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William Crosbie is Canada's fifth Ambassador to Afghanistan since the two countries resumed diplomatic relations in 2002.

Crosbie arrives to the job as Canada's Representative at a critical time: The NATO-lead war is entering its ninth year, the Taliban seems stronger, and Canadian soldiers are dying every month. Violence means reconstruction efforts are lagging, and the national elections that exposed widespread fraud have yet to produce a clear winner.

CTV's South Asia Bureau Chief Janis Mackey Frayer spoke with William Crosbie at the Canadian embassy in Kabul.

Is it possible, 8 years into the war, to change the direction?

Crosbie: I want to take you up on that 8 years. I call it a bit of a myth. Yes it's true that we defeated the Taliban 8 years ago but the reality is that the international community has only been in Afghanistan in the way that we know it now for the past two to three years.

The first five years or so the amount of development assistance, security forces, governance, civilians, was nothing like it is now. The Americans as we know through President Obama are now bringing in a civilian surge. He's recognized what we have already been doing, which is we need to have more civilian component, we need to focus on development and governance. You gotta give it a chance to work.

How difficult will it be for Canada to work with an Afghan government that is coming to power on the back of an obviously flawed process?

Crosbie: When I talk to Afghans about the election it is not so much the level of fraud but the fact they had an election.

I think that in terms of the legitimacy it will come not so much from the election itself but from the words and actions of the new government. Can they in fact demonstrate an ability to address the challenges.

Afghans you have suggested smell a NATO pullout. Do you think they are then looking to hedge their bets elsewhere?

I think they're on the fence. I think they are saying for themselves, 'who is going to be here for the long haul?'. Or, are we going to fall back to civil war?

And critically, what are our neighbours going to do? This is a part of the world where neighbours have been involved and meddled in ethnic politics for a long period of time. And they still have the ability, if they wish to do so, to prohibit the kind of future we would like to see for the country.

Do you believe militarily Canada needs to be here longer than 2011?

Who knows what the situation will be like in one years time or two years time? What the dynamic will be? We know our goal is to increase the ability of the Afghan national security forces to take a leadership role in providing security. We're putting much more effort into training and mentoring. There are many more of the soldiers including the Americans that are coming who are involved in that. So my hope is that we will have a better security environment in two years time that will enable us to do our development work.

And if we don't?

Well then we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Why is there the impression that the war is being lost?

I think the Taliban has been very good in their information campaign -- the psychological warfare, the impression that whole country is falling apart. On my daily agenda I see all of the security instances that happen across the country. So I quickly fall into thinking this country is extremely violent and has no hope of moving ahead. The reality is very different. The silent majority doesn't get spoken about.

The McChrystal report also painted a very dark picture about the situation. And I think that in some respects lead to an assessment that things are really going in the wrong direction.

And of course the election campaign is not what we expected. I think in retrospective we were somewhat naive to think this first Afghan-led election would be a shining example of democracy. It is an example of democracy and there are some really important things that happened there. But it didn't live up to the standards that we would have hoped for.

McChrystal thinks troops are the answer. Is that the solution?

Certainly part of the solution in Kandahar. We have noticed over the past couple of months with the increase of American troops that we have been able to concentrate our forces in specific areas, to secure those areas, and to actually bring about governance and development and jobs.

With less than 3,000 troops trying to cover an entire province with over a million and a half people, supported by the Afghan national security forces, we were very subject to the insurgents' attacks. So with the increased troops including those who are going to be doing police training we are confident we are going to see more results in Kandahar.

There are 100,000 NATO troops. 90,000 Afghan security forces. Why then is security so bad?

The insurgency is extremely ruthless. And this is a society that has been brutalized by violence for decades. They recruit little boys, they engage in child trafficking, take them over to Pakistan and raise them as suicide bombers. They carefully pick off anybody in the Afghan government or in civil society who are leaders. They kill tribal elders and tactically pick them out so they destroy the structure of society.

And as we know they use IED's -- thousands of them across the country -- so these are really indiscriminate weapons. You know, we've never had to live in a place like that. Can you imagine someone telling you that if you go to vote they're going to chop off your fingers? Or they're going to kill you? This is a really ruthless organization. Supported by foreigners, no doubt. And undoubtedly Afghans as well. I think the ruthlessness is a key factor of why they're succeeding. And I think as well there is a sense of disappointment that we have not been able to do a better job on governance. Again our effort has only been two to three years and I hope we'll be able to demonstrate an ongoing commitment to turn that around.

Who, then, can win?

I think we have every opportunity to win if we're committed to do so. We can talk ourselves into defeat. And that's sort of what you see happening now. Because all of the stories are of the negative stuff and about the violence and about that incidents that are drawn to peoples' attention. And it's not about the backdrop and what's happening in broader society.