The Torch: Their (our?) man in Kandahar

Let's hope this works out; a significant gesture by President Karzai, I would think:

A Canadian-Afghan academic, who will become the new governor of Kandahar province this weekend, says he wants to build bridges between cultures and improve the lives of regular Afghans.

Tooryalai Wesa - who fled his home in 1991 and settled in Coquitlam, B.C. - met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai for lunch on Thursday to discuss his challenging new job.

"Some of the Afghans are trying to come back because we want to help the country and because of the lack of the professional people" in the country, Wesa told CTV Newsnet Thursday.

Born and raised in Kandahar, Wesa has extensive work experience in the province and feels that he can be an effective link between the local population and the international force of soldiers, diplomats and aid workers currently posted there.

"I feel that there's a huge demand for professional people there and these people need help," he said.

The posting has extra significance for Canada since most of the country's 2,750 troops are stationed in the volatile province.

"I want to be a bridge between these two homes that I have [emphasis added]," said Wesa, adding that improving security and infrastructure in the region are very high on his list of priorities.

Wesa added that bolstering the agriculture industry by providing Kandaharis with fertilizers and pesticides is also key to establishing security in the area. The province has been overrun with Taliban attacks and is considered an insurgent stronghold.

Kandahar province has had two governors in the span of the past eight months...

Wesa is fluent in Pashto, Dari, Farsi, English, German and Arabic and has an impressive resume.

Not only does he have extensive experience in education and rural development, but he has also worked with Canadian soldiers as a trainer and is a founder of Kandahar University.

Born in 1950, Wesa studied agriculture at Kabul University in the 1970s.

A few years later, he attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and lived in Hungary and Switzerland before earning his Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia.

His thesis at UBC centered on the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan and the "devastating impact" it had on the country's agricultural infrastructure, according to his biography, which is posted on the UBC website.

"My UBC classmates were worried about my country and wondered why I wanted to pursue my PhD thesis on the agricultural extension system there," he writes in the short bio...