when I hear about "drive-by" ultimatums to Afghan villagers to cooperate with coalition forces or else lose assistance. The obvious rebuttal from the Afghan side - which I actually heard voiced once when a U.S. Army Major made a more low-key plea for cooperation - is "if you want us to help you why don't you give us some weapons or stick around in order to protect us from the Taliban?" We can't expect Afghan villagers to risk their lives to provide us with intel when we have no ability to protect them from reprisals because we are clueless as to who is doing the intimidation and because we return to our FOBs rather than live with the villagers. There is also an assumption, that is probably false in many cases, that Afghan villagers actually care enough about foreign assistance to change their beliefs or patterns of behavior. I do not know the particulars of this "model village" but I wouldn't be surprised if the project was designed by Canadian development officers with Afghans viewed more as recipients than participants. Finally, I doubt that the Canadian military has the power to make a unilateral decision to cut off assistance to this model village project. The civilian agencies have a say in this and there is a strong political imperative from Ottawa to continue with the project.