KANDAHAR — Where some people see nothing but conflict, Ben Rowswell sees potential.

That may explain why, after 17 years in service of Canadian diplomacy in some of the world's most troubled hotspots, he continues to believe in the opportunities for growth and development that have surrounded him for the last year in battle-ravaged Kandahar province.

"Conflict is where the rubber meets the road," said Rowswell, who is packing it in after 10 months as the Representative of Canada in Kandahar (RoCK), the country's top-ranked civilian official in the region.

Despite his plans to put his days in political hotspots behind him, Rowswell admitted he remains drawn to places where conflict gives rise to growth, development and progress.

"You look back on how the international system evolves, (and) it evolves around conflicts and the responses to conflict. I get the feeling when I'm in this kind of place that I have a bit of a glimpse of what the future might look like."

Rowswell's own future, after nearly two decades of diplomatic work in some of the world's most dangerous places, is decidedly rosy: he's getting married next month and plans to take a job as a visiting professor at Stanford University and write a book about his travels.

The future of the land around him is nowhere near as clear.

"It's not the future that we are hoping for, but the one that's going to develop in response to the scars of conflict,"he said. "We are building on the scar tissue that will shape what international relations will be like."

Rowswell, who is just days from turning 40, has essentially been the civilian equivalent of Brig.-Gen. Jonathan Vance, the commander of Task Force Kandahar, providing leadership to Canada's diplomats, development officers, police and corrections officials.

With the end of Canada's mission now less than a year away, the success or failure of the effort is sure to be a topic of heated discussion and debate in the coming months, and a clear conclusion is likely to prove elusive -- especially with locals who feel let down by the Afghan government.

But despite persistent security problems, Rowswell said he's confident his country has made a difference -- particularly in the restive, challenging southern part of the country where Canada chose to focus its efforts.

"'There's 34 provinces in Afghanistan,' they said. 'Why is Canada focused so much on just one province? Don't you realize that you need to build a national institution?'

"We took a bit of a risk in saying, 'We want to invest in one place, make a difference there and pick one of the most difficult provinces.' Now, two years later, the rest of the alliance is with us in Kandahar in the numbers that are required."

Canada's military presence may be slowly shrinking into districts like Dand, Daman and Panjwaii, but on the civilian side, the country's presence is as strong as ever, he added. However, while the future of the military mission is clear, the fate of the development side remains an open question.

"We're still looking for direction in what happens to the future of Canada's civilian mission here in Afghanistan, and once we have that clarity, we'll make some corresponding decisions," Rowswell said.

"We know there's going to be a major diplomatic mission -- that's what the prime minister has told us. We know that the military mission will be coming to a close, but there'll be a lot of work for people like me ... and we know that the embassy is going to continue to play a major role."

Rowswell spent a year in Kabul as Canada's deputy chief of mission and was formerly a Canadian emissary in Iraq.

He got his start in the foreign service at the age of 22, when he hopped a plane to Somalia and worked at the airport in Mogadishu during that country's fearsome civil war -- a sink-or-swim crash course in international affairs.

"It was really dangerous in Mogadishu -- worse than Kandahar -- and so we didn't go out very much at all," Rowswell said in an interview. "I saw a lot of fear."

He told the story of a young Kenyan journalist who was killed while he was there, and used to send a message to other members of the local press corps.

"He had been beheaded, and they placed his head at the entrance of the hotel where the journalists all hung out just to freak them out," Rowswell said.

"You really got the sense of a place where civilization had broken down."