask some pretty basic questions.
Afghanistan is an extremely complicated situation, mainly because it is a war on terror, and the war on terror is layered over a civil war, and the civil war is layered over tribal conflicts, and further, that is layered over personal disputes. It goes on and on.
We get a notion of perpetual fermenting conflict in all of these layers. I wonder where we would be today if, for the past seven years, we had put as much money into the other two Ds as we have put into defence. Maybe if we had, we now would actually be aspiring to bring our troops home.
In fact, Canada has no direct strategic interest in Afghanistan. We do not have any major businesses there. We do not have any resources that we are interested in. Essentially we are there to bring peace to the situation. Initially, we went in to help in the war on terror, but unfortunately, in the words of John Kerry, President Bush took “his eye off the ball”, and al-Qaeda, while defeated a number of years ago, still maintains some presence in this conflict.
I want to mention, however, that I like the part of the resolution that shifts the emphasis of the mission, but it will be meaningful only if we put serious effort into conflict resolution among the Afghans themselves.
I want to share two stories that relate to peace-building. A well known NGO in Canada submitted a very detailed peace-building initiative to CIDA. Its members had a great deal of experience. They certainly know what they are talking about. They were prepared to put up their own resources. The submission was received by CIDA and returned to them with an offer of $1,000 towards their initiative. Needless to say, that $1,000 was declined. The NGO was somewhat insulted. Therein lies something of the tale as to why we are not dealing with peace-building, or serious peace-building, in this country.
The second story involves an elected senator in Afghanistan. He was to mediate a conflict between two tribes. Apparently there was a blood feud. I am not quite sure what it involved, but the solution was apparently to offer up two women from one tribe and give them to the other tribe. If in fact that is the level of conflict resolution in Afghanistan, is it any wonder that these layerings of conflict continue, whether it is a war on terror or inter-tribal conflicts, et cetera?
My view of the matter is that Canada and our NATO partners need to get serious about these kinds of peace-building initiatives. My point in sharing those two stories is to emphasize that unless these kinds of low level episodes of violence are not resolved in coherent and just ways, it is highly unlikely that we will ever see peace in Afghanistan, and I fear that our troops will be there forever.
Actually, I would amend the last statement. We probably will be there indefinitely until at some point we simply get fed up and walk away from it. I do not think that would be very good for us. I do not think it would be very good for the Afghan people. I do not think that would be very good for the stated goals that we have in being in Afghanistan.
What would a serious conflict resolution process look like?
First, I believe we have to be intentional about building capacity. I realize that is an overused word. It is a type of lingo in the NGO trade, but we really need to remember that this country has known nothing about conflict resolution for a very long time. Afghanistan is a place where institutions are in fact corrupt and where justice is quite clearly hit and miss, more miss than hit.
Second, capacity building is absolutely essential and it should be taught in Afghan schools, because we have to inculcate that view into the children of Afghanistan.
Third, it needs to be involved in everything we do there, including our deployment of troops. It needs to be involved in everything from aid to diplomacy to troop deployment.
To drive that point home, the fourth point is that we need to drive it into the heads of every Afghan official we meet, every political official, every politician, every warlord, every police officer, every judge, and every man, woman and child in that country.
I do not want to sound Pollyannaish, but unless we have peace-building from the ground up, then this will be a perpetual conflict. However, I do want to be recorded as supporting the fact that this is a motion for change. I hope this motion for change will go forward.
