Published by Senator Colin Kenny on 24 April 2008
The success of the war that Canada is fighting in Afghanistan is going to depend on the intelligent use of weapons. But not the kind that kill people.
All Canada's automatic rifles and rockets and grenade launchers will have been wasted if Afghans don't soon gain access to the weapons they need the most: education, justice, and job opportunities.
When I entered Afghanistan with four other members of the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence last week, I had real doubts about Canadians fighting a war on behalf of a population so clearly in disarray - riddled with corruption, saddled with a medieval mindset and skewed by a drug trade running wild.
When I left Afghanistan four days later, my primary image was no longer of brave Canadians trying to prop up an ineffectual government and a hopeless society, and I believe my colleagues also came away with a different impression than we went in with.
Yes, we saw brave Canadians, a most impressive array of young folks from across the country, most of whom care deeply about their mission. But we also saw courageous Afghans prepared to take incredible risks to escape decades of misery.
Those Afghans that have managed to survive have lived under power-hungry warlords, brutal Soviet invaders, and the demonic Taliban. For those who live in provinces like Kandahar, where Canadians are posted, the next decade represents their chance - probably their only chance - to taste some semblance of sane and civilized lives.
Of course this may not work . The challenges are staggering and the window of opportunity may close. But what is clear is that there is no hope of progress for these people unless development programs and projects sponsored by countries like Canada take hold. Right now there is no chance of them taking hold without our troops holding the Taliban at bay while Afghans take chances to study, work and build new lives.
And they do takes chances. We talked to students who have been threatened - and whose families have been threatened - on the way home from school. Education - especially for women - is a huge threat to those who need the continuance of blind obedience in order to rule.
We learned that even during the reign of the Taliban covert schools existed - even for girls, even in deeply religious Islamic communities. There is a thirst for education in this impoverished wasteland.
We talked to workers on a Canadian road project who had to change the time they came to work in the morning because it wasn't the same time that farmers generally took to the roads. The Taliban were picking off these workers because they knew that if they making their way somewhere at 7 a.m., they were probably working for foreigners. That crime is punishable in a variety of hideous ways.
Some day, everyone hopes, the Afghan army and the Afghan police will be both strong and fair, and development projects will be able to take place under their protective wings. But not yet, certainly not in provinces like Kandahar.
When foreigners are involved in individual projects, they need military protection to get to them. We met one woman, helping to reform the prison system, who required three military vehicles and a dozen personnel to get her safely to where she needed to go.
When Afghans run Canadian-sponsored development projects - and because of the security situation nearly all projects in Kandahar are run by Afghans - they put their lives at risk.
Canadian aid directors - co-operating with the Canadian military which itself must do some of the aid work , like road-building - are doing a good job under difficult circumstances. Their mantra is consultation.They don't go ahead with projects unless deemed priorities by community councils. That is important, because we are there to enable Afghans to get where they want to go, not to direct them where we want them to go.
Right now our development enabling can't be done without our military enabling. Which is OK, according to the Afghans we talked to when Canadian officials weren't present. Maybe some of them were telling us what they thought we wanted to hear, but many expressed heartfelt appreciation for both Canada's development efforts and the military efforts that make the development possible.
Canada has subscribed to various aid theories over the past four decades as we have tried to do patch jobs in scores of countries around the world, sometimes with little lasting effect. The two theories that have always made the most sense are (a) focus on a handful of countries rather than try to serve every country in need; (b) focus on the poorest of the world's poor; (c) stay on site long enough that donors and recipients understand each other well enough to ensure progress than can be sustained.
Afghanistan is as poor a country as you can get, with as mournful a history as any country in the world. Canada is right to focus on it - not because Osama bin Laden is holed up somewhere in this part of the world, but because Afghans desperately need us.
Canada is No. 1 on the list of per-capita development donors to Afghanistan. Our aid program recently got a boost when Hanif Atmar, Afghanistan's minister of education, asked Canada to take the lead in advising the government on co-ordinating education across the country.
Canadians are always going to want to be helping somewhere. Despite our committee's doubts over the past few years and our criticisms of the Canadian International Development Agency, right now we'd have to say that there is no better place for Canada to be focusing our aid than this.
We're distributing weapons to Afghans. Of the very best kind.