"Afghanistan made me optimistic. People there have never given up hope," said Mr. Alexander, a rookie MP first elected on May 2, defeating Liberal incumbent Mark Holland in Ajax-Pickering, Ont.
"If you look at the lives of ordinary Afghans, who are trying to get their kids through school, find jobs themselves, or rebuild their houses or develop their agriculture, there has been a huge amount of improvement over the last 10 years by almost any measure."
He noted that the Afghan economy has boomed, roads are being built, medical clinics and schools are being constructed and there's more being done to improve Afghans lives than Canadians know. It's the premise of his new book, The Long Way Back: Afghanistan's Quest for Peace, published by Harper Collins and to be released Sept. 10.
"I have a very strong sense of the achievements which are sometimes mundane in media terms, they're not flashy, but they make a difference to millions of ordinary lives. On that kind of foundation, you can build the rule of law, you can build order and peace," Mr. Alexander said, noting that while peace has yet to be achieved, it's clearer now how to get there.
He told The Hill Times last week that the main issue preventing peace is the relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan and how each country deals with the Taliban.
"As I say in the book, reconstruction needs to continue. We do need to continue efforts to eliminating terrorism, we do need to continue to strengthen everyone's ability to protect Afghan civilians, but above and beyond that, there needs to be a big political effort to achieve a settlement between Afghanistan and Pakistan that would ensure that intervention and interference across that border doesn't happen again, but which would also ensure that it is a real border, recognized by both sides," said Mr. Alexander, who serves as Parliamentary secretary to the Minister of National Defence.
Canada's engagement with Afghanistan began in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. The Canadian government committed military and development resources to the U.S.-led mission until this year. Canada now operates in a development capacity, with 1,000 soldiers remaining in Afghanistan until 2014 as Afghan forces assume responsibility for their own security. The government's four priorities in this area are: helping with education and health, advancing rule of law and human rights, promoting regional diplomacy and delivering humanitarian assistance.
Since 2002, 157 members of the Canadian Forces have been killed serving in the Afghanistan mission. In addition, four Canadian civilians were killed, including two aid workers, a diplomat and a journalist.
Prior to joining elected politics, Mr. Alexander was a career bureaucrat, working for 18 years in the Canadian foreign service. His first posting was at the Canadian embassy in Russia. He'll be hosting a book launch Friday, Sept. 9 (also his 43rd birthday), in Toronto at Osgoode Hall from 5:30 to 8 p.m. with invited guests. When asked what he wants readers to take away from his book, he said he wants them to take note of the positive achievements Canada has made so far in Afghanistan "and that the real security challenge, the real key to bringing peace is an enduring settlement between Afghanistan and Pakistan as state and as a society."
The Q&A has been edited for length and style.
Why did you want to write this book?
"I thought it was a terribly important story, not just for Canada, and our contribution was really outsized in many ways, but for the whole international community because so much was invested by so many countries and so much more obviously by the Afghans themselves—hope, determination, resources, lives. I felt that story deserved to be told."
In an interview last year with The Hill Times, Esprit de Corps publisher Scott Taylor said that Canada's 1,000 soldiers staying until 2014 in Afghanistan is the last thing Afghans need. He said, "We're not laying the foundation. We're just constantly coming in and painting and putting in new drapes quickly to make it look like we're doing something, it's a façade." Do you agree?
"Absolutely not. When I arrived in Afghanistan in 2003, there was no professional police force. The army was a fledgling force of a few thousand trained people without any capacity to operate independently. Today, both of those institutions are back, and unfortunately fighting the Taliban but carrying more and more of the burden of responsibility for security of their own country. That's an enormously positive development. ... We are responding to a very earnest, a very serious and widely-shared aspiration on the part of the Afghans when we agreed to continue training the army and police."
Canadian Press reporter Murray Brewster is also writing a book about his experience in Afghanistan, and he told The Hill Times in July that "I think we came in with some very naïve expectations. It's been a very brutal awakening and that's my impression of this place. When I say the jury's still out, it's out because I don't think we can actually say with any degree of certainty how whether what we've tried to accomplish here has actually been accomplished." What's your response to that?
"Well, I think the accomplishments are real and we can be clear about what they are. Whether they will endure is to some extent uncertain. It depends on the decisions Afghans will make, it depends on decisions their neighbours, including Pakistan will make, and it also depends on our continuing effort, especially our political effort, to shape a settlement that will bring peace."
He also said that he's worried about Canadians' attention to the war waning and that the war has "largely fallen off the public agenda." Do you agree? Should there be debates going on about these issues, in Parliament, about Pakistan and the border? Should Canadians be paying attention?
"We do need that debate. ... The transition towards an Afghan lead on security is something that Afghans want, it's something that most Canadians want, and it's something most of the world wants, so you know, we have a concensus on the way forward on many fronts with regard to Afghanistan and that sometimes means there's less controversy and fewer headlines. On the issue of political settlement, I agree there will need to be more debate, but at the appropriate time."
Lauryn Oates, a Canadian aid worker in Afghanistan, wrote in Postmedia Aug. 31, that "when the international community gave up on Afghanistan after a feeble effort at a peace process, during the civil war of the 1990s led by the mujahedeen who decided to eat their own, a bloodbath ensued, followed by the Taliban, followed by bin Laden, al- Qaida, and the atrocities of 9/11. It's not long enough ago to warrant forgetting. There are lessons there that we need now, desperately. We ignore that history at our peril, and to leave Afghanistan in disarray is to dishonour those lost 10 years ago in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania." How do you respond to that? Are we abandoning Afghanistan and leaving it in disarray?
"I really don't think there's any danger of abandonment. There's a transition under way, but there's still heavy engagement and in some fields, it's stronger from the whole international community than it ever has before. But Lauryn is absolutely right, that to understand the last 10 years, and to understand the starting point, you know the acute poverty, the lack of institutions, the stark forms of insecurity Afghanistan is facing, you have to look at the decade or more before 9/11 and the neglect, the abject neglect, of Afghanistan on the part of the international community was a fact of life for most of that time."
Ten years after the 9/11 attacks, and the death of Osama bin Laden, is the West "winning" the "war on terror"?
"It's not so much a question of winning for us. The people who need to win and take their lives back from, free their lives from the kind of intimidation and fear and impunity that terrorism represents are the Afghans themselves, are the Pakistanis themselves. And that has not been achieved—let's be very clear—but, the path towards peace is clear, and the steps that need to be taken are feasible and that is what is sustaining hope in those regions right now."
What did you learn from being in Afghanistan for six years?
"Well, I certainly learned humility in the face of difficult circumstances. Any foreigner who goes to Afghanistan claiming to have all the solutions before arriving is starting out on the wrong foot. I think we all learned the importance of ... local knowledge and going with the grain of local custom and local experience. ... I also learned that it is possible to overcome even the greatest obstacle if the international community acts together."
What's your best memory from there?
"I think it's the kids that leaves the biggest impression on your imagination—their optimism, their laughter, their flexibility, their drive to try to do the right thing, to go to school, to learn English for some of them, to learn computer skills, to start a business, the girls you saw in the morning in their black and white uniform almost marching to school not because it was regimented but because they wanted to be there on time, and they wanted to be together. Those are all inspiring vignettes that come back to me, and it's really for their sake that all of this has happened. We all know their parents haven't enjoyed peace in their lifetime, but there really is every possibility that those kids can still live most of their lives in a peaceful and more orderly society."
Origin
Source: Hill Times
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