Is It International Development Or International Disinterest?

After more than a year of aggressively selling Canadians on the importance of our mission in Afghanistan, you’d think Hillier, Harper, and company would get it by now. But all indications are that disinterest has won the day, at least when it comes to the all-important rebuilding of Afghanistan. Whether it’s CIDA, the government, or the chief of defence staff who brought us to Afghanistan in the first place, the focus has been on pounding the Taliban to dust and little more. Turning that dust into bricks will simply have to wait for another day; when that day will be seems of little interest to anyone. Is Stephen Harper interested? He’s talked authoritatively about the need to succeed in Afghanistan, but the rhetoric has been almost exclusively focused on military success, his oratory peppered with fighting metaphors, his calls to the world community concerned with troop commitments, not aid. Almost assuredly briefed on both the corruption problems of the Karzai government we are helping to prop up, and the extortion by security forces we’ve helped train (recent BBC field reports talk of government soldiers demanding money for safe passage through checkpoints), Harper has been mum on the subject, to the point of turning Hamid Karzai’s recent visit to Ottawa into a virtual love-in. He must also be aware of the “$1000” men of Kabul, an excessive number of over-paid foreign “consultants” consuming much of what little aid funding has managed to find its way to Afghanistan. While Harper will stand up in the UN and call for more support for NATO efforts in Afghanistan, he seems disinterested in having his foreign minister do more than play “Meet the Parents” with Condoleezza Rice. Precious funds are being frittered away, in full sight of the people for whom it was pledged. There is little demonstrated interest by the Conservative government, and specifically Foreign Affairs, to get participating countries to focus more on results, and less on lining the pockets of their contractors. What interest his government has seems limited to dispatching one Josée Verner, Minister of International Cooperation, to Afghanistan. The soft-nosed minister responsible for all things CIDA recently made this startling comment: ''Every Canadian wants to know: ‘How do we spend the money in Afghanistan?’ I'll be able to tell them I met officials here and I announced projects.'' Did she ask said officials how they are spending it? Did she enquire about results? Perhaps she just gave everybody a hug. With regards to announced projects, Ms. Verner stated that CIDA has funded the construction of 350 schools, and is funding 93 projects (either completed or in process) with our PRT in Kandahar. Of course, her aides couldn’t actually provide a list of such schools, nor could military officials do more than scratch their heads when asked about the PRT funding. All of this would not be happening if Rick Hillier, whose brainchild the Afghan mission was, had been more interested in flexing his considerable political muscles in favour of development, rather than merely playing cheerleader to the troops and military pitchman to the rest of Canada. CIDA has had more than a year to free up funds for which our PRT is still waiting. We’ve had a year to take the lead in forcing the world community’s hand (that would be ‘D’ for diplomacy) on aid and confronting Karzai’s government on corruption. Instead we’re facing a situation where we’re down to, as NATO’s Afghanistan commander, General David Richards, suggests, no more than six months to win Afghanis over or lose them forever, while CIDA and Foreign Affairs are only now waking up to the problem. For the man who could move a government to war, it’s a shame he hasn’t been equally interested in fostering peace and reconstruction. To use your own phrase, Rick: get engaged.