National Defence committee  I think we would appall any person who had a PhD in development, and I really have to apologize to them, but what happened the first time was that the men from the village in Arghandab made me promise to bring back food, so we simply bought a lot of bread and put it in the backs

National Defence committee  No, you can get food in Kandahar. There is food, mostly coming from Pakistan, but you can buy food in Kandahar. Normally in the villages, from which it's difficult for them to get to Kandahar, they were growing their food. But they've moved into these refugee camps, and there's n

National Defence committee  Yes. Since we came out we've been talking to a lot of the Red Cross agencies about this: the British Red Cross, the Canadian Red Cross, the Italian Red Cross. We've talked to more of them as well about buying Afghan morphine. The Italian Red Cross has endorsed buying Afghan morph

National Defence committee  No, we don't have regular contact with the military. But the fact is that the military have to keep their operations to themselves. However, we send reconnaissance trips to the villages before I go. Some of the guys who are with me are ex-military and Afghans and they go and chec

National Defence committee  I can understand a little bit of Pashto but very little. I'm getting better. I have Afghan colleagues who are with me all the time by my side, who work with me doing the translation.

National Defence committee  Perhaps that's for another day.

National Defence committee  It's certainly a longer conversation, but despite any extremist political beliefs, my observation of people in Afghanistan is that an oath on the Koran is binding, even to those with extremist political beliefs. But it's a question for another day.

National Defence committee  Yes. That's not to say I'm not afraid of anyone; it would be foolish in Afghanistan to take that approach.

National Defence committee  Certainly I am aware, when I'm in those villages, that there are people there who, for reasons we discuss with them, have chosen to allow the Taliban and those fighting forces to pass through those villages. I'm very interested, as a security policy analyst, to understand the mot

National Defence committee  I'm going to try to start being really quick now. We need to run the pilot projects, but if they grow poppies for medicine, our studies have shown that the net farmer income, which is different from the farm gate price—you guys know what I'm talking about there—is the same or mo

National Defence committee  First and foremost, an oath on the Koran does the trick. It's the same as an oath on the Bible here.

National Defence committee  No, but we would have input into that under a licensing scheme. For example, that Indian farm gate price of opium for morphine and codeine, if you look the farm gate price and the retail, there's a 5,900% markup, so there's a lot of the value chain there that could be reallocated

National Defence committee  We should deal in the harshest manner with the al-Qaeda Taliban, absolutely, but for those young men who can go either way, we need to find a way to make friends with them. When I say we want to run pilot projects because we don't know if this is going to work, I mean that: we d

National Defence committee  But they know immediately you're not an Afghan, so they ask you and you say. So they know I'm a Canadian.

National Defence committee  Right. That suicide bomber was trained, organized, financed, and sent there by the al-Qaeda that is this part of the Taliban. It's not these guys. He was going there to do that, no matter what the Canadian military were doing that day. So even if the military is in local clothing