Priority 2. Strengthen Afghan institutional capacity to deliver core services and promote economic growth, enhancing the confidence of Kandaharis in their government.

To improve lives and build a better future for Afghans—and to address the discontent exploited by insurgents—Afghan institutions must improve capacities for delivering basic services.

Canadian Objective for 2011: By 2011, we expect that Kandahar’s provincial administration and core ministries of the Afghan government will be better able to provide basic services to key districts of Kandahar province.

Insurgent action, including personal intimidation and physical destruction of schools, continued to keep many Kandahar schools closed. In fact, Afghan authorities reported that 180 of 364schools in the province were not open during the quarter, in large part because of security concerns. (Schools closed for the summer from June 5 to September 4.)

The work of building, expanding or repairing 50 schools in key districts by 2011—a Canadian signature project—continued. No new schools were completed in this quarter, but 28 were under construction. Altogether, five schools have been completed since the project began in 2008.

Progress was also achieved in other areas of education: literacy training for Afghan National Police; vocational training; and approval of a
$1.5-million skills-for-employment project at the Kandahar Technical School, an initiative to develop market-relevant skills among young men and women.

Rehabilitation of the Dahla Dam and its irrigation system—a second Canadian signature project—advanced through its crucial inception phase. A new bridge was being used regularly by Kandaharis, and a new road to the site was partially completed. A project inception report and security inception report were prepared—necessary preliminaries to detailed engineering work and security arrangements to follow. Experts in irrigation, hydrology, agriculture and governance have been assembled from across Canada for wide-ranging consultations in support of this $50‑million project.

To track progress on the Dahla project more precisely, our benchmark has been supplemented with a new indicator and target. The new indicator will require quarterly reporting on all current rehabilitation activities as work proceeds, and the new target calls for completion of each activity according to the project plan. Similarly, our economic opportunities benchmark will now record the number of enterprises and cooperatives operating in key districts; this is a better measure of economic activity than numbers of newly established enterprises and co-ops.