Three years after the Taliban recaptured Afghanistan, Canada’s lengthiest military engagement seems a distant memory, one almost unrecalled by most citizens, even those who can still name Vimy Ridge and Passchendaele as part of this nation’s martial history.

But as Tim Martin, retired diplomat and novelist (Moral Hazards), documents in his fast-paced Unwinnable Peace, the visceral legacy of that controversial, costly mission remains very much present in the PTSD of both civilians and warriors, the struggles of Canadian veterans to get deserved benefits, and the uphill battles to evacuate the Afghans left behind who have targets on their backs for having worked alongside Canadians.

As the book’s title attests, what originated as a seemingly straightforward armed response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks metastasized into a directionless international occupation that generated a resumption of the Afghan narcotics trade, greased the wheels of a voracious economy of corruption, and sparked the resurgence of an apparently vanquished Taliban.

Martin’s personal account of efforts to encourage diplomacy and development – which constituted a great deal of on-the-ground work but received little media coverage during his Kandahar posting – illustrates how this volatile mix of action and circumstances served as an unsettling backdrop for many well-intentioned aid workers, diplomats, and military personnel. Enriched with the reflections of two dozen of those colleagues, his memoir describes the adrenalin and exhaustion that marked long, hot days monitoring prison conditions following revelations of the torture of detainees handed over by Canadian forces, building relationships with Afghan officials and community elders, coping with worrying reports of assassination attempts, and reaching modest achievements (the graduation of Kandahar’s first female police officer).

Ever the diplomat, Martin (who was the last Representative of Canada in Kandahar) carefully parses how efforts to stabilize the country introduced (some would say imposed) non-indigenous forms of governance, and how the work to construct new schools, enact a polio vaccination campaign, and improve irrigation infrastructure was often at odds with military players calling the shots from Brussels, Washington, and Ottawa.

As Martin’s team prepared for a U.S. troop surge and American takeover of Kandahar coordination, a central conundrum was reconciling military goals with those of reconstruction and development. As one interviewee asks, how could Afghans trust occupation forces who by day talked education and aid yet in darkness terrorized them with night raids and Black Hawk helicopters? Others lament the loss of early opportunities to have all-party talks that would have prevented a Taliban resurgence – which was fed, in part, by the occupiers’ heavy emphasis on counter-insurgency warfare that invariably victimized civilians.

Martin poses difficult questions and recognizes nuances in Afghanistan, where many Canadians and other foreigners landed knowing little about the culture, language, traditions, and geopolitical space the country occupies; he concludes that he himself ultimately “didn’t understand the place.”

Martin seems an open-minded public servant who praises whistle-blowers, condemns Islamophobia, and calls out bureaucratic bafflegab, yet his text sometimes suffers from an unacknowledged Heart of Darkness colonialism and unnecessary Canadian flag-waving in the face of alleged Afghan inscrutability. Noting “it is in the darkest places that Canada’s valour and values shine brightest,” he finds Afghanistan a country whose history “left no space for a competent and legitimate modern government.” Careless language replicates unfortunate clichés and some inaccuracies (Kabul’s landscape of “twisted reinforcing rods like cockroach antennae,” “chaotic swarms” of traffic, the equation of governance development to “weaving a basket out of snakes,” calling Eid an “ancient” festival), as do character descriptions that unnecessarily note shapes and sizes of beards, noses, and lips.

Perhaps closer editing might have brought such ill-considered word choices to Martin’s attention, but left as is, they unintentionally support Martin’s overarching thesis about the complex dynamics of Canadian white saviour-ism. Nevertheless, both intentionally and inadvertently, Unwinnable Peace is a worthwhile, dialogue-provoking addition to what is a relatively sparse shelf of books that seek to derive meaning and understanding not only from the Afghanistan mission but, ultimately, our 21st-century selves when we venture onto the world stage.