Video Netcast

Ambassador Sproule discusses:

 Canada's support to the Afghanistan Compact and the role it will play in measuring the international community's success in Afghanistan. Video Netcast (in English only with transcripts). QuickTime | Windows Media

 Canada, alongside its international allies, is looking to address some of the challenges that lie ahead for Afghanistan (in English only with transcripts). QuickTime | Windows Media


Transcript

Canada's support to the Afghanistan Compact and the role it will play in measuring the international community's success in Afghanistan.

An important time frame that we are looking at is five years, because at the end of January [2006], at the London Conference, the new Afghanistan Compact was agreed to, where the international community made commitments to Afghanistan for five years, and Afghanistan made commitments to the international community for five years.

The Afghanistan Compact, as I said, has a five-year time frame. It is designed to provide very specific benchmarks, goals and objectives that the international community and the Afghanistan government can work towards together. And we can check to see our progress. It follows on from the Bonn Agreement. In Bonn, specific goals were set out—for example, the establishment of a new constitution, presidential elections, as well as national and provincial assembly elections.

Those were all accomplished, so it was now time for us to move to the next stage, which is to a great extent focusing on three areas. One area is security and providing the Afghans with the wherewithal to take over their own security, over time. Another is the area of governance and helping them build their institutions so they can provide the means to be self-sufficient economically and improve the human rights conditions and the governance conditions for their people. And finally, in the area of economic development, there are specific benchmarks set out about goals: participation of women in society, involvement of the population in decision making, extension of the central government authority to all the provinces where the provinces feel they benefit. So that provides a very good framework to check—for the international community, the Afghanistan government and its people to see the progress we are making and ensure we are on track.

Transcript

Canada, alongside its international allies, is looking to address some of the challenges that lie ahead for Afghanistan. 

Something that I am very concerned about is the role of narcotics in the country. Right now, estimates suggest that between 50 and 60 percent of the gross national product could be derived from narcotics manufacture and trafficking. And those involved in that trade have also become involved in some of the terrorism and insurgency efforts. This will be a very difficult issue to tackle. I think we are well on our way to addressing it, but if we do not succeed in extricating Afghanistan from its economic dependence on the narcotics trade, a lot of the other things will be very difficult to implement.

Canada, not surprisingly, is a very important player in the international community in Afghanistan. We have, as I said, a very large military engagement: 2,300 soldiers in Kandahar alone, and then we have others who are deployed in Kabul and other places in the country to assist. And they will be part of the transition of the country to a NATO-led international security assistance force. And so Canada is on the leading edge of NATO's involvement in Afghanistan, where they will be moving, this summer, into southern Afghanistan; they have been primarily restricted to the north. So it is important for Canada to be there because internationally Afghanistan is viewed as a place that is a recovering state and should never again become a haven for terrorism.

At the same time, we understand that this is an important stage in NATO's development. We are an important player and member in NATO and we want to ensure its success.

On the development side, it's our largest bilateral program in the world. The Afghan people recognize the contribution that Canada is making both in the military sense and in the financial and development sense. As result, diplomatically we play a very prominent role in Kabul. Indicative of that is the fact that our embassy there has increased to 20 Canadians, almost doubling what we had only a year ago, and we have 34 locally engaged staff. So our presence is large, it is important, it's recognized that it is important, and we are quite exited about the challenges.