Former Canadian envoy says Ottawa should reopen mission in Afghanistan

Two of Canada’s former ambassadors to Afghanistan are debating whether it’s time to establish a diplomatic presence in Kabul, and how best to keep tabs on the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA).

“There are ways for us to be on the ground and to see for ourselves, and to act for ourselves and act directly to help Afghans – without lending direct support to the Taliban (IEA),” former envoy Arif Lalani said in an interview this week.

“We should be able to decide for ourselves and inform others about what is really going on in Afghanistan. And the degree to which we can’t do that ourselves, I don’t think it does a service to anyone.”

Chris Alexander, a former Conservative foreign-affairs minister who also served as Canada’s ambassador in Kabul, meanwhile says that recognizing the IEA would compromise fundamental Canadian values, the Canadian Press reported.

“The cost would be too high, in terms of legitimizing an absolutely depraved regime,” he said Wednesday.

Lalani told the Senate’s foreign-affairs committee last month that the IEA “seems to have taken hostage an entire society, and our (Canada’s) response has been to neither use force nor to use diplomacy.”

“We are at a standstill, and Afghans are suffering. We actually need to take a decision.”

Lalani said Canada should be “looking at creative ways to find assistance to help Afghans” while understanding how countries like China, Russia and Iran are engaging with the IEA.

Lalani said Ottawa could better help individual Afghans sustain themselves economically, otherwise “what little economic development is taking place will slide backwards” as governments grapple to respond to multiple humanitarian crises worldwide.

“We have a government in Afghanistan that no one likes, that is doing incredible damage to its own population. But we need to now think about the Afghan people, as opposed to our own sense of outrage,” he said.

He also said if Canadians were to establish a presence in Afghanistan, it could in the form of “specific development programming” that has measured outcomes.

“The alternative is us sort of standing still from the sidelines and pretending that we’re going to do more,” he said.

“If we take that position, let’s please stop the selfies and hashtags and suggest we’re going to do more and we stand with Afghans, because we’re not.”