While the Afghan detainee access and treatment issue has kept Canadian politicians and media very busy over the past two weeks, the people of Afghanistan continued to face a series of serious challenges on the security, economic-development and state-building fronts almost 5½ years following the ouster of the Taliban.

As far as the detainee issue is concerned, the Afghans, having previously reached similar bilateral arrangements with some other nations, did not hesitate to update and upgrade the 2005 arrangement to give further assurances to Canada that we are willing to work together to improve detainee conditions under the law, to provide direct access for monitoring and, more importantly, to continue with the important job of helping restore good governance practices and advance the cause of implementing rule of law in the country.

Afghans realized that the allegations need to be looked into, that the claims need to be checked for validity and that, as part of the reforms that are taking place in a devastated country with 30 years of conflict behind, we need to find solutions that work for Afghanistan and the international community, by realizing that state-building is a long-term proposition that takes time, capacity, resources and political will.

On other fronts, the armed Taliban factions, who are increasingly resorting to extreme methods of violence against soft and hard targets, are becoming more adept at manipulating public opinions through kidnappings, suicide attacks and intimidation tactics to weaken our resolve.

The Afghan people dread their attempts at making a comeback. That would be the end of democracy, human rights, education for girls and rights for women, development and reconstruction.

By association with extremist and terrorist groups, it would also re-create a serious threat to security at the regional as well as global levels.

We cannot allow that to happen.

We need to push ahead on the security front to stabilize the provinces along the Afghan-Pakistan Durand Line frontier and continue to engage regional countries, especially Pakistan to work with us to prevent extremist and terrorist elements from finding refuge, arms, resources and training in our region.

On the other hand we need to accelerate our efforts at putting people to work through developmental projects that promote economic growth, help institutions with capacity building and service delivery, and fight corruption and the poppy-dependent economy.

NATO and other international security forces also need to increase their levels of coordination with Afghans and amongst each other to prevent civilian casualties, and come up with measures to maintain trust and friendship with locals.

Donor countries and organizations from more than 60 nations met in Kabul last week as part of the Afghanistan Development Forum to address the country's development priorities. The Afghans expressed their appreciation for continued international assistance to help with all recovery and reform benchmarks. We also made it clear that people now expect to see aid money be better managed and provide effective results that can be felt and seen.

Afghanistan is still a fragile country in transition from war and devastation to peace and rebuilding. It faces numerous challenges, but its people are eager for change and the international community's commitment to work on this strategic mission in one of the world's poorest and most disadvantaged nations is one key factor for success.