Afghanistan committee  Yes.

Afghanistan committee  As I think I said earlier, I think NDS is widely recognized as sort of the cream of the crop within the Afghan public sector. There were some individuals who were illiterate, and they were being helped out by colleagues. There were some rudimentary training programs that were available to NDS, and they were trying to minimize the problem as much as possible.

Afghanistan committee  With Ambassador Hoffmann's encouragement we had very preliminary discussions with ANP. They saw the program as being applicable to training ANP, but to use their wording it would have to be “dumbed down” for ANP personnel. As Geoffrey was saying, the fundamental models are pictured in a video.

Afghanistan committee  Yes, we've been asked two or three times by DFAIT, by the RCMP working with DFAIT, to put forward another submission. Those submissions have gone in, and at first when they asked for the submissions they came back to us and said “We can't go ahead with that work because we don't have any money”.

Afghanistan committee  That's right.

Afghanistan committee  Yes.

Afghanistan committee  I mean April 2011.

Afghanistan committee  Yes, in Kabul. People were coming from across the country, so we had representatives from all provinces.

Afghanistan committee  I don't think there's any question that this kind of organizational development is absolutely required. One of the things we found was that there's not a lot of strategic thinking that goes on in the law enforcement sector in Afghanistan. I suspect it's generally across the public sector, but I don't have exposure to the other sectors.

Afghanistan committee  I think a significant number. I was frankly shocked at Mr. Saleh standing beside me in the graduation saying all of those guys were trained by the KGB. I was quite surprised by that.

Afghanistan committee  In the NDS academy, just down from the Intercon Hotel--

Afghanistan committee  We were extremely well looked after by the embassy. We did not stay at the embassy. We did not stay in the diplomatic part of Kabul. We stayed as close to the NDS academy as possible.

Afghanistan committee  We received a couple of bomb threats that were direct, but nothing—

Afghanistan committee  I don't believe so, no.

Afghanistan committee  Absolutely. They had a true thirst for knowledge in virtually all subject matters that we raised. I think the illiteracy rate is lower in NDS than in other organizations. These people are not stupid by any means, and they understood what we were talking about.