III. Canadian Priorities: Benchmarks for Progress
The Government this year has strengthened and concentrated the Canadian engagement in Afghanistan in three crucial ways. First, we are focused on achieving results by 2011, when Canada’s military presence in Kandahar is to end. Second, we are focusing our civilian and military efforts in Kandahar, where Canadian soldiers, diplomats, development specialists, police, corrections officials and others can work jointly for greater effect. (The number of Canadian civilians posted in Kandahar rose by 20 in the quarter, to 51; another 23 were in Kabul.) And third, we have reshaped our engagement in a coherent set of six policy priorities—the mission framework described in our first quarterly report, and addressed in detail below.
To accomplish that concentration and achieve progress, we have introduced benchmarks by which Parliament and Canadians can judge whether, how and in which priorities our mission is succeeding. Many benchmarks are numerical—counting numbers of trained soldiers or teachers, for example. Others are more qualitative, conveying assessments of governmental abilities or political change.
All our benchmarks are consistent with those identified by Afghans themselves and embedded in the Afghanistan Compact and the Afghanistan National Development Strategy. But they have been specifically devised to gauge progress in the six priorities of Canada’s Afghan engagement. All are presented in an appendix in this report.
Three points bear repeating. The first is that Afghanistan has endured decades of poverty, misrule and warfare and ranks among the world’s least developed countries; the present conflict there is immensely complicated, deeply rooted in Afghanistan’s complex history, and exacerbated by the turmoil of the region. The second point is that Canada is one of many countries contributing to the improvement of Afghanistan’s security, governance and development. It is obvious that we cannot control most events there. The third point is that, while our objectives in Afghanistan are realistic and achievable, Afghanistan will remain a developing country for many years—with all the challenges faced by developing countries. Notwithstanding all that, we can design and conduct our engagement to maximize the probability of making progress in each of our priorities.
