III. Canadian Priorities: Reporting Progress

In mid-2008 Canada established and announced the six priorities that define our engagement in Afghanistan. These priorities are to: enable the ANSF in Kandahar to sustain a safer environment and promote law and order; strengthen Afghan institutional capacity to deliver basic services; provide humanitarian assistance for the most vulnerable people; enhance border security with facilitation of Afghan-Pakistani dialogue; help advance Afghanistan’s democratic governance; and facilitate Afghan-led political reconciliation. These priorities reflect Canada’s particular areas of competence to contribute to a better life for Afghans. And they respond to the needs identified by Afghanistan’s own development strategy, as part of a coordinated international program of aid to Afghanistan’s security, governance and development.

Action on Canada’s priorities is being designed and executed to achieve concrete progress by 2011, when our military mission in Kandahar ends. For greater effect, we continue to concentrate military and civilian efforts in Kandahar while maintaining an influential diplomatic and development presence in Kabul, so that security, governance and development programs reinforce each other.

We have also embedded benchmarks in our programming, enabling Parliament and Canadians to measure the progress of Canada’s engagement in each of the six priorities. The benchmarks, and the results for this quarter, are presented in the Appendix of this report.