OTTAWA—As the bodies of four Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan returned to their final resting place in Canada last week, President Hamid Karzai was in Ottawa to tell Canadians the loss was "sad, but worth it."
Karzai addressed a joint session of Parliament on Friday and acknowledged that "many Canadians are pondering their country's role in Afghanistan."
He spoke briefly of the near total destruction brought to his nation after more than two decades of war and occupation involving the former Soviet Union, al Qaeda, and the Taliban regime.
Karzai said the world ignored Afghanistan's transformation into a "breeding ground" for terrorists. "We had nothing to sell and nothing to buy so we did not matter," he said. That is, until September 11, 2001.
It was then that the Western world realized "the cost of ignoring Afghanistan was higher than the cost of helping it," Karzai said.
Afghanistan is the single largest recipient of Canadian aid, estimated at over $3 billion. Karzai thanked prime ministers Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin, and Stephen Harper for making Canada a leader in rebuilding Afghanistan.
Thanks to the international coalition forces of more than 35 countries and significant Canadian help, "Afghanistan today is profoundly different from what it was five years ago," he said.
Karzai added that his country has developed "a most progressive constitution," which allowed for both presidential and parliamentary elections.
A thunderous applause followed Karzai's announcement that 28 percent of Afghanistan's Members of Parliament are women, and among six million children now attending school, 35 percent are girls.
He also said that over 4.5 million refugees had returned to Afghanistan. "Afghanistan is once again the home of all Afghans," he said.
According to Karzai, the Afghan economy has grown from one of $180 income per capita to $350 per capita in five years. However, "the menace of narcotics"—drugs and poppies that are funding terrorists—remains a serious problem, and the absence of alternative sources of income for farmers threatens Afghanistan's economic foundation.
Karzai's carefully-worded speech did not name countries that provide support for insurgents. He said it was important to go beyond military operations that deal only with the "symptoms of terrorism," and address ideological, political, and financial factors.
Karzai provided a time frame of five to ten years for Canada's continued involvement. "I hope you have the patience to bear with us that long," he said, "because Canada has made a tremendous difference already."
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