Canada's Foreign Aid

Canada has devoted a large proportion of its foreign aid dollars to Afghanistan in a two-pronged effort to try to effect meaningful humanly-necessary change in that country. On the one hand, helping to battle an Islamist insurgency determined to reappoint itself governors of the country, on the other hand, trying to invest in civil infrastructure for a country that has never had any to rely upon.

From striving to build schools and health centres, and driving a polio eradication campaign, and a project to rehabilitate a provincial dam to improve the local farming irrigation system, the lives of Afghans has been markedly improved. That is, a small proportion of the population, those directly affected by these applications in peace-keeping in an arena of war-making.

The battlefield successes by Canadian troops against the Taliban were balanced off by the successes in CIDA's support for democratic development, NGOs involved in teaching civil administration, reforming the justice system, encouraging women to educate themselves and become assertive to fulfilling their needs in employment and health and security.

"It would take me until tomorrow morning to explain all the ways that Canada has helped us on the battlefield, within the brigade and with reconstruction", according to a commander of the Afghan army brigade working with Canadians across Kandahar. "What the Canadians have done for us is beyond imagination. How much I will miss them", a district leader claimed in an interview.

Canada's soldiers, development officers and diplomats all worked tirelessly in a combined effort to help Afghanistan become a more humane place for its population. But they cannot change the Government of Afghanistan. And it, along with the national police and the Afghan military, are consumed with a tradition of graft and corruption.

We've done what we could, time to allow the country to gather itself together and do for itself.