Who will protect civilian workers in Afghanistan?

When Canadian soldiers leave Kandahar in 2011, their civilian counterparts working on ambitious reconstruction and development projects will have to rely on private companies to protect them. That’s the message from Ron Hoffmann, Canada’s ambassador to Afghanistan. His comments confirm that there will be no Canadian troops left to protect Canada’s Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) headquarters in downtown Kandahar city, nor some of the signature projects that will stretch beyond 2011, such as the much-hyped Arghandab irrigation project. “There are many theoretical options on the table for how our civilian presence will be shaped and will look like, post-2011,” Hoffmann said. “But those decisions have not yet been made.”

Canwest News Service