Chris Alexander says Canada and its allies should hold a conference to set new goals for Afghanistan.Della Rollins
Chris Alexander, Canada's former ambassador to Afghanistan, has announced he is seeking nomination in Ajax-Pickering for the Conservative Party in the next federal election.
Mr. Alexander, 41, was seen as a star diplomat when he served as a Liberal-appointed envoy to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. He stayed on in the country following that posting, as the deputy special representative for the United Nations Secretary-General.
Today, he is widely considered the most qualified Canadian observer of Afghanistan, with Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special envoy to the region , and Kai Eide, the top UN official in the country, regularly seeking his advice.
Speculation had been mounting that he would seek political office when he decided to return to Canada with his wife and their young baby last month. However, his decision to seek nomination with the Conservatives comes as a surprise to some observers who predicted he would have sought to ally himself with the Liberals.
Mr. Alexander, in an interview with The Globe, hinted that his choice to run for the Conservatives reflected his belief that the party's view on Afghanistan was more in line with his own.
He pushed back against growing doubts over the merits of Canada's mission there, calling for more international troops on the ground and a renewed focus on attacking militant targets in Pakistan. Mr. Alexander has called on Canada and its allies to hold an international conference on Afghanistan later this year to set new goals to reflect the changing reality on the ground.
"Yes, this mission is taking longer than everyone had hoped, or than we expected because the conflict is getting worse. So we need to have a serious discussion about how we can succeed with the investments that we are prepared to make," he told The Globe and Mail on Wednesday.
His comments coincide with a mounting debate in both Canada and the United States over how the war should evolve.
Yesterday, U.S. President Barack Obama set new goals to boost the ability of Pakistan and Afghanistan to fight militants, but he is struggling to muster support within his own party to approve a surge of fighting forces. Ottawa has also just issued a grim assessment of its Afghan operations, outlining in a quarterly report how Canada's mission is falling short of its military and reconstruction goals as instability worsens.
There are a multitude of problems facing Afghanistan, and foreign involvement there, but they are not insurmountable, Mr. Alexander argues.