UN Reports Situation in Mali Deteriorating

By: Lee Berthiaume, Global News 

In a sobering new report, the head of the United Nations says the security situation in Mali has sharply deteriorated over the past three months even as demand for more food aid and other humanitarian assistance has skyrocketed.

The UN Mali patch is shown on a Canadian forces member's uniform before boarding a plane at CFB Trenton in Trenton, Ont., on July 5, 2018.

READ MORE: Canadian troops ready as ‘complex’ Mali peacekeeping mission gets underway: commander

The assessment by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres coincides with the presence of Canadian peacekeepers in Mali, and suggests the country is in many ways worse off now than when they first arrived in June.

Not that there haven’t been some hopeful signs, including successful presidential elections in July and August and a marked decline in the number of peacekeepers killed or wounded despite continuing attacks by armed groups.

That is reflected in the fact that while the Canadian military’s primary task in Mali is to evacuate injured UN peacekeepers by helicopter, they have so far only conducted two such missions, both on Sept. 11.

Guterres nonetheless painted a picture of a country at war with itself as various ethnic and extremist groups targeted each other as well as the Malian military, international forces and even civilians.

The result was the largest number of civilians killed – 287 – in one three-month period since UN peacekeepers first arrived in the country in 2013, while thousands more have been forced to flee their homes to escape the violence.

Much of the fighting was between members of two different ethnic communities in the centre of the country, while groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State were also responsible for a great deal of violence.

READ MORE: Canada’s on a new kind of mission in Mali — mixing peacekeeping with counterterrorism

“Intercommunal conflict, exacerbated by violent extremist groups, is fraying an already fragile social fabric and is deeply concerning,” Guterres wrote. “Too high a human toll has accrued as a result of the ongoing spiral of violence.”

The number of human-rights violations in Mali, which was already troublingly high, was similarly worse because of hundreds of new extrajudicial killings, disappearances, tortures and rapes across different parts of the country.

While most of those atrocities were perpetrated by the Islamic groups and competing ethnic communities, the Malian military itself was implicated in 18 violations – including one mass killing that is being criminally investigated.

“The human rights situation is alarming,” Guterres wrote. “It is absolutely imperative that the government prevent human rights violations and abuses, including those committed by the Malian armed forces.”

Further adding to Malians’ woes were severe floods in some areas and drought in others that, when combined with the fighting, had doubled the number of internally displaced people and left one in four needing humanitarian aid.

“The level of needs of is higher than at any point since the beginning of the crisis in 2012,” Guterres wrote.

READ MORE: Jeff Semple: First impressions of Canadian peacekeepers in Mali

The country was plunged into turmoil after a rebellion in the north at the same time as the Malian military was staging a coup in the capital, Bamako.

Canadian peacekeepers recently helped the World Food Programme deliver more than two tonnes of food, water and medicine by helicopter to a village in central Mali.

Yet despite the growing need for more emergency aid, Guterres reported that only one-third of the roughly $400 million needed to help Malians had been provided to the UN by the beginning of September.

WATCH: Exclusive: Treacherous conditions for Canada’s troops in Mali



“While needs continue to increase, humanitarian funding has decreased, preventing a timely at-scale and appropriate response,” he wrote.

Canada has provided funding for various development projects and agencies in Mali, but Bruno Charbonneau, an expert on Mali at Laurentian University, said the $60 million in emergency aid given since 2012 is relatively small.

Most of that money was also pledged immediately after the rebellion in the north and the coup.

READ MORE: At least 6 soldiers killed in attack on military taskforce headquarters in central Mali

As for the bigger picture, Charbonneau said what is needed is more international focus on the centre of Mali and greater emphasis on development to tackle the root causes of the conflict.

“As long as the focus is on countering terrorism in the Sahel, everything else is secondary,” he said. “And I think it’s a bad reading of the situation based on assumptions about the dynamics of the conflict and its causes.”

Taylor: Our Missions Lack Clear and Achievable Objectives

By: Scott Taylor, Editor and Chief of Esprit-de-Corps Magazine 

The Canadian Armed Forces are currently committed and deployed on five oversees missions, none of which have a clear cut or achievable objective.

Of course, the old Cold War warhorses will claim that our battle group stationed in Latvia has been successfully deterring Russian aggression into the Baltic States. One could similarly argue that a tinfoil cap is proper protection against alien brain removal, proven by the fact that you still have your brain.

I would think that Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania’s membership in NATO, with that alliance’s pledge of collective defence, coupled with the nuclear arsenals of the U.S., U.K. and France would serve as ample deterrent to even the most ambitious of Russian dictators.

Canadian officers who have served in Latvia know that it was nothing like our decade-long experience in Afghanistan. There will be no letters to the next-of-kin to inform them of a soldier’s death in combat. If the Russians don’t attack, nobody gets killed, and if Russia does trigger nuclear conflagration with NATO in the Baltic, there will be no one left alive to write the letters.

Keeping a battalion of Canadian soldiers in Latvia is an unnecessary waste of $400 million per year, and an added strain on the family lives of those personnel deployed abroad, unaccompanied, for either six months or one year.

We also have about 200 Canadian soldiers deployed in Ukraine as trainers. This is a bit of a sticky wicket (as the cricketers say) in that Ukraine is not a NATO member. Since 2014 Ukraine has been embroiled in a simmering civil war between the Western-backed regime in Kiev and the largely ethnic Russian breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been soundly demonized for supplying military personnel, weapons and equipment to the ethnic Russian separatists. If Putin is evil for interfering militarily in a civil war in a neighbouring country in support of rebels of Russian ethnicity, how can we paint ourselves as angels for training and equipping more young Ukrainian men to kill in that same civil war?

Then we have not one, but two separate missions committed to the mess that once was the nation of Iraq.

One group of special forces operatives and helicopters remain in support of the U.S.-led alliance to defeat Daesh (aka ISIS or ISIL) while the second mission will be a Canadian-led, NATO effort to train more young Iraqi men how to kill. These Iraqis will in turn prop the corrupt regime in Baghdad.

For the record, and to silence those who prattle on about how the West is democratizing Iraq, the last round of elections failed to produce a verifiable result. A recount was ordered, but before that could happen, somehow, the warehouse containing the ballots burned down. You could not make this stuff up. As a result, the next regime will be headed up by a Shiite cleric and warlord named Muqtada Al-Sadr.

In 2004, this guy was considered public enemy No. 1 by the U.S. when he mobilized his militia to combat the American occupation.

Canada has no seat at the big boy table that will eventually seek to resolve the multifaceted conflict that engulfs Syria, Iraq and eastern Turkey. It will probably require a redrawing of existing maps and perhaps even the creation of new states, but none of that will be concluded with any Canadian say in the matter. In the meantime, we somehow justify the fact that our elite soldiers are teaching more young Iraqi men to kill more effectively.

In Mali, we can at least boast that we are under the UN banner, wearing blue berets, and using our helicopters for medical evacuation missions.

Unfortunately there is also no end game objective in Mali. Canada’s present commitment of one year will expire long before the fundamental causes of the Malian conflict have been resolved. In other words, our Canadian troops are doing a lot all around the world but achieving very little.

Canada sends humanitarian assistance to Indonesia

By Levon Sevunts, Radio Canada International 

Canada has deployed a military transport aircraft to deliver vital humanitarian supplies to the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, which was struck by a devastating earthquake and tsunami on Sept. 29, federal officials announced Thursday.

A C-130 Hercules transport plane takes off from CFB Trenton in Trenton. Ont.

The CC-130 Hercules will deliver humanitarian relief stocks, including tarpaulins and shelter kits, to help respond to the immediate needs of the vulnerable people affected, International Development Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau and Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said in a joint communique.

The aircraft, which departed October 8, 2018, from Trenton, Ontario, is expected to arrive in Indonesia in the coming days, officials said. Upon arrival, it will support the transportation of assistance and supplies to the affected region.

“Canada remains deeply concerned about the impact of the earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia, and our thoughts are with all those affected,” Bibeau said in a statement. “Canada has responded quickly to bring support to those who need it most, and the relief items provided will help to address immediate humanitarian needs on the ground.”

This is in addition to the $1.5 million in humanitarian assistance from Ottawa announced on Oct. 2, 2018.

“Canada stands with the people of Indonesia and the Canadian Armed Forces stands ready to assist as Indonesia recovers from the effects of the earthquake and tsunami,” Sajjan said in a statement.

Indonesia’s national disaster agency said the official death toll had risen to 2,073 as of Thursday, with most of the fatalities in Palu.

Officially, 680 people are missing but officials fear the number could be several thousand because hundreds of homes were literally sucked into the earth.

Save the Children in Indonesia estimates there could be as many as 1,500 children missing.

CAF Drawing up plans to Extend Iraq Mission

Lee Berthiaume, The Canadian Press

OTTAWA -- The Canadian military is drawing up options to extend its mission in Iraq even as growing political instability and competing foreign interests threaten to plunge the country into yet another cycle of bloody violence.

The mission, which includes hundreds of special forces soldiers, transport and refuelling aircraft, a military hospital and counter-explosive experts, recently entered its fifth year and is currently set to expire at the end of March.

But Brig.-Gen. Colin Keiver, the commander of Joint Task Force-Iraq, said the Iraqi government will continue to rely on Canada and other international partners for the foreseeable future despite the Islamic State's defeat last year.

"They recognize they need continued assistance in order to ensure security and work on stability and prosperity in Iraq," Keiver said on a call with reporters on Friday.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced in June that Canada would contribute 250 soldiers to lead an expanded NATO training mission in Iraq whose focus will be helping local forces bring peace and stability to the country.

But military planners have started working on proposals for an extension to the rest of Canada's mission beyond March, which Keiver expects will be presented to cabinet ministers for a decision sometime this fall.

Peace and stability appear a long way off for many Iraqis, thanks to political infighting and deep ethnic and religious divisions across the country.

Keiver said the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has become a shadow of its former self thanks to sustained pressure by Iraqi and allied forces, but the militant group that once threatened to take over the whole of the region remains a threat nonetheless.

"What we see is them trying to reconstitute and trying to regroup to potentially do bigger things in the future and the Iraqi security forces are really keeping the pressure on them right now," Keiver said of ISIL.

"We watch it very closely. It is something that Iraq has to stay on top of."

The more immediate threat appears to be political infighting, corruption and public anger.

The country remains without a government four months after parliamentary elections, and there are concerns that tensions between different political groups -- some backed by the U.S. and others by Iran -- will erupt into civil war.

Those fears have escalated in recent weeks after Iran destroyed a Kurdish political headquarters in Iraq, a protest destroyed the Iranian consulate in the oil-rich city of Basra and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was shelled. Iranian-backed militias also continue to prowl the country.

Violent protests have also erupted in recent weeks over the slow pace of reconstruction and rampant government corruption and many Iraqis are angry at the lack of economic opportunity and development within the country.

The different challenges have not directly affected Canadian military operations in Iraq, Keiver said, though he added that officials are watching developments closely and feel Baghdad needs to start taking action or risk further problems.

"They've got to get on with the business of forming a government," he said. "They've got to address things like unemployment and reconstructions and all these things like that. (ISIL) can't exploit those potential opportunities, but they're working hard to get there."

Canadian Army Takes Delivery of 1st MSVS Vehicles from MACK Trucks

The Canadian Department of National Defence recently took delivery of its first Medium Support Vehicle System (MSVS) Standard Military Pattern (SMP) trucks from Mack Defense. The trucks were handed over during a special ceremony at the Canadian Forces base in Petawawa, Ontario. Canadian Minister of Defence Harjit Sajjan and other senior departmental officers were on-hand for the event.

Mack Defense will deliver more than 1,500 8×8 trucks and will support the trucks once delivered. The trucks features include cargo areas, material handling cranes, load handling systems, and mobile repair capabilities.

Through the Medium Support Vehicle System (MSVS) Project, the Government of Canada is acquiring a new fleet of medium capacity logistics trucks for the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) to replace its current fleet of Medium Logistics Vehicle Wheeled (MLVW) trucks in service since the 1980s. In addition, the project has acquired new ISO container-based mobile workspaces or “kitted shelters” that provide medical, dental, workshop, field kitchen, command post capabilities among others.

These new trucks and ancillary equipment will provide lift and logistical support on the ground, and will transport equipment and supplies where they are needed most both at home and abroad. The delivery programme should be complete by late 2019.

New Canada Post Stamps Pay Tribute to CAF and 1st Responders

CAF and OPP conducting Explosive Training in Ontario

By: David Pugliese, The Ottawa Citizen

Exercise ARDENT DEFENDER staged two counter-explosive threat scenarios in Meaford, ON, on October 10 and 11 as police and military personnel from a number of organizations tested their skills in dealing with explosive threats.

One scenario involved a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device at the harbour front and the other involved explosive devices found in a building and drew upon the HAZMAT response expertise of local emergency services, according to information provided by the Canadian military. Local, county, and regional emergency responders took part alongside Canadian and international soldiers and observers.

The exercise continues at CFB Borden and 4 CDTC Meaford until October 19. The exercise gives Canadian Armed Forces soldiers an opportunity to work with domestic and international partners in a series of realistic and challenging scenarios, according to the military.

Exercise ARDENT DEFENDER 2018 includes participation from various Canadian police agencies and other government departments, including Global Affairs Canada, the Ontario Provincial Police, the Peel Regional Police, the York Regional Police, the Niagara Regional Police, and the Sûreté du Québec. Other participants include the Canadian Coast Guard at Meaford Harbour Station), Grey-Bruce Regional Health Services and Hamilton Police Services. Various staff from the Municipality of Meaford are also involved.

Twenty-five nations are represented at the exercise and the NATO Centre of Excellence is hosting international doctrinal working groups at Canadian Forces Base Borden during the exercise, the Canadian Forces noted. Additionally, Defence Research and Development Canada has sent a number of defence scientists to the exercise to field test new technologies and to gain feedback from the soldiers and operators who use explosive ordnance search and disposal equipment.


Below are photos of the exercise, courtesy of the Canadian Forces:

New RCAF Spy Planes to cost upwards of $300 Million

By: David Pugliese, Post Media 

The cost of three small surveillance aircraft Canada is buying from the U.S. could be $140 million more than the Canadian military had originally estimated.

The three Beechcraft King Air planes, to be based at CFB Trenton in Ontario, will be outfitted with sensors and equipment to intercept cell phone and other electronic transmissions. Canadian special forces and, potentially, other government departments will use them for missions overseas and in Canada.

On Oct. 1 the Canadian Forces told Postmedia the three outfitted planes and initial in-service support would cost between $100 million and $249 million, as outlined in the Liberal government’s defence policy documents.

However, on Oct. 4 the U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency revealed the final tally, informing Congress that the deal was underway with an estimated cost of US $300 million — around $389 million.

Canadian companies had wanted to provide the aircraft and on-board equipment, and several have formed alliances with U.S. firms who supply the Pentagon with the same or similar aircraft.


We will work to more clearly define our interests and requirements for the purchase, and negotiate an acceptable price with the U.S.


But the Canadian military decided it needed the planes more quickly than they believed Canadian companies could deliver, and that U.S. security regulations governing the on-board sensor equipment might cause delays. As a result, it determined the U.S. government was the only supplier capable of providing the planes.

The Canadian Forces says it hopes to get a better deal. The cost the U.S. government agency presented to Congress is not the final tally and the “final cost is anticipated to be much lower,” the Canadian Forces claimed in an email. “Over the coming months, we will work to more clearly define our interests and requirements for the purchase, and negotiate an acceptable price with the U.S.,” the email said.

A Beechcraft Super King Air 200 sits in the Air Transportation Services hangar at the City Centre Airport in Edmonton on Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2012. EDMONTON SUN/QMI AGENCY

Department of National Defence spokeswoman Ashley Lemire said in an email to Postmedia that the delivery of the first plane would take place sometime between 2020 and 2021. The final delivery of the three aircraft would be wrapped up by 2022.

The main contractor is Beechcraft in Wichita, Kan.

The Canadian government will run a separate program to allow companies to compete to provide in-service support for the planes. The government expects to ask for bids for that 20-year contract sometime in the spring of 2019, said Lemire. DND declined to provide an estimate of what that long-term support would cost taxpayers.

Industry representatives have complained over the years that the Canadian Forces cut domestic firms out of the project and reduced the role they could play. Lemire rejected that claim, saying Canadian firms would have a role in servicing the planes.

It is unclear at this point whether the aircraft will be under the command of the Royal Canadian Air Force or special forces. “The Manned Airborne Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance project will deliver a rapidly deployable, airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability to Canadian Special Operations Forces Command to support domestic and overseas operations,” Lemire said in her email. “The command and control arrangement of this capability has yet to be finalized.”

RCAF pilots will fly the aircraft but special forces personnel will operate the specialized equipment in the planes.

The planes will be outfitted with electro-optical sensors that would allow the aircraft to track the movement of individuals and vehicles on the ground. Canadian special forces had access to similar aircraft in Afghanistan to track and target insurgents.