OTTAWA—The Canadian government defended its reconstruction efforts in war-torn Afghanistan on Friday in the face of growing criticism at home that its role in the NATO-led mission there has become too narrowly focused on combat, rather than on rebuilding the country.
Helping Afghans to help themselves takes time, senior Canadian government officials said Friday, adding that nation building cannot succeed while Taliban insurgents run rampant.
The officials addressed a media conference called one day after the release of a report highly critical of the security and development mission in Afghanistan.
The report, released by the Senlis Council, a U.K.-based international policy think tank, says "the international community is losing the campaign for the hearts and minds of the people of southern Afghanistan and the Taliban are winning it." It warns that "this puts the British and Canadian servicemen who are posted there at risk."
This year the country plunged into the most severe period of violence since U.S.-led forces overthrew the Taliban Islamic fundamentalist government in 2001. Canadians are fighting at the frontlines of the combat and 44 have died in Afghanistan since 2002, most in recent months.
Canada is among 12 countries leading reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan under the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. Key goals for the reconstruction include improved security, governance, rule of law, and human rights, as well as economic and social development.
Canada's Provincial Reconstruction Team has one diplomat, three development workers, over 300 military troops, and five civilian police deployed in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan.
On Monday Canada's opposition Bloc Quebecois party threatened to declare a non-confidence motion in the ruling Conservative government unless the government focuses more on reconstruction in Afghanistan. The same criticism has been voiced by some Afghan civilians and parliamentarians in several NATO member countries.
At the briefing, journalists questioned the government on the Senlis report findings and on whether the government was too focused on battling the Taliban.
The report found foreign development agencies "are not functioning in southern Afghanistan and that even the most basic aid such as food relief is so minimal that it is functionally non-existent."
A spokesperson for Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) called these charges "abjectly false." He noted that the UN World Food Program and Children's Fund have not confirmed any cases of starvation in Kandahar.
A spokesperson for Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) said Canada's reconstruction team is striving to develop "alternative livelihood" for poor rural farmers that have been drawn into the poppy trade, which supports the Taliban.
"You cannot immediately expect a poor farmer and his family to move off dependency on the crop unless you've got some alternative to offer them for the short and immediate term," he remarked.
Programs underway include micro-financing, cash-for-work, horticultural centre creation, and road rehabilitation.
Asked how long it will take for the Afghanistan National Police to no longer require international assistance, an official from Canada's federal police agency, the RCMP, said it would be "irresponsible to speculate."
He relayed, "It's been said that it's not that the insurgents or any groups against the national government of Afghanistan are that strong, it's that the institutions themselves are so weak.
"It's taken 30 years of conflict to get the institutions to the condition they are in now. You just don't build that up overnight," he said.
An official with DFAIT said Canadian soldiers are allowing devepment workers and diplomats to do their job.
"Without stability there can be no sustainable development," he said.
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