Afghanistan committee  The voter registration itself was a huge success, with cooperation between the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Defence. For me, from an Afghan perspective, what was different between this voter registration and the first one a few years back was that it was Afghans doing the security.

Afghanistan committee  Certainly from the CSTC-A perspective, we use consultants to assist us both in Kabul with the headquarters and then the delivery of training. I did not get involved and didn't see any contractors involved with actual conduct of military operations. But because we were short, we hired a number of contractors to help us to great effect.

Afghanistan committee  I spent a year with all those officials—the Afghan Minister of Defence, Minister Wardak, and their equivalent of the Chief of Defence Staff, General Bismullah Khan—and helped them create a system of governance over the top of their army so that when the President heard from the people, and military operations needed to occur, there would be a flow-down of orders.

Afghanistan committee  Yes, there is a judge advocate general division within the Afghan National Army headquarters. There is a separate military justice system, but it is very much a work-in-progress. As I related earlier, there is a legal framework within the Afghan army that has a JAG--he's a brigadier-general--and at various units and brigades there are legal officers.

Afghanistan committee  Canada has a really good history up in Kabul. You go into the Kabul military training centre, where we used to have a team; I met many Afghan NCOs and officers there who were trained by Canadians when we were up there. There's a huge role for any nation that wishes to step in.

Afghanistan committee  The U.S. Navy is involved in training a number of them as well. They're spread out across.... I don't know if they're with the Marine Corps, but I know they're with the other three services.

Afghanistan committee  The first graduating class of their military academy had approximately 88 candidates. Out of that were 30 bright young potential candidates for pilot school, and all 30 of them are now in the U.S., undertaking training. In big-picture terms, the plan for the Afghan National Army Air Corps was to simply use the pilots they had trained during the Soviet time to use older Eastern bloc equipment, the Mi fleets and the Antonovs.

Afghanistan committee  I have not.

Afghanistan committee  When I was there, we had about 200 Afghan officers undertaking training outside of Afghanistan in a variety of nations, the biggest being the U.S. In fact, we have four Afghan students at RMC in Kingston, and they've completed their first year. I'm not sure how they did, but I met one of them who was back over Christmastime.

Afghanistan committee  I had a validation training team that worked for me up in Kabul. They were responsible for verifying the level of training across the entire ANA. This team had absolutely no problems when they went down into the brigade we were mentoring; they found it to be at the same standard as what the Americans were doing.

Afghanistan committee  I left when those discussions were occurring, so I'm really not sure where we're at. But the influx of American troops will allow CSTC-A to double its capacity in police mentoring. That was our biggest challenge when I was there. The commanding general's theme was to keep going with the army in the way we were, but we definitely needed more emphasis on the police.

Afghanistan committee  Absolutely. All the work that is done down in the south by Canadians is well appreciated. We will challenge the Afghan army and we will challenge NATO to find an equivalent partner who is able to work down there, but we will not have it all done before we go. Let me give you the example of counter-IED teams.

Afghanistan committee  I don't think we'll have the job done before we leave, but we'll be certainly proud of what we've accomplished. There's a lot of work-in-progress right now to determine what the steps will be after we leave. But I don't think it's viable that they are going to be able to stand alone without us after we leave.

Afghanistan committee  I don't have the chart with me today, but the command kept stats of the different ethnic backgrounds. I'd be happy to provide that to the clerk. That was almost, in army talk, a centre of gravity. But the most important issue for the minister and the chief was to maintain ethnic balance.

Afghanistan committee  Within the Afghan National Army, the biometrics process was commenced to start tracking Afghan National Army recruits who arrived, and cross-referencing that back to any material the government might have on criminals or on known Taliban. It's something the leadership is very attuned to and watches closely, but there's not a specific formula.