Opinion: There is no peace to keep in Mali, and the UN mission there has become a deadly quagmire—one that Canada might be wise to just avoid
Ken Hansen is an independent defence and security analyst and owner of Hansen Maritime Horizons. Retired from the navy in 2009 in the rank of Commander, he is a member of the Science Advisory Committee for Atlantic Oceans Research Enterprise and a contributor to the Security Affairs Committee for the Royal United Services Institute.
“Canada is back,” Justin Trudeau said when his Liberals won the 2015 election. After years in the wilderness on peacekeeping, he said, Canada would be returning to its heritage as a leader in peacekeeping missions, promising to commit up to $400 million and 600 Canadian Armed Forces personnel to UN peace operations.
In this Feb. 25, 2015 photo provided by the United Nations, UN peacekeepers from Bangladesh arrive at the Niger Battalion Base in Ansongo, in eastern Mali. (Marco Dormino/United Nations via AP)
But his Liberal government has hit a significant road bump along the way: The most recent figures from the United Nations have found that Canada’s peacekeeping commitment has reached an all-time low. The government said it was looking for a mission that would be the right fit.
In March, after the United Nations sent a formal request for a military contribution to its ongoing mission in Mali (MINUSMA)—established in April of 2013 with a mandate to “support the transitional authorities of Mali in the stabilization of the country and implementation of the transitional roadmap”—the government announced that it had found the right mission. Canada offered up six helicopters—four light utility “Griffons” and two twin-rotor “Chinook” transports—and approximately 250 military personnel (and up to 600) to MINUSMA.
But the UN was quick with its assessment. In mid-April, the UN said that the Canadian force was not robust enough to meet the increasing demands of what is being described as the UN’s most dangerous mission, saying that Canada needed more helicopters to assure a minimum of two transport aircraft and two escort helicopters at short notice. The current German contingent employs four armed utility helicopters and four transports with over 900 support personnel, while the Dutch, who the Germans replaced, used four Apache attack helicopters and three Chinook transports; both contingents lost a helicopter due to accidents Nevertheless, the helicopters and personnel were reportedly set to be deployed later this summer, though Canada now appears to be hemming and hawing as the UN calls for Canada to meet its deadlines.
But even beyond Canada’s seeming unpreparedness, and the pressure to bolster its peacekeeping efforts, there are red flags all over the mission. The situation in Mali strongly resembles the conflict in Afghanistan, a mission marked by mission creep and escalating risk. Ethnically divided, with a weak central government and borders that are not respected or controllable, Mali is confronted by a radical opponent that will use any level of violence against all manner of victims. Canada’s desire to participate in future UN peace support missions must be tempered by careful situation analysis and adequate risk mitigation, or they risk blundering into a dangerous mission like MINUSMA—a toxic situation that Canada would be wise to avoid.
The history of the violent conflict between the impoverished northern and affluent southern parts of Mali is long, with a traceable history going back to the 13th century. This most recent issue, according to the Clingendael Institute—which has charted the break-up between north and south—stems from the French period of colonization when the northern Tuareg and nomadic Arab communities were virtually excluded from plans for post-colonial rule on June 20, 1960. From that point onward, the Tuareg have had only a few seats in the Malian assembly. The first-ever Arab, Zahabi Ould Sidi Mohamed, was elected in 2013.
From 1960 to 2012, there were four Tuareg rebellions and five different peace agreements. The use of the French military to force the sides apart has been a recurring theme, and the deployment of France’s notorious Foreign Legion—whose heavy-handed use of force in this part of the world is legendary—only sharpens the resentment of the northerners.
The most recent peace accord, sponsored by Algeria, was signed in 2015, but the violence since then has been almost constant. Neither side respects the agreement. The arrival of al-Qaeda in the Sahel to bolster the northerners has provoked a significant escalation in the type of attacks being staged, while also broadening the issues at stake; indeed, the Malian situation is only part of the bigger social and economic problems that stretch across the entire region. The International Crisis Group (ICG) report for 2017 postulated the Sahel as the zone of conflict between forces from Saharan Africa and the non-Arab agrarian south.
The trend lines in Mali do not auger well for Canada’s peacekeeping aspirations. The ICG’s 2018 Watch List Report describes strengthening insurgencies in parts of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. Jihadi groups are exploiting the situation to establish secure operating areas and find new recruits. The ICG maintains that the Bamako Peace agreement of June 2015 has stalled, and crop failure and food shortages are only exacerbating the ethnic tensions.
These are huge, historical issues, and if disentangling them seems like an outsize task for Canadians who still value the peacekeeping tradition, the UN’s recent history of expanding the mission mandate should be particularly worrisome. a long list of further duties, including: “ensuring security, stabilization and protection of civilians; supporting national political dialogue and reconciliation; and assisting the reestablishment of State authority, the rebuilding of the security sector, and the promotion and protection of human rights in that country.” These complicated responsibilities tasks carry a far heavier burden of responsibility for the use of force. The mission has grown, as a result, and its current strength is set at 15,425 personnel, comprising mostly 13,289 military and 1,920 police. The annual budget is USD$1.048 billion.
The biggest problem is that MINUSMA does not have the capabilities for the type of threat they face. “We are gathering the intelligence, but we lack the forces who can act on that information,” the mission’s chief of intelligence, Swedish Lt.-Colonel Per Wilson, told Sieff. And after a visit to Mali, Prof. Walter Dorn of the Royal Military College in Kingston told the CBC“the UN mission is struggling, but is making a difference on the ground… The Mali government is struggling to exert control over the wild territories in the north.” The successes, so far, have been limited—and the risks are great.
The need for more robust military capabilities led the UN to approve cooperation between the French military and the UN mission. Resolution 2364 (2017) expanded MINUSMA to its current limits and added the additional tasks of “providing operational and logistical support to the Malian Security and Defence Forces. The resolution also reinforced cooperation between the mission, the local multi-national “Group of 5” Sahel forces and French forces while respecting their respective mandates.” The escalatory nature of the UN’s move is obvious.
The tactical connection between French Foreign Legionnaires and the UN forces have only led to an inevitable comparison that has made the task even tougher for the peacekeepers on the front lines: according to Sieff’s article, Islamist extremists across the Sahel region have dubbed the whole undertaking as “Crusader occupation forces.” As a result, the militants have started targeting peacekeepers. Sieff described attacks on UN convoys with improvised explosive devices and cars driven into UN compounds carrying 1,000-pound bombs detonated in suicide attacks. The UN death toll is currently 169, and there will be more.
If Canadians think that our mission in Mali will be a return to some form of peacekeeping, they are in for a stunning shock: There is no peace to keep. The UN has already begun moving into a dangerous and violent form of operations that the UN does not formally recognize, known in military circles as “peace imposition.” The obvious demand for rapid reaction and effective logistics will put a heavy burden on the Canadian contingent. They will be in the very epicentre of the most aggressive and dangerous actions, and losses are practically a certainty. “It is a crisis that looks more like the U.S. ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan than the cease-fires traditionally monitored by U.N. missions,” Sieff writes—and in this, he is absolutely correct.
Former ambassador Robert Fowler, in an open letter published in the Globe and Mail, wrote of what he saw as “the importance of Canada’s mission to Mali.” “The Islamists hate everything we represent,” he argued. “They also hate the United Nations with a vicious passion.” His assessment aligns quite well with the trends identified here. However, his recommendation for a major whole-of-government commitment to the region is definitely not what the Trudeau government wants—that is, another searing Afghanistan experience.
Fowler, who spent months as a captive of the rebels, feels that the Canadian mission will not be about regime change and social re-engineering. But frankly, how he views the mission will not affect how it is actually conducted. That has already been established by the rebels who have likened all outside forces to “crusaders.” The prospects are high that this will go much as the Afghanistan debacle went; the same type of escalation and mission creep seen during our 12-year engagement there is already happening in Mali. The UN is expanding its operational aims and tactical objectives in the region, finding new allies, and some old ones, for a protracted struggle.
This type of mission against radical extremists and corrupted political systems has consistently produced very dubious results in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Given the long and complicated history of the Sahel region, it feels foolish to expect anything else in Mali.
By: Wilfred Greaves, Ph.D., The Mackenzie Institute
Original Essay Found Here - Pages 10-13
The Challenges of Staying the Course and Maintaining the Commitment.
During Op Athena, on 5 November 2009, Corporal Suzanna Long from the Canadian Police Monitoring Team interacts with Afghan children during a presence patrol in the Dand District. DND photo IS2009-3062-07 by Master Corporal Angela Abbey
More than 15 years after Western states first occupied Afghanistan, 13 years since the American-led invasion of Iraq, and at a time when Canada’s new Liberal government is assessing which complex UN peacekeeping mission it will contribute troops to, it is appropriate to reflect on the lessons learned in one of the most common recent forms of conflict: counterinsurgency operations (COIN). In particular, the limited strategic success of recent Western military interventions, considerable causality rates among allied militaries, and alleged violations of international humanitarian law as a result of substantial civilian casualties suggest that an appraisal of COIN doctrine is required.
The concept of military necessity is central to this appraisal because it determines what conduct by combatants is permissible towards civilians caught in areas of conflict. The test of military necessity is vital for determining whether civilian casualties, however tragic, conform to the laws of war. The challenge is that unconventional military operations such as COIN invert certain classical war-fighting principles, resulting in a paradoxical meaning of military necessity. The goal of a successful COIN is to provide physical security for the civilian population since only by winning popular support and denying it to the enemy can COIN succeed.[1] In this sense, minimizing civilian casualties from both insurgent and counterinsurgent activities is vital for the ultimate success of the mission. But operational success is only one necessary component for victory. The SWORD model of COIN, for example, identifies seven strategic dimensions that must be won for counter-insurgency to succeed. One of these is “the war to stay the course and maintain commitment” (or the ‘war at home’), namely the need for domestic support for the deployment of troops conducting a COIN mission.[2] Counter-insurgency missions take years to succeed, if not decades, because they require nothing less than the creation of legitimate political institutions and the political, economic, social, and ideological isolation of the insurgent enemy. Any factor that reduces domestic support for the mission will likely harm the mission’s longevity since political leaders are less likely to maintain long-term military commitments if they are unpopular or otherwise costly for politicians to support. These two criteria for success – civiliancentred considerations for the use of force and maintenance of domestic support for the mission – result in a paradox for determining military necessity in counter-insurgency operations. Placing the physical security of civilians at the centre of military decisionmaking requires exposing counter-insurgent soldiers to greater risk of harm. However, increased friendly casualties are likely to result in a loss of domestic support which also undermines the mission’s ultimate prospect of success. The heightened risks assumed by counter-insurgents, therefore, have negative implications for a successful outcome, given that relatively small numbers of counter-insurgent casualties can translate into significant changes in domestic support. The maintenance of domestic support thus becomes a necessary military objective in itself, complicating the doctrinal emphasis on shifting risk from civilians to counter-insurgents. The result is the paradoxical conclusion that minimizing civilian casualties and maintaining domestic support by minimizing counter-insurgent casualties are both militarily necessary for successful COIN.
Military Necessity and International Humanitarian Law International humanitarian law (IHL) doesn’t seek to prevent war, but to curb war’s worst excesses by moderating combatants’ conduct so that it conforms to a shared standard of ‘civilized’ warfare. Going back to the industrialization of war in the 1800s, “the principle has been more and more acknowledged that the unarmed citizen is to be spared in person, property, and honour as much as the exigencies of war will admit.”[3] Between the mid-19th century and the First World War, IHL experienced a proliferation of treaties and statements which sought to restrict the use of military force only to that which was necessary for victory, such as the First Geneva Convention of 1864, the St. Petersburg Declaration of 1868, and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. Weapons such as soft-nosed bullets, explosive projectiles, or chemical and biological weapons that inflicted additional pain and suffering became prohibited. This established the precedent that there are restrictions on the conduct of war defined by generally agreed upon standards for military actions.
The modern conception of military necessity draws meaning not just from material considerations of what is necessary to win a war, but also from moral justifications of which actions are acceptable in the pursuit of victory. [4] It is, in effect, a question of legitimacy: are the military methods employed legitimate given the objective they are used to pursue? In this way, ‘necessary’ is a euphemism for ‘permissible’, based on how significant a combatant considers a military objective to be. In practice, the difficulty rests in the inherently subjective determination of which actions qualify as militarily necessary (and are thus permissible), and which do not.
The Geneva Conventions, for instance, do not precisely define ‘military necessity’, but instead offer a two-part explanation that informs the contemporary practices of many states. Legitimate military objectives are “limited to those objects which by their nature, location, purpose, or use make an effective contribution to military action, and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage.”[5] While explicitly stating that attacks deliberately targeting civilians are prohibited,[6] the Geneva Conventions also indicate that civilian casualties do not constitute a violation of international law, so long as the number is not “excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.”[7] Military necessity, therefore, is based on a reasonable determination of the strategic importance of an objective and the calculation of an acceptable rate of civilian casualties relative to accomplishing it. As such, it defines the threshold for determining proportionality in combat, and distinguishes legitimate military actions from war crimes.
Because of its inherent subjectivity and the high stakes for soldiers and commanders involved in combat, military necessity has often been interpreted very widely. Policymakers, senior officers, and military bureaucracies have extended what is considered militarily necessary to include their preferred objectives, often by referring to broad strategic goals rather than discrete tactical ones.[8] This allows for the conceptual stretching of military necessity to include a variety of military actions and activities.[9] It also enables the concept to be adapted to reflect important changes in the nature of war, the legality and culpability of military and civilian officials, and the distinct victory conditions for waging a counterinsurgency.
Contemporary COIN Doctrine Contemporary counter-insurgency doctrine embraces the necessity of placing civilians at the centre of military operations. Perhaps the clearest example is the U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, published in 2007, which states: “The cornerstone of any COIN effort is establishing security for the civilian populace. Without a secure environment, no permanent reforms can be implemented and disorder spreads”.[10] The Canadian Armed Forces also produced a counter-insurgency manual that drew on lessons learned in Afghanistan, though it was never published. [11] Though more equivocal than its American counterpart, it agreed that “the overall effect sought in a counter-insurgency is not the death or capture of insurgents, but more importantly, the provision of security to the population.”[12] As statements of military doctrine, these manuals underscore the extent to which success in COIN rests on the provision of human security for the receiving population, not with kinetic operations against the enemy.
According to Harvard University’s Sarah Sewall, who wrote the U.S. manual’s introduction and now serves as an Under-Secretary of State in the Obama Administration, “the civilian population is the center of gravity – the deciding factor in the struggle… The real battle is for civilian support for, or acquiescence to, the counterinsurgents and host nation government.”[13] Any action that alienates the local population is thus counterproductive to the counter-insurgents’ long-term goals, no matter how many enemy fighters are killed in the process. As a result, any civilian casualties benefit the insurgents, regardless of whom those civilians are killed by. If killed by intervening troops, support is lost among the local population, and if killed by insurgents, it demonstrates the inability of counter-insurgents to keep the population safe.
This undermines the conventional notion implicit in the concept of military necessity; that some civilian casualties may be acceptable because any civilian casualties are detrimental to the counter-insurgents’ goal of winning local support. The strategic onus to minimize civilian casualties rests squarely on counter-insurgents.
Effective COIN thus contradicts the tactics by which Western states have preferred to fight their recent wars.[14] Although international principles of legitimate military intervention expressly mandate that “force protection cannot become the principal objective,”[15] it was nonetheless a principle of Western combat operations for decades.
The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq altered this way of war by committing many Western states to the extensive use of ground forces for close combat and COIN operations, in which force protection was counterproductive for winning hearts and minds. This makes counterinsurgents less able to combat insurgents among the population, and suggests to the receiving populace that the counter-insurgents are unprepared to confront the same dangers the people have no choice but to face.[16] COIN doctrine underscores the futility of force protection as a guiding operational principle, since providing security to the civilian population requires that counter-insurgents accept greater danger by performing activities such as foot patrols, establishing forward operating posts, engaging with communities, and maintaining a visible public presence. COIN doctrine thus requires re-balancing the risks borne by soldiers and civilians.
COIN doctrine especially challenges the practice of “risk transfer”, which by “defying virtually every theory of counterinsurgency, military officials have pursued force protection even at the expense of mission accomplishment.”[17] The relationship between risk to soldiers and risk to civilians is zero-sum: less risk for one group entails more risk for the other. Risk transfer from soldiers to civilians has been practiced for decades, but is neither a natural nor inevitable aspect of modern combat.[18] On the contrary, “to a large degree, modern strategists fix the levels of risk that combatants and non-combatants face. Civilian casualties flow from policy preferences in predictable ways.”[19] It is therefore possible to redistribute the relative risks faced by civilians and counterinsurgents in order to support the objective of winning local support.
Contemporary COIN doctrine thus inverts the military calculus of valuing most the lives of one’s own soldiers and pursuing enemy fighters as the primary objective of military operations. This calculus does not – indeed, cannot – apply in COIN because the insurgent enemy is not easily distinguishable from the general population. Even if they were, the principal objective of counter-insurgency operations is not ‘defeating’ a conventional enemy. Precisely because the enemy can readily draw reinforcements and material support from the civilian population, is why securing public support is the primary objective. This imposes numerous operational, legal and political challenges upon states fighting counter-insurgencies, and alters the assessment of which actions will likely contribute to strategic success.
However, COIN doctrine is further complicated by the fact that success requires more than just tactical victory on the ground. It requires a popular perception that the intervening counter-insurgents are committed to defeating the insurgency over the long-term.[20] In the case of democracies fighting insurgencies, this commitment and how it is perceived by people in the receiving country can be affected by popular opinion at home. Since elected officials are often responsive to public pressure, and politicians, not generals, ultimately decide whether to sustain or abandon a military mission, maintaining domestic support is as equally important to the long-term prospects of success for a counter-insurgency as gaining local support. Problematically, domestic support can be undermined by casualty-aversion in the general public.
Although it is difficult to determine the effect of military casualties on democratic policy-making, casualties can awaken voters to the costs of a military engagement and incite resistance to the foreign deployment of troops, particularly if the mission is perceived as non-essential. “The further a particular war or military operation is removed from core national interests, the more the populace will be averse to casualties andthe more decision-makers will seek to avoid them.”[21] While circumstances vary, the long duration and elective nature of foreign counterinsurgents’ decision to intervene renders COIN more susceptible to public opinion than other types of military involvement. The consequence is that decision-makers need to minimize casualties in order to limit domestic opposition to the deployment of troops abroad.
The result of these competing imperatives is a paradox for effective COIN strategy. On the one hand, cothe unter-insurgency doctrine requires the intervener to accept more casualties in order to minimize the cost to civilians and maintain popular support in the receiving country. Higher numbers of friendly casualties can weaken domestic support for the mission, contributing to a stronger possibility of withdrawal without accomplishing the mission’s objectives. Such a withdrawal must be considered a strategic failure, and is an undesirable outcome for the counter-insurgents. On the other hand, an emphasis on force protection in order to mitigate domestic casualty aversion comes at the cost of civilian lives that decrease support for the mission in the receiving country. Given the nature of counter-insurgency, losing the civilian ‘centre of gravity’ is, by definition, likely to result in strategic failure. In both cases, it appears that this paradox constrains the ability of democracies to succeed at COIN.
This paradox raises the question of how to balance risks to foreign civilians in order to satisfy one aspect of counter-insurgency doctrine versus those to one’s own troops to satisfy another. Protecting civilians and protecting one’s own soldiers may both be militarily necessary for successful counterinsurgency, but can they be effectively reconciled? Ultimately, the concept of military necessity suggests that international humanitarian law provides an inadequate set of tools to guide military practice in counterinsurgency. In part, this is due to the inherent limitations of international law, since “the legal framework for regulating war does not contemplate asymmetric warfare waged by non-state actors and thus fails to regulate perhaps the dominant form of warfare for the 21st century.”[22] It is also due to the nature of counter-insurgency warfare itself, and the dual yet duelling objectives it demands of counterinsurgents. The provision of security for civilians is the ultimate objective of counter-insurgency, since only this will garner the local legitimacy that is “the single most important internal dimension of a [counter-insurgency] war.”[23] But as shown by recent examples of COIN operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, counter-insurgency requires some kinetic activities against the enemy. This exposes counter-insurgents and can weaken domestic support, prompting an early withdrawal or compromising the ultimate objectives. The paradox thus exists at the highest level of COIN doctrine. The competing imperatives of successful counter-insurgency indicate that decisions over the appropriate distribution of risk between soldiers and civilians must be reconciled through some standard other than international humanitarian law.
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Wilfrid Greaves holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Toronto, where he is an Instructor at the Trudeau Centre for Peace, Conflict and Justice. His research focuses on Arctic security, natural resource extraction and climate change, Canadian foreign policy, and human security in complex peace operations. Examples of his recent work have been published in the following journals: Security Dialogue, Polar Record, and Critical Studies on Security.
References:
[1] Max G. Manwaring and John T. Fishel, “Insurgency and Coun - terinsurgency: Toward a New Analytical Approach,” Small Wars and Insurgencies 3, no. 3 (Winter 1992).
[2] Nils French, “Learning from the Seven Soviet Wars: Lessons for Canada in Afghanistan,” The Canadian Army Journal 10, no. 4 (Winter 2008): 36.
[3] Francis Lieber quoted in David Bosco, “Moral Principle vs. Military Necessity,” The American Scholar 77, no.1 (Winter 2008). Accessed at http://www.theamericanscholar.org/moral-princi - ple-vs-military-necessity/.
[4] Ibid, 51.1-51.2.
[5] Nobuo Hayashi, “Requirements of Military Necessity in Interna - tional Humanitarian Law and International Criminal Law,” Boston University International Law Journal 28, no. 39 (2010): 41-140.
[6] ICRC, Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 Au - gust 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), of 8 June 1977 (Geneva: International Committee of the Red Cross, 1996), section 52.2.
[7] Ibid, 51.2.
[8] Ibid, 51.5b. [9] Eyal Benvenisti, “Human Dignity in Combat: The Duty to Spare Enemy Civilians,” Israel Law Review 39, no. 2 (2006): 95-96; Thom - as W. Smith, “Protecting Civilians, or Soldiers? Humanitarian Law and the Economy of Risk in Iraq,” International Studies Perspectives 9, no.2 (2008): 147.
[10] See, for example, Aaron Belkin, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: Is the Gay Ban Based on Military Necessity?” Parameters 33, no. 2 (2003).
[11] United States Department of the Army, The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 42.
[12] DND, DRAFT: Counter-insurgency Operations Manual (Ottawa: Department of National Defence, 2007), 12. Commissioned in 2005 by then Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Rick Hillier, a draft version of the ‘counter-insurgency operations manual’ was released to the public in 2007. However, DND subsequently announced that it did not intend to release the document for publication or use by the Canadian Forces.
[13] Sarah Sewall, “Introduction to the University of Chicago Press Edition: A Radical Field Manual,” The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), xxv.
[14] Antulio J. Echevarria, Towards an American Way of War (Carl - isle: Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, 2004), 9.
[15] ICISS, The Responsibility to Protect: Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (Ottawa: Interna - tional Development Research Centre, 2001), viii. United States Department of the Army, 48.
[16] Hugh Smith, “What Cost Will Democracies Bear? A Review of Popular Theories of Casualty Aversion,” Armed Forces and Society 31, no. 4 (Summer 2005): 145.
[17] Smith, 146. See also Echevarria 2004, Reisman 2007, and Shaw 2005.
[18] Manwaring and Fishel, 281-284.
[19] Smith 2005, 492. For a more detailed discussion of this phe - nomenon in the context of Canada’s involvement in the Afghan war, see Peter Loewen and Daniel Rubenson, “Canadian War Deaths in Afghanistan: Costly Policies and Support for Incumbents,” Working Paper (2012). Available at http://individual.utoronto.ca/loewen/Re - search_files/war_deaths_vfinal%20.pdf.
[20] Manwaring and Fishel, 281-284.
[21] Smith 2005, 492. For a more detailed discussion of this phe - nomenon in the context of Canada’s involvement in the Afghan war, see Peter Loewen and Daniel Rubenson, “Canadian War Deaths in Afghanistan: Costly Policies and Support for Incumbents,” Working Paper (2012). Available at http://individual.utoronto.ca/loewen/Re - search_files/war_deaths_vfinal%20.pdf.
A sharp drop in Americans willing to sign up for their country’s armed forces attributed in part to a steady mass-media diet of wounded soldiers, wars without end, and mistreated veterans is a recruiting problem Canadian military brass say they don’t have — with exceptions.
Far more Canadians show interest in enlisting than the armed forces actually take in any given year. (Facebook/CanadianArmy)
This month, the Pentagon began a major initiative aimed at exploring the “myths” many Americans have about their military in an effort to counteract a growing reluctance to serve. North of the border, far more Canadians — by a factor of 10 — show interest in enlisting than the armed forces actually take in any given year.
“Over the past few years, we’ve had no difficulty in recruiting to meet the numbers assigned to us by the chain of command or the government of Canada,” said Col. Andre Demers, who heads recruiting efforts from his base at CFB Borden, Ont. “We’re meeting our overall recruiting goals, globally.”
The main problem on the recruiting end in Canada, according to Demers, is finding qualified applicants for the more specialized trades, such as medical personnel, aviation technicians or IT specialists where competition with civilian society is fierce.
“Overall, the interest in the Canadian Armed Forces is there,” Demers said. “We have enough people to generate enough qualified applicants that are reflecting Canadian society and values to meet our overall requirements.”
U.S. survey results show the proportion of youth who felt the military provided an attractive lifestyle plunged from 63 per cent to 35 per cent between 2004 to 2016. As a result, the new Pentagon initiative to address the “growing civilian-military divide” aims to introduce the American public to the “real lives” of individuals serving, and correct common myths about military life.
Part of the problem, the Pentagon says, is that fewer than one per cent of Americans are currently serving, leading to a “natural disconnect” between civilians and the military and a growing ignorance about the services.
“People are having fewer direct interactions with service members,” the U.S. Department of Defense says.
Even on a relative scale, the sheer size and needs of the U.S. military dwarfs its Canadian counterpart.
For example, the Americans estimate they need an average 264,000 new recruits each year to maintain the operational readiness of a standing military estimated at roughly 1.2 million. Canada, by contrast, seeks about 5,000 recruits each year for its regular forces of about 68,000 and about 5,000 people show interest every month.
David Perry, vice-president of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, said the Canadian Armed Forces have less of an image problem than does the U.S. military. A key issue here, he said, is the time it takes from enlistment to getting newcomers into uniform and, as the terminology goes, “trained and effective.”
“In terms of the public image, the American military has remained much more in the public eye than the Canadian one has,” Perry said. “(But) getting people who are interested into the military is a larger problem than in the United States. It’s more of a bureaucratic and human resource issue than an attraction issue.”
Gen. Jonathan Vance, chief of Canada’s defence staff, said recently the military has several initiatives underway aimed at speeding up the recruitment process. The military is also specifically trying to attract more women, visible minorities, members of the LGBTQ community and other segments of society that have been historically under-represented.
“What we’re trying to do is normalize the system and make it better overall,” Vance told The Canadian Press. “There’s no question about it: We’re growing. And it’s going to start slow and it’s going to pick up.”
Christian Leuprecht, a professor at Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont., said the Canadian Armed Forces has generally looked to a bigger segment of the population from which to attract would-be soldiers than the U.S. traditionally has done.
“We have a broader pool of recruits by trying to make the Canadian Forces as inclusive as possible,” Leuprecht said. “We are not fighting turf wars over things like gays in the military and can women serve in combat trades. Those are all hatchets that we buried.”
Still, Canada’s efforts to make its forces more representative of the population — such as signing up fewer white men from rural areas of the Prairies and Maritimes — has proven challenging. For example, military brass are aiming to increase female participation to 25 per cent of serving personnel by 2025 — a goal made elusive by ongoing stories of sexual harassment by women who have enlisted.
“When you’re continually highlighting past problems with sexual impropriety, that’s probably not the best selling point at actually getting people in the door,” Perry said.
Chris Kilford’s plea for “just a little more” Canadian involvement in Afghanistan came as no surprise. It is only the latest verse of a song the military establishment has been singing for decades, with the U.S. as choirmaster.
If not singing, Kilford is surely whistling in the graveyard of foreign invaders. Since 1838, the British twice, the Russians and the U.S. have failed to subdue a people who stubbornly insist on settling their own disputes, sadly often with violence.
Kilford labelling everyone not on the U.S. side as terrorists is a tired device that will not work this time. There is little to choose between the Taliban and the collection of warlords the U.S. assembled.
The history of Canada in Afghanistan reveals just how misguided is Kilford’s position. Canada was lured into the most dangerous area, Kandahar, by a three-part bait-and-switch formula that the U.S. is still using today in Iraq.
Part 2, Switch: Use the undue influence of the military establishment to get Canadians into “real fighting.” Canada’s generals are deeply integrated with and envious of their American counterparts. The defence ministry chief of staff during the height of the war observed that Canadian brass have always been preoccupied, almost obsessed with their relationship with the U.S. military. Canada’s generals and admirals tend to be more concerned about their relationship with their American counterparts than they are with their own political master in Ottawa.
That concern played out in questionable conduct by Gen. Rick Hillier. In 2005, the Kabul mission was due to end. Hillier wanted a combat role for Canadian forces. He had candidly reminded us all, remember, that Canadian forces were not a social-service agency. Their job is to kill people.
Then-prime minister Paul Martin was more concerned with Darfur. Before he would consider Hillier’s plan for Afghanistan, he demanded a guarantee that Canadian forces could perform both missions. Hillier gave it, but reneged. Soon, the bulk of the fighting, dying and alienating civilians was in the hands of only the U.S., the U.K. and Canada. Other NATO nations put restrictions on use of their forces.
Part 3, Justify: Emphasize whatever element of the formula seems to work at the time. Cabinet minister Bill Graham went on a speaking tour explaining that Canadians were rebuilding a troubled country, winning hearts and minds as “warrior diplomats.” At the same time, Hillier was touting the mission as one to “kill detestable murderers and scumbags” in Kandahar who threatened western societies. As late as 2011, then-governor general David Johnston was assuring us with Part 1. Canadian forces were rebuilding schools and ensuring the peace that would permit boys and girls to have an education.
Kilford’s pitch is a bit of a hybrid: Let’s support Donald Trump’s campaign to kill “detestable murderers and scumbags” by re-involving the Canadian military — but only to help the Afghans help themselves. (Of course, we don’t want to have a big fight there.)
Don’t buy it. Canadians did build schools in Afghanistan. Canadian troops often did try to help civilians. The recently unveiled monument here emphasizes that and is a welcome change from the misleading war memorials that dominate the landscape. But that is not why we were in Afghanistan.
Graham gave the real reason after Canada declined to send troops to Iraq or join the Ballistic Missile Defence Program: Foreign Affairs’ view was that there is a limit to how much we could constantly say no to the political master in Washington. All we had was Afghanistan. On every other file, we were not onside.
Kilford laments that “domestic political considerations” keep us from “doing the right thing.” Let us hope so. With an increasingly delusional leader to the south, this is no time to fall for the formula again. ---- Retired law professor William Geimer is a U.S. army veteran and the author of Canada: The Case for Staying Out of Other People’s Wars.
By: David Bercuson, Canadian Global Affairs Institute
The reversal by U.S. President Donald Trump of his position on Afghanistan, and his commitment to send an additional 4000 soldiers there to “kill terrorists” and not to “nation build”, should not move Ottawa to change its position not to send any more Canadians to Afghanistan.
Between the late fall of 2001 and the summer of 2011, Canadians served in Afghanistan, suffered more than 165 killed, and kept their fingers in the dyke in Kandahar province – barely – but could accomplish little by way of “fixing” Afghanistan because Afghanistan is probably unfixable by outsiders. We in the west don’t like to believe that some of the world’s greatest and most persistent geo-political issues do not lend themselves to Western forms of resolution. Unfortunately, that is the reality we must accept.
The Israeli-Palestinian problem is one example. If we look at the micro level in places such as Kashmir, or northeast India, or the southern Philippines we will see conflicts that have been ongoing for years if not centuries because the long-ago movement of peoples, religions, ideologies, and so on, have pushed some outside their “natural” boundaries and sloughed over into nearby territories where they ran into conflict with indigenous peoples, ideologies and religions who were not compatible or didn’t want to be compatible.
Afghanistan is such a place. As long ago as Alexander the Great – long before the arrival of Islam – the different tribes who lived in that essential power vacuum between Persia and India, and later between India and Russia, provided foreign invaders with a less-than-warm welcome. It is not true, however, that Afghanistan is the place where empires go to die. In fact, Britain won the second Anglo-Afghan war quite handily. But victory, as defined by the then developing western concept of statecraft, was intended either to occupy, hold, colonize and assimilate the indigenous, or to hold on as long as politics made it necessary, and then give it up in return for other concessions elsewhere.
Such practices didn’t work in Afghanistan because it was, and is, essentially “too far up the line” and its people too independent to allow either forms of occupation to work. Over time, the Greeks, the Persians, the Indians, the British, the Russians simply had to decide at some point that Afghanistan was simply not worth the effort. They all fought in Afghanistan with one hand behind their back, and it wasn’t enough. Then again, two hands was not worth the price. That was as true of the United States and NATO as it was of any of their predecessors.
It is true of Canada, and also true of Donald Trump.
The renewed effort of the United States in Afghanistan will fail because it is not a serious effort to defeat the Taliban and win the war. Such an effort would mean a half a million troops and a ready willingness to end Pakistan’s role of continuing to this day to be the Taliban’s number one supporter and haven.
Why then should Canada go there? To support the Americans? To show the flag? That is what we did the first three times we were there. Yes, we were there once, but this time we have neither the troops nor the treasure to do anything even in a token way. We have deployed a handful of troops to the Baltic, another handful to the middle east, and we are running the danger of fracturing our military as we did continuously during the peacekeeping operations of the Cold War and post-Cold War period.
If we are serious about projecting Canadian power where it matters, and where our most important ally – the United States – takes notice, we should resist the temptation to send a few hundred Canadians hither and thither without any mass and with no chance of making any tactical or strategic difference.
If the Afghan government and the bulk of the Afghan people don’t want to be ruled again by the Taliban, they will find a will and a way to avoid it.
Militarily, Canada is a small country and must pick its military engagements with great care and with an eye firmly fixed on serving its own national interests. ---- – David Bercuson is Research Director of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.
