Thank you.

I think several things are important at this point. One is to recognize that there is not a working peace process in Afghanistan at the moment. Lots of people are going through the motions, but essentially the agreement that the Americans signed with the Taliban was an exit agreement for the United States, rather than a peace agreement for Afghanistan. Because the U.S., at that point, gave the Taliban everything that they really wanted, the Taliban have been engaged in strategic stalling since then, but that is no longer the main game.

Really, a crisis management approach is a much better one for the Canadian government and like-minded governments to take, recognizing that two things are very important.

One is to maintain support, not so much for any given government, but for a republican and pluralist system in Afghanistan, as opposed to the totalitarian order that the Taliban would like to impose. One way of doing that is to seek every diplomatic channel available to send a signal that those who attempt to impose a totalitarian order can expect to be marginalized and isolated internationally.

The other is with respect to vulnerable individuals to recognize that, at a certain point, millions of refugees may be flowing out of Afghanistan despite all of the constraints on people's movement that COVID has imposed. The numbers could well overwhelm the capacity of governments, such as those in Iran and Turkey, to prevent onward movement towards Europe. There will be demands for a range of countries in the world to step up to provide resettlement for people who will really have no realistic option of going safely back to Afghanistan in the foreseeable future.

Canada, which has a very long history of humanitarian contributions in this respect, I think has a role to play there too.

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