Afghanistan on a roll: with evidence of important development successes, this is no time to abandon the war effort.

Following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, then defence minister Art Eggleton boldly proclaimed his Liberal government was committed to whatever measures were required to rid Afghanistan of al Qaeda and its state supporters, the Taliban. "We're in this campaign against terrorism all the way," he said. Less than six years later, the Liberal party is calling to pull Canadian troops out of Afghanistan by 2009, suggesting captured Taliban terrorists be brought back to Canada, and criticizing the Conservative government for "overspending on Afghanistan equipment."

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The NDP have gone the Liberals one better, demanding the government remove its troops from Kandahar immediately and redirect them to Sudan.

NDP defence critic Dawn Black says Canada is focusing exclusively on the counter-insurgency, and neglecting development in Afghanistan. "We're going on search-and-destroy missions, and we just create more terrorists that way, and turn ordinary Afghans against us," says the New Westminster-Coquitlam MP.

A new study on Afghanistan's infant mortality rate tells a different story, though--a story of how Afghanistan has improved since its liberation. Improvement in women's access to medical care since the Taliban fell has led to the prevention of 40,000 deaths a year, according to the preliminary results of a Johns Hopkins University study. And those numbers are conservative, since Afghan health really began to improve toward the end of the study, said Benjamin Loevinsohn, senior public health specialist at the World Bank.

In 2001, Afghanistan's infant mortality rate was estimated to be 165 per one thousand live births. In 2006, that number decreased to 135 per one thousand. The researchers "found improvements in virtually all aspects of care in almost every province," said a joint statement by Afghanistan's Public Health Ministry and the World Bank.

Loevinsohn attributed the reduction in mortality to the expansion of health clinics in rural areas, wider distribution of basic vaccinations against measles, polio and tetanus, and improvements in natal care, such as more midwives, nurses and birth attendants.

Black concedes that the dwindling mortality rate is a "wonderful thing," but she downplays the study's importance, saying that Afghanistan "still has one of the highest maternal death rates in the world." She points to Peggy Mason, formerly Canada's ambassador for disarmament to the UN, as a voice she listens to on Afghanistan.

But Mason actually thinks it's unwise to leave Afghanistan immediately. "I think we should be pounding our fists, getting NATO to change its strategy, but I think we have a responsibility to Afghanistan now," says Mason, a senior fellow at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University.

There are other indicators that life in Afghanistan has improved significantly since the fall of the Taliban. The World Bank's director for Afghanistan, Alastair McKechnie, says the Afghan economy has grown at rates greater than 10 per cent, on average, during the past five years. Over that period, Afghanistan became South Asia's fastest-growing economy. "The differences between early 2002 and today are quite staggering--whether it's the number of shops that are trading, whether it's the condition of buildings that have been rehabilitated, whether it's the capacity of government to implement programs, [or] whether it's the amount of traffic on the road," says McKechnie.

Progress often goes unreported. In 2002, Afghanistan signed onto the international mine ban treaty, the pet project of former Liberal foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy. In August, the United Nations Development Programme reported that nearly 200,000 landmines had been destroyed since January 2005. More than a thousand caches of ammunition have been surveyed and more than 12,000 anti-tank mines destroyed.

Notable advancements have occurred in the past month. The first HIV/AIDS diagnostic center in Afghanistan's northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif began operations in May in one of the city's hospitals. The testing facility, which is equipped with modern treatment technology, follows the establishment of similar centres in Kabul and two other provinces. The head of the AIDS control department of the Health Ministry said the ministry is planning to open testing facilities in other provinces.

Why Sudan should take priority over Afghanistan remains a mystery. Liberal Leader Stephane Dion complained that the Afghanistan mission "hinder[s] Canada's ability to undertake peace-support missions elsewhere, such as Darfur or Haiti." Black wants Canadian troops redirected to Darfur, where they can play a role that does not involve counter-insurgency. "It's a UN mission, the Sudan government has said that it welcomes troops; it's a different type of mission than the violent one we're involved in in Afghanistan," she says.

Actually, it is far from clear that intervening in Sudan would be such an easy operation for Canada. In April 2006, Osama bin Laden released a tape in which he anticipated UN peacekeeping troops in Muslim Sudan: "I call on the mujahedeen and their supporters, especially in Sudan and the Arabian peninsula, to prepare for a long war against the crusaders and plunderers in western Sudan." Bin Laden said he regarded foreign troops on Sudanese soil as a good reason to "defend Islam, its land and its people." And the Sudanese government has previously rejected numerous UN or NATO offers of troop contributions, calling them "neo-colonialist" and reneging on promises to accept them.

Military historian Jack Granatstein sees murkier motives behind the desire to abandon Afghanistan and commit to Sudan. "Afghanistan is seen as an American war, and the left is anti-American on principle," says Granatstein, a fellow at the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, a Calgary-based think-tank. Indeed, on April 19 in Parliament, Dion said that Harper's conditions for Afghanistan "seem to be the same sort of conditions that President George W. Bush imposed for ending the war in Iraq." And NDP Leader Jack Layton invokes Bush and America in nearly every speech he makes on Canada's role in Afghanistan.

Granatstein does see a genuine humanitarian motive in the case for Sudan, but he has trouble understanding why Afghanistan is seen as unworthy of liberal support. "It is very odd that a patriarchal society like Afghanistan is somehow not worth helping. Very odd."

Unlike the NDP and the Liberals, Granatstein is optimistic about Canada's long-term prospects in Afghanistan. He says that most Afghans are on the government's side, and that there is not an infinite number of insurgents to fight. "We have to eliminate their military, their ability to wage war and to spread terror. And we can do so."

Omar Samad, Afghanistan's ambassador to Canada, agrees: "The operations in the south last year with Afghan forces prevented the collapse of Kandahar into Taliban hands. Can you imagine the impact if we had failed to act on time?" His conclusion: "The mission in Afghanistan is winnable."