Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, I'll jump to the recommendations. What is necessary now is to strike a fair balance in order to achieve these objectives and to attempt to improve the fate of the Afghans. If I must stick to essential recommendations, I would say that the task for Canada is, first, to ens

Foreign Affairs committee  Good afternoon. My name is Marc André Boivin and I am Deputy Director of the Réseau francophone de recherche sur les opérations de paix. I have previously had occasion to go to Afghanistan. I personally conducted interviews, in particular of people from the UN Assistance Mission

Foreign Affairs committee  Regarding pointing fingers at Pakistan, the thing is, the Musharraf government, in order to sustain itself, has allied itself with Islamist parties, Islamist parties who were backers of the Taliban. There's a direct link there. But to go with Mr. Beaudet on this, the bigger pictu

Foreign Affairs committee  There's one example there. Pakistan has its own set of problems. It has very complex governmental dynamics. To what extent Musharraf is involved, to what extent it is former ISI—

Foreign Affairs committee  I thought they were for Mr. Beaudet, regarding the gains, first off.

Foreign Affairs committee  As to how many kinds of Taliban there are, and where, when the Taliban were forced out, they obviously had to go into a clandestine mode. That makes it all the more difficult to say who's who. From the reports I've read—and you probably have access to more secretive ones than I

Foreign Affairs committee  Do you want to know how to convince Quebeckers?

Foreign Affairs committee  I will again quote Barnett Rubin. When he was here, he was asked whether it was possible to be successful in Afghanistan or whether the situation was desperate. Barnett Rubin, always quick with a comeback, immediately replied that it depended on what objectives had been set. I th

Foreign Affairs committee  However, things did work out in some countries. At the beginning of the 1990s, several civil wars were raging in Latin America, and had been ongoing for many years. However, these wars came to an end with the help of UN missions which had received fewer resources than anticipated

Foreign Affairs committee  Ultimately, that is what makes headlines, and it is what leads people to ask questions. We have never talked about this, but the Canadian Forces are currently undergoing a vast transformation program. There's been mostly talk of acquisition programs, but these did not happen in

Foreign Affairs committee  I want to add, then, to the question being asked.

Foreign Affairs committee  I had the pleasure of being here when Barnett Rubin came a few weeks back. He wrote a book called The Fragmentation of Afghanistan long before anybody was interested in Afghanistan. One of the key findings that he put forth in his book, looking at the last two centuries, was tha

Foreign Affairs committee  Good morning to you all. My name is Marc-André Boivin. I work for the Réseau francophone de recherche sur les opérations de paix, or it might be easier for you to say the Francophone Research Network on Peace Operations. This group is based at the University of Montreal. I have f

National Defence committee  This doubling of effort was actually agreed upon a long time ago and did not wait for last week. It's part of a gradual extension counter-clockwise of the ISAF mission to Afghanistan in general. ISAF was originally created by the UN, but only to provide security in Kabul. Followi

National Defence committee  I think that in the last few years a considerable amount of experience has been gained. I think the Canadian contingent has developed and has evolved in the way it trains soldiers. I have certainly witnessed some evolution in the training being provided. It's always a difficult