By: Lee Berthiaume, The Canadian Press
OTTAWA — Despite the withdrawal of Canada's fighter jets from Iraq and Syria last spring, a senior officer says Canadian military aircraft are providing vital intelligence to allies for air strikes and other operations against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
The Liberal government announced in February that it was ending Canadian combat operations in Iraq by withdrawing six CF-18s that had been part of the U.S.-led bombing campaign against ISIL since October 2014.
But the Liberals left behind a Polaris air-to-air refueller and two Aurora surveillance aircraft. Those aircraft have continued to support the bombing campaign against ISIL, also known as Daesh, even as public attention has turned to the role of Canadian special forces operatives in northern Iraq.
National Defence says the Polaris has flown 544 missions and delivered more than 14,200 tonnes of fuel to allied aircraft over the last two years. The Auroras, meanwhile, have flown 575 reconnaissance missions over ISIL territory.
Brig.-Gen. Shane Brennan, commander of Canada's Joint Task Force-Iraq, says at the same time the number of Canadian intelligence officers assigned to the anti-ISIL effort has grown to 50. Their mission is to analyze the pictures taken by the Auroras so the coalition can plan air strikes and ground operations.
"What we do is gather the trends and the activities of what is happening with Daesh," Brennan said from the task force's headquarters in Kuwait. "That is used to support what you would call targeting, whether that's munitions-based or lethal targeting, or other types of targeting."
Brennan described the work of the Auroras and intelligence officers as a "critical contribution" to the fight against ISIL.
"In military operations, the planning and intelligence preparation is usually a key to success," he said. "In this way, we're actually feeding into the larger coalition process and making a significant difference."
U.S. and other coalition officials have credited the bombing campaign with helping to push ISIL back after it initially overran large swaths of Iraq and Syria in 2014. But there have also been concerns about civilian casualties, particularly following a series of U.S. strikes around the Syrian city of Manbij in July.
Brennan said the Auroras were not involved identifying targets in Manbij and have instead been flying over northern Iraq in support of the coming battle for the city of Mosul.
Preparations to liberate Mosul from ISIL have become the main focus for allied and Iraqi forces over the last few months, given that the city is the last major urban centre still controlled by the militant group in Iraq.
The approximately 2,000 Kurds trained by Canada over the last two years aren't expected to actually enter Mosul when the battle begins, but will instead secure territory to the north and east while the Iraqi military clears the city. At the same time, Brennan said Canada will be contributing in other ways.
An additional helicopter is being deployed into the area — bringing the total to four — to help transport troops and equipment. In addition, a field hospital is set to be deployed from Canadian Forces Base Petawawa.
But Brennan also acknowledged the many political challenges facing Iraq besides ISIL. Those include questions about the country's long-term stability, particularly given Kurdish desires for independence, and the surprise sacking of Iraq's minister of defence on corruption charges last month.
"It is a difficult time for the government of Iraq," he said. "Obviously there's all kinds of challenges that occur within a diverse country like that as well."
The good news, Brennan said, is that there are discussions between central Iraqi officials and the semi-autonomous Kurdish government in the north of the country. In addition, he said, the interim defence minister previously served with the Iraqi security forces.
"So we're very confident that we're not going to see this as a setback in the ongoing planning for Mosul. So there's good stability from that particular front," he said. "But all these things are of concern, that is true."
- Follow @leeberthiaume on Twitter.
Lee Berthiaume, The Canadian Press
Showing posts with label US led coalition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label US led coalition. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
Thursday, June 2, 2016
OP IMPACT Air-Task-Force Iraq Update
Since the end of the RCAF CF-18 Air campaign against ISIS, little news has surfaced about OP IMPACT until the recent news regarding CAF Special Forces facing mortar fire over the weekend; or the political implications of wearing the Kurdish flag on their uniforms.
As such, I figured it was about time to offer an update on Air-Task-Force Iraq.
According to the DND OP IMPACT webpage,
As part of the Government of Canada’s expanded contribution to multinational efforts to degrade and defeat the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) recently added three CH-146 Griffon helicopters, an all-source intelligence centre, and additional trainers to Operation IMPACT. Learn more.
As such, I figured it was about time to offer an update on Air-Task-Force Iraq.
As part of the Government of Canada’s expanded contribution to multinational efforts to degrade and defeat the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) recently added three CH-146 Griffon helicopters, an all-source intelligence centre, and additional trainers to Operation IMPACT. Learn more.
Current Total of Aircraft sorties
*This total includes 1378 sorties conducted by CF-18 Hornets between 30 October 2014 and 15 February 2016.
- As of 28 May 2016, Air Task Force-Iraq has conducted 2332 sorties*:
- CC-150T Polaris aerial refueller conducted 462 sorties, delivering some 26,800,000 pounds of fuel to coalition aircraft; and
- CP-140 Aurora aircraft conducted 492 reconnaissance missions.
*This total includes 1378 sorties conducted by CF-18 Hornets between 30 October 2014 and 15 February 2016.
 |
| To keep the aircraft functioning properly in a desert environment, an aviation technician sprays down the wing and fuselage of a CP-140 Aurora in Kuwait during Operation IMPACT on April 4, 2016. Photo: CAF Combat Camera |
Saturday, February 20, 2016
Review of RCAF anti-ISIS Air Campaign
BY STEWART BELL AND MATTHEW FISHER
The National Post
It is kind of sad to see them go. I realize that for your operators who fly the CF-18s ... I think they are a little disappointed because I know if I was one of them at the squadron level and much younger, I would probably be feeling the same way. We are pounding these guys so hard, once the folks on the ground show up, what you have is a skeletal force in different locations. —Lt.-Gen. Charles Brown, Commander, Air Force component, U.S. Central Command
The strikes varied from something that was very intense to others that were more routine. There were a lot of moving parts that involved a lot of co-ordination. There has never been a dull moment. This was one of the best moments of my career.
— unnamed RCAF pilot
Mosul had been in the grip of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant for almost five months when Canadian CF-18 Hornet fighter jets began appearing over the northern city — the largest occupied by the armed extremists. The CF-18s conducted one of their first airstrikes near Mosul on Nov. 17, 2014, hitting an improvised explosives device warehouse. Over the 15 months that followed, Canadian warplanes would target the Mosul area more than anywhere else. As the CF-18s prepare to return home after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to pull them out of the fight against ISIL, a Postmedia analysis of the campaign shows that almost a third of the Canadian airstrikes targeted Mosul.
Up to 10 times a month, Canadian pilots flying out of a scorching hot airfield in Kuwait struck ISIL in and around Iraq’s second-largest city, targeting everything from bunkers and artillery to vehicles and car bomb factories.
While the political debate continues over Trudeau’s decision to ground the CF-18s in favour of more training, the analysis of Canadian Armed Forces airstrike data answers a more pragmatic question: what exactly did Canada’s fighter jets do?
Figures show that the six CF-18s conducted more than 230 airstrikes — all but five of them in Iraq. The vast majority targeted what the military described as fighting positions. The attacks were concentrated around Mosul, Sinjar and Ramadi.
The latter two cities have been retaken by Iraqi forces but Mosul remains the glittering prize. The once culturally rich city on the Tigris River has been ravaged by ISIL, which has imposed its militant brand of Islamic law through executions, child recruitment and ethnic cleansing.
Crosses at churches have been replaced with black ISIL flags, and the 1,700-year-old Christian population has fled after being ordered to convert to Islam. A buildup around the city has been underway for months, in anticipation of a planned ground assault.
“To retake Mosul on the ground there has to be months of preparation before that in terms of airstrikes and other forms of planning,” said Thomas Juneau, an associate professor at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. “It’s logical to target IS capabilities, IS defences, IS weapons depots in the Mosul area.”
Canada was not alone in its focus on Mosul — it was also the city most frequently struck by the coalition as a whole. “What our six (planes) have done has been a very small part of a big campaign,” said Randall Wakelam, an associate history professor at the Royal Military College of Canada.
The U.S.-led air coalition began to take shape in August 2014, after ISIL swept into Sinjar, committing one of the worst war crimes of the conflict. The videotaped beheading of U.S. journalist James Foley further cemented international resolve to defeat the Islamist extremists.
Canada joined the air mission in Oct. 2014, when Parliament voted to join the coalition. “We must do our part,” said then-prime minister Stephen Harper. But opposition parties stood against it, with Trudeau arguing that Canada should play a humanitarian role rather than “trying to whip out our CF-18s and show how big they are.”
The airstrikes aimed to halt ISIL’s expansion, shrink its territory and erode its capabilities, said Juneau, who called Canada’s participation “as political as military in the sense that it was a way to contribute to the legitimacy of overall operations.”
Within days of the vote, the CF18s left Cold Lake, Alta., for a base outside Kuwait City.
The first Canadian airstrike came on Nov. 2, west of Fallujah. The planes recorded six strikes that month and nine in December, but by January they were conducting almost daily bombing runs.
In Mosul, ISIL set fire to parts of the city to throw off reconnaissance aircraft, and mixed among civilians. “We follow laws of conflicts but they hold meetings in mosques, hospitals and schools,” said Col. Sean Boyle, who commanded Air Task Force Iraq between April and October 2015. “It makes it a much more complicated mission.”
The CF-18s sometimes flew missions alone and sometimes alongside coalition partners. Boyle recalled a Canadian-led attack on a training camp near Mosul by CF18s, Saudi F-15s and planes from four other nations. “We worked seamlessly. We were on the same page,” said Chief Warrant Officer John Short, who spent six months on the air campaign.
In Sinjar, where ISIL massacred, enslaved and expelled the Yazidi minority, CF-18s struck 31 times as Kurdish forces fought to retake the city. The central city of Ramadi was the third most commonly targeted with two dozen airstrikes; Iraqi forces recently took control of Ramadi, proclaiming it their first major victory against ISIL.
The targeting reflected the fact that “we are the air force for the various opposition forces,” said professor Stephen Saideman, the Paterson Chair in International Affairs at Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs.
Although Parliament voted last March to extend the air mission into Syria, the CF-18s struck only five times in that country — twice in the ISIL stronghold of Raqqa. The most recent sortie into Syria was Jan. 27, the target an IED factory near Palmyra.
The airstrike data suggest that preventing IED attacks was a priority for the mission. The military reported striking dozens of IED factories, storage facilities and vehicles rigged with explosives — a favourite ISIL weapon.
The tempo of Canadian airstrikes peaked from May to July 2015, the data show. During that period, CF-18s conducted 69 strikes. The pace slowed during the federal election, but Trudeau did not ground the CF-18s immediately after his October federal election victory. Almost 60 airstrikes — about quarter of the total — occurred after he was sworn in.
The air campaign has been notable for the absence of confirmed civilian casualties. That may be partly due to the lack of an independent media presence on the ground, but the airstrike data also suggest pilots were cautious.
Eight out of 10 times, Canadian fighter jets returned from their sorties without having dropped any bombs. “I reviewed every single strike with pilots, sometimes frame by frame,” Boyle said. “To the best of our ability we can confirm that there are no civilian casualties.”
He said the guided munitions, which ranged from 500 to 2,000 pounds, were “very advanced” and accurate 99 per cent of the time — although “one or two times” the bombs were duds that struck without detonating.
By contrast, the Russians — who were accused this week of bombing a hospital in Syria — have shown less regard for civilians. “The Syrians are sometimes dropping bombs from helicopters,” Boyle said.
On Feb. 8, Trudeau announced he would end the air mission Feb. 22. Saying that “our efforts should better reflect what Canada is all about,” the prime minister said his government would instead focus on aid, diplomacy and training Iraqi forces.
On Wednesday, the military announced the mission had actually ended on Feb. 15. The Canadian Joint Operations Command Headquarters said this week the CF-18s had contributed to efforts to “halt and degrade” ISIL.
Canada’s final tally: 1,378 CF-18 sorties and 251 airstrikes on 267 ISIL fighting positions, 30 IED factories and storage facilities and other targets. ( The official totals vary from Postmedia’s because some of the military’s publicly released data record multiple airstrikes as a single strike.)
“To date as a result of coalition efforts ISIL can no longer manoeuvre freely in large numbers,” said spokesman Capt. Kirk Sullivan. The ISIL leadership and its economy have been targeted, and morale is declining, he said.
Among those returning home will be military lawyers who were part of the targeting process that ensured Canada’s rules of engagement were followed.
“The coalition has been able to stop the advances of ISIL, their freedom of movement and their supply chain,” said a CF-18 pilot who flew 41 missions over Iraq last year and is now back in Canada. “This was one of the best moments of my career.”
Statement by an named RCAF CF-18 pilot who took part in OP IMPACT:
I flew 41 combat missions over Iraq. The strikes varied from something that was very intense to others that were more routine. There were a lot of moving parts that involved a lot of co-ordination. The air space was quite busy. We either flew as Canadian elements of the coalition or as parts of a large coalition package. I have the pleasure of serving the government where and when asked. This is a huge responsibility and it is a pleasure to deploy. Operating the equipment itself was an inherent challenge in the Middle East. There were heat and other effects. (Preparing the aircraft to fly) is a rigorous process. I am confident there was no collateral damage before, during and after our missions. Checking for collateral damage is an important part of what we do together. It starts before the mission takes place. It is an extensive, rigorous process that does not end until the release of the weapon. To the best of my knowledge there were no problems with any of the airstrikes during the entire mission and specifically, during my deployment.
The National Post
It is kind of sad to see them go. I realize that for your operators who fly the CF-18s ... I think they are a little disappointed because I know if I was one of them at the squadron level and much younger, I would probably be feeling the same way. We are pounding these guys so hard, once the folks on the ground show up, what you have is a skeletal force in different locations. —Lt.-Gen. Charles Brown, Commander, Air Force component, U.S. Central Command
The strikes varied from something that was very intense to others that were more routine. There were a lot of moving parts that involved a lot of co-ordination. There has never been a dull moment. This was one of the best moments of my career.
— unnamed RCAF pilot
Up to 10 times a month, Canadian pilots flying out of a scorching hot airfield in Kuwait struck ISIL in and around Iraq’s second-largest city, targeting everything from bunkers and artillery to vehicles and car bomb factories.
While the political debate continues over Trudeau’s decision to ground the CF-18s in favour of more training, the analysis of Canadian Armed Forces airstrike data answers a more pragmatic question: what exactly did Canada’s fighter jets do?
Figures show that the six CF-18s conducted more than 230 airstrikes — all but five of them in Iraq. The vast majority targeted what the military described as fighting positions. The attacks were concentrated around Mosul, Sinjar and Ramadi.
The latter two cities have been retaken by Iraqi forces but Mosul remains the glittering prize. The once culturally rich city on the Tigris River has been ravaged by ISIL, which has imposed its militant brand of Islamic law through executions, child recruitment and ethnic cleansing.
Crosses at churches have been replaced with black ISIL flags, and the 1,700-year-old Christian population has fled after being ordered to convert to Islam. A buildup around the city has been underway for months, in anticipation of a planned ground assault.
“To retake Mosul on the ground there has to be months of preparation before that in terms of airstrikes and other forms of planning,” said Thomas Juneau, an associate professor at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. “It’s logical to target IS capabilities, IS defences, IS weapons depots in the Mosul area.”
Canada was not alone in its focus on Mosul — it was also the city most frequently struck by the coalition as a whole. “What our six (planes) have done has been a very small part of a big campaign,” said Randall Wakelam, an associate history professor at the Royal Military College of Canada.
The U.S.-led air coalition began to take shape in August 2014, after ISIL swept into Sinjar, committing one of the worst war crimes of the conflict. The videotaped beheading of U.S. journalist James Foley further cemented international resolve to defeat the Islamist extremists.
Canada joined the air mission in Oct. 2014, when Parliament voted to join the coalition. “We must do our part,” said then-prime minister Stephen Harper. But opposition parties stood against it, with Trudeau arguing that Canada should play a humanitarian role rather than “trying to whip out our CF-18s and show how big they are.”
The airstrikes aimed to halt ISIL’s expansion, shrink its territory and erode its capabilities, said Juneau, who called Canada’s participation “as political as military in the sense that it was a way to contribute to the legitimacy of overall operations.”
Within days of the vote, the CF18s left Cold Lake, Alta., for a base outside Kuwait City.
The first Canadian airstrike came on Nov. 2, west of Fallujah. The planes recorded six strikes that month and nine in December, but by January they were conducting almost daily bombing runs.
In Mosul, ISIL set fire to parts of the city to throw off reconnaissance aircraft, and mixed among civilians. “We follow laws of conflicts but they hold meetings in mosques, hospitals and schools,” said Col. Sean Boyle, who commanded Air Task Force Iraq between April and October 2015. “It makes it a much more complicated mission.”
The CF-18s sometimes flew missions alone and sometimes alongside coalition partners. Boyle recalled a Canadian-led attack on a training camp near Mosul by CF18s, Saudi F-15s and planes from four other nations. “We worked seamlessly. We were on the same page,” said Chief Warrant Officer John Short, who spent six months on the air campaign.
In Sinjar, where ISIL massacred, enslaved and expelled the Yazidi minority, CF-18s struck 31 times as Kurdish forces fought to retake the city. The central city of Ramadi was the third most commonly targeted with two dozen airstrikes; Iraqi forces recently took control of Ramadi, proclaiming it their first major victory against ISIL.
The targeting reflected the fact that “we are the air force for the various opposition forces,” said professor Stephen Saideman, the Paterson Chair in International Affairs at Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs.
Although Parliament voted last March to extend the air mission into Syria, the CF-18s struck only five times in that country — twice in the ISIL stronghold of Raqqa. The most recent sortie into Syria was Jan. 27, the target an IED factory near Palmyra.
The airstrike data suggest that preventing IED attacks was a priority for the mission. The military reported striking dozens of IED factories, storage facilities and vehicles rigged with explosives — a favourite ISIL weapon.
The tempo of Canadian airstrikes peaked from May to July 2015, the data show. During that period, CF-18s conducted 69 strikes. The pace slowed during the federal election, but Trudeau did not ground the CF-18s immediately after his October federal election victory. Almost 60 airstrikes — about quarter of the total — occurred after he was sworn in.
The air campaign has been notable for the absence of confirmed civilian casualties. That may be partly due to the lack of an independent media presence on the ground, but the airstrike data also suggest pilots were cautious.
Eight out of 10 times, Canadian fighter jets returned from their sorties without having dropped any bombs. “I reviewed every single strike with pilots, sometimes frame by frame,” Boyle said. “To the best of our ability we can confirm that there are no civilian casualties.”
He said the guided munitions, which ranged from 500 to 2,000 pounds, were “very advanced” and accurate 99 per cent of the time — although “one or two times” the bombs were duds that struck without detonating.
By contrast, the Russians — who were accused this week of bombing a hospital in Syria — have shown less regard for civilians. “The Syrians are sometimes dropping bombs from helicopters,” Boyle said.
On Feb. 8, Trudeau announced he would end the air mission Feb. 22. Saying that “our efforts should better reflect what Canada is all about,” the prime minister said his government would instead focus on aid, diplomacy and training Iraqi forces.
On Wednesday, the military announced the mission had actually ended on Feb. 15. The Canadian Joint Operations Command Headquarters said this week the CF-18s had contributed to efforts to “halt and degrade” ISIL.
Canada’s final tally: 1,378 CF-18 sorties and 251 airstrikes on 267 ISIL fighting positions, 30 IED factories and storage facilities and other targets. ( The official totals vary from Postmedia’s because some of the military’s publicly released data record multiple airstrikes as a single strike.)
“To date as a result of coalition efforts ISIL can no longer manoeuvre freely in large numbers,” said spokesman Capt. Kirk Sullivan. The ISIL leadership and its economy have been targeted, and morale is declining, he said.
Among those returning home will be military lawyers who were part of the targeting process that ensured Canada’s rules of engagement were followed.
“The coalition has been able to stop the advances of ISIL, their freedom of movement and their supply chain,” said a CF-18 pilot who flew 41 missions over Iraq last year and is now back in Canada. “This was one of the best moments of my career.”
I flew 41 combat missions over Iraq. The strikes varied from something that was very intense to others that were more routine. There were a lot of moving parts that involved a lot of co-ordination. The air space was quite busy. We either flew as Canadian elements of the coalition or as parts of a large coalition package. I have the pleasure of serving the government where and when asked. This is a huge responsibility and it is a pleasure to deploy. Operating the equipment itself was an inherent challenge in the Middle East. There were heat and other effects. (Preparing the aircraft to fly) is a rigorous process. I am confident there was no collateral damage before, during and after our missions. Checking for collateral damage is an important part of what we do together. It starts before the mission takes place. It is an extensive, rigorous process that does not end until the release of the weapon. To the best of my knowledge there were no problems with any of the airstrikes during the entire mission and specifically, during my deployment.
Thursday, February 4, 2016
Walkom: Canada wise to be cautious about ever-widening ISIS War
Thomas Walkom published a very interesting article in today's Toronto Star, explaining why the Liberal government has been smart about taking its time outlining Canada`s future contribution to the ISIS campaign. He clearly explains how after 10+ years of war against terrorism, things have only gotten worse.
Here is his article,
Slowly, inexorably, the war against the Islamic State is widening.
It has moved into Afghanistan, where both the U.S. and the Taliban are taking on ISIS militants.
It is moving into Libya. There, the U.S. is reportedly contemplating airstrikes. Italy is said to be looking at the eventual dispatch of ground troops.
In Iraq, the U.S. has already found itself enmeshed in ground combat — in spite of President Barack Obama’s stated aversion to the notion.
American special forces have also been sent into Syria.
In both countries, U.S. ground troops are there technically only to “advise and assist.” But the phrase is being interpreted broadly.
As U.S. Defence Secretary Ash Carter noted last month in a speech to troops, the U.S. plans to go after ISIS commanders and militants “killing or capturing them wherever we find them.”
Politically, Washington is putting pressure on its friends to up their commitments.
That was the message that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry delivered to his allied counterparts, including Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion, in Rome Tuesday.
In spite of American pressure, Canada’s new Liberal government is moving slowly. Conservative critics slam Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for failing to say what, if anything, he will do militarily in Iraq and Syria once he fulfils his promise to bring Canada’s six fighter jets home.
But perhaps the government is wise to take its time. War is serious business.
As Canadians found in Afghanistan, it’s easy to get enmeshed in war. It’s harder to get out.
To his credit, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan seems to recognize this. A veteran of the Afghan War, he knows what can happen when politicians send troops into conflict before sorting out the ramifications.
“I want to make sure we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past,” Sajjan told the Commons Monday.
“Because every single time we make these mistakes as political leaders, we send our men and women into harm’s way for no reason.”
For that frank assessment, the minister was pilloried. Conservative critic James Bezan suggested he was belittling Canada’s soldiers. Jason Kenney, another Conservative MP, mocked his syntax.
In fact, Sajjan was right. Mistakes were made in Afghanistan. As a soldier serving in that war, he was on the receiving end of them.
On Friday, he outlined some of these mistakes in a speech to a foreign policy conference.
The Canadian Press reports that Sajjan singled out the West’s failure to grasp the complex situation on the ground.
He also noted that much of the money earmarked for Afghan aid only fuelled corruption.
And he issued a general caution about the war against terror.
“Over the last 10 years, we need to do a really hard assessment,” he said. “Should we be patting ourselves on the back? And I’m talking from a security perspective around the world.
“I think we can say things have not gotten much better. Things have gotten worse.”
It’s hard to disagree with that conclusion. Things have gotten worse.
Afghanistan is still mired in war. In spite of Western training, Afghan troops have not taken up the slack in the fight against the Taliban. The Americans have delayed the withdrawal of their forces once. They may do so again.
What’s more, the Islamic State is now active in Afghanistan, fighting both the U.S. and the Taliban. According to the New York Times, U.S. forces have carried out a dozen operations against ISIS in Afghanistan during the last three weeks.
Libya is a mess. Western intervention to remove Moammar Gadhafi has left it fractured and without a coherent government. The U.S. and its allies are now belatedly trying to cobble together a Libyan government of national unity to prevent the country from becoming yet another ISIS stronghold.
Iraq is in crisis thanks in large part to the U.S. invasion of 2003. Syria is in crisis even though the U.S. didn’t invade. There are no easy answers.
Given all of this, it makes sense for Canada’s government to move carefully. It may bother the armchair warriors that Canada is not rushing into battle in Iraq and Syria. I doubt that it bothers the soldiers who might be sent there.
Thomas Walkom’s column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday.
Thursday, January 28, 2016
Dion: Canada Cannot Say 'Yes' to All Coalition Requests visa-vi ISIS
Mike Blanchfield, The Canadian Press
Published Thursday, January 28, 2016 10:19AM EST
Last Updated Thursday, January 28, 2016 12:18PM EST
OTTAWA -- Canada will have to say no to some of the requests that its allies are making in the fight against Islamic extremists, Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion said Thursday.
But the minister wouldn't say if some coalition members have asked Canada to keep its fighter jets in Iraq and Syria.
"We cannot say yes to everything," Dion said.
Dion was discussing Canada's future contribution to the mission against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant at a major gathering of foreign affairs experts in Ottawa. He insisted the new Liberal contribution will be meaningful."When our plan will be out, it will not be all what our allies are asking us to do, but it will be pretty close of what they hope from us."
The Liberals plan to withdraw Canada's six CF-18 fighter jets from the US-led bombing coalition, which has sparked criticism from the Opposition Conservatives.
Dion will not say when the government will announce its new plan, but he says there would be no gap in Canada's contribution to the air war in the meantime.
"The plan is not out because the current plan is still there. There is no gap. We are still involved."
He also said he will travel to Rome next week for another major meeting of coalition partners.
Dion played down the fact that Canada was not invited to a recent coalition meeting led by the Americans. He such "ad hoc" meetings occur, but Canada is always fully briefed by the United States.
He said Canada is conducting two to three per cent of the coalition airstrikes and he said it is "doable" for the coalition to replace that contribution.
David Perry, a senior analyst with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, said Canadian warplanes may have been flying a relatively low percentage of bombing missions, but the contribution has been more meaningful than statistics would indicate.
"Canada's been flying a lot of the more difficult missions for quite some time and that will end."
Published Thursday, January 28, 2016 10:19AM EST
Last Updated Thursday, January 28, 2016 12:18PM EST
OTTAWA -- Canada will have to say no to some of the requests that its allies are making in the fight against Islamic extremists, Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion said Thursday.
But the minister wouldn't say if some coalition members have asked Canada to keep its fighter jets in Iraq and Syria.
"We cannot say yes to everything," Dion said.
Dion was discussing Canada's future contribution to the mission against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant at a major gathering of foreign affairs experts in Ottawa. He insisted the new Liberal contribution will be meaningful."When our plan will be out, it will not be all what our allies are asking us to do, but it will be pretty close of what they hope from us."
The Liberals plan to withdraw Canada's six CF-18 fighter jets from the US-led bombing coalition, which has sparked criticism from the Opposition Conservatives.
Dion will not say when the government will announce its new plan, but he says there would be no gap in Canada's contribution to the air war in the meantime.
"The plan is not out because the current plan is still there. There is no gap. We are still involved."
He also said he will travel to Rome next week for another major meeting of coalition partners.
Dion played down the fact that Canada was not invited to a recent coalition meeting led by the Americans. He such "ad hoc" meetings occur, but Canada is always fully briefed by the United States.
He said Canada is conducting two to three per cent of the coalition airstrikes and he said it is "doable" for the coalition to replace that contribution.
David Perry, a senior analyst with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, said Canadian warplanes may have been flying a relatively low percentage of bombing missions, but the contribution has been more meaningful than statistics would indicate.
"Canada's been flying a lot of the more difficult missions for quite some time and that will end."
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
Canada in Iraq: Sajjan - Government will Vote on New Iraq Mission
By: Tim Naumetz, The Hill Times
The Liberal government will bring a decision on renewing and changing Canada’s participation in the U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State combatants in Iraq to the House of Commons for a vote, says Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan.
“We promised to be an open and transparent government. We will be discussing it in Cabinet, and we will be bringing it to the House as well,” Mr. Sajjan (Vancouver South, B.C.) told The Hill Times Monday in response to questions as the March 30, 2016, expiry date approaches for a year-long extension to the Iraq mission by the previous Conservative government.
While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Papineau, Que.) and his Cabinet have indicated the government intends to continue Canada’s role in a U.S.-led military campaign against ISIL, Mr. Trudeau as late as last week signaled the government will stick to a Liberal election promise that it would withdraw six Canadian CF-18 fighter bombers that have been part of air-strike operations along with the U.S. and 11 other countries.
Despite Mr. Sajjan’s statement, NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair (Outremont, Que.) continued to criticize Mr. Trudeau and his government over the time that has passed with no change to Canada’s Iraq mission since the Liberals took office last Nov. 4.
Air strikes by Canada's CF-18s have continued, while operations by Canadian Special Forces soldiers attached to Iraqi security forces also continue.
"Mr. Trudeau made a crystal clear commitment to withdraw Canada's CF-18s from the bombing mission. Instead of making good on that promise, the bombings increased and then his Defence minister mused about extending the mission without consulting with Parliament,” Mr. Mulcair said Monday.
“The Liberal government must bring any change to the mission before Parliament and finally come clean with their plans for our military. It is unacceptable to have this much confusion when it comes to our troops in combat,” he said through his top media aide, George Smith.
The motion passed on March 30, 2015 stated that the Commons supported the previous Conservative government’s decision to extend the mission, which the Conservatives first approved for a six-month period in October, 2014, to “a date not beyond March 30, 2016.”
The motion also stated that the House of Commons “continues to support the government's decision to contribute Canadian military assets to the fight against ISIL, and terrorists aligned with ISIL, including air strike capability with authorisation to conduct airstrikes in Iraq and Syria."
Canadian CF-18s took part in only four air strikes against ISIL targets in Syria up to last July and have not conducted air strikes in Syria since then, but the wording of the March 30, 2015, motion suggests withdrawal of the CF-18s by this coming March 30 would have to be included in a new motion, as well as continuance of Canadian refuelling, surveillance and cargo aircraft in the mission.
As well, considering the Liberal commitment to Parliamentary reform and consultation with Parliament, any increase in the number of Canadian Special Operations Regiment soldiers as advisers and trainers for Kurdish Peshmerga Iraqi security forces would likely also be included in the motion.
Mr. Trudeau reiterated the Liberal CF-18 withdrawal plans at the World Economy Forum summit in Davos, Switzerland, last week.
“We are committed to withdrawing our six CF-18 fighter jets and looking for another way to continue in the efforts against these global terrorists,” he said.
Relatives of six Canadians who were killed in an Al Qaeda terrorist attack in Burkina Faso last week—all from Quebec and four from the same family—called on the government to maintain Canada’s role in the bombing campaigns.
Mr. Sajjan suggested Monday the Canadian mission could continue as it is until the March 30 deadline, as Mr. Trudeau and his Cabinet map out the new Canadian contribution.
“We do need to look at how we're going to evolve in terms of the next, you know, what the next year may look like or even beyond that, and this is where it's extremely important,” Mr. Sajjan told reporters outside the Commons after Question Period.
He said Canada’s new mission has to be “synchronized” approach involving several departments. “The decision will be coming soon,” he said.
tnaumetz@hilltimes.com
The Hill Times
The Liberal government will bring a decision on renewing and changing Canada’s participation in the U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State combatants in Iraq to the House of Commons for a vote, says Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan.
“We promised to be an open and transparent government. We will be discussing it in Cabinet, and we will be bringing it to the House as well,” Mr. Sajjan (Vancouver South, B.C.) told The Hill Times Monday in response to questions as the March 30, 2016, expiry date approaches for a year-long extension to the Iraq mission by the previous Conservative government.
While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Papineau, Que.) and his Cabinet have indicated the government intends to continue Canada’s role in a U.S.-led military campaign against ISIL, Mr. Trudeau as late as last week signaled the government will stick to a Liberal election promise that it would withdraw six Canadian CF-18 fighter bombers that have been part of air-strike operations along with the U.S. and 11 other countries.
Despite Mr. Sajjan’s statement, NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair (Outremont, Que.) continued to criticize Mr. Trudeau and his government over the time that has passed with no change to Canada’s Iraq mission since the Liberals took office last Nov. 4.
Air strikes by Canada's CF-18s have continued, while operations by Canadian Special Forces soldiers attached to Iraqi security forces also continue.
"Mr. Trudeau made a crystal clear commitment to withdraw Canada's CF-18s from the bombing mission. Instead of making good on that promise, the bombings increased and then his Defence minister mused about extending the mission without consulting with Parliament,” Mr. Mulcair said Monday.
“The Liberal government must bring any change to the mission before Parliament and finally come clean with their plans for our military. It is unacceptable to have this much confusion when it comes to our troops in combat,” he said through his top media aide, George Smith.
The motion passed on March 30, 2015 stated that the Commons supported the previous Conservative government’s decision to extend the mission, which the Conservatives first approved for a six-month period in October, 2014, to “a date not beyond March 30, 2016.”
The motion also stated that the House of Commons “continues to support the government's decision to contribute Canadian military assets to the fight against ISIL, and terrorists aligned with ISIL, including air strike capability with authorisation to conduct airstrikes in Iraq and Syria."
Canadian CF-18s took part in only four air strikes against ISIL targets in Syria up to last July and have not conducted air strikes in Syria since then, but the wording of the March 30, 2015, motion suggests withdrawal of the CF-18s by this coming March 30 would have to be included in a new motion, as well as continuance of Canadian refuelling, surveillance and cargo aircraft in the mission.
As well, considering the Liberal commitment to Parliamentary reform and consultation with Parliament, any increase in the number of Canadian Special Operations Regiment soldiers as advisers and trainers for Kurdish Peshmerga Iraqi security forces would likely also be included in the motion.
Mr. Trudeau reiterated the Liberal CF-18 withdrawal plans at the World Economy Forum summit in Davos, Switzerland, last week.
“We are committed to withdrawing our six CF-18 fighter jets and looking for another way to continue in the efforts against these global terrorists,” he said.
Relatives of six Canadians who were killed in an Al Qaeda terrorist attack in Burkina Faso last week—all from Quebec and four from the same family—called on the government to maintain Canada’s role in the bombing campaigns.
Mr. Sajjan suggested Monday the Canadian mission could continue as it is until the March 30 deadline, as Mr. Trudeau and his Cabinet map out the new Canadian contribution.
“We do need to look at how we're going to evolve in terms of the next, you know, what the next year may look like or even beyond that, and this is where it's extremely important,” Mr. Sajjan told reporters outside the Commons after Question Period.
He said Canada’s new mission has to be “synchronized” approach involving several departments. “The decision will be coming soon,” he said.
tnaumetz@hilltimes.com
The Hill Times
Monday, January 25, 2016
Cabinet Close to Decision on Canada's Role in Middle East
By: Mark Kennedy, Ottawa Citizen,
Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said Sunday the federal government is close to deciding how Canada will play a role in the mission in the Middle East against the Islamic State Iraq and the Levant.
Sajjan made the comments to reporters as MPs geared up for their return to Parliament on Monday. The governing Liberals promised during the election campaign to bring home the six CF-18 military jets dropping bombs on ISIL targets in Iraq and Syria.
That combat mission, ordered by the previous Conservative government, was scheduled to end in March, but the Liberals have not pulled back the planes yet or even definitely indicated if they will do so before March.
Conservative critics say Canada is losing influence with its western military allies because of its plan to pull out of the combat air sorties; the NDP is critical of the Liberals for delaying their promise.
Sajjan said the government doesn’t want to rush a decision on the complex matter and that he is close to bringing a thorough plan to cabinet to approve.
“I think Canadians deserve to know,” he said of the government’s plan. “But also, Canadians expect us to be very responsible in making sure that we do an absolutely thorough assessment.
“The last thing we want to be doing is making any type of knee-jerk reaction decisions just for the sake of getting an answer out.”
Sajjan said he has been working with Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion and other ministers on the plan.
“Because this is not just strictly a military issue. It’s political, it’s development, it’s humanitarian. And that’s why we want to make sure we take the time to have proper consultation.”
“We’re being very responsible. We’re working very closely — from the minister level in discussions all the way through our staff in making sure that we have a good synergy. We’re working out the few details right now and we’ll be taking it to cabinet very shortly.”
Sajjan said an announcement will be made “soon” about the timing of the CF-18 pullout from the region.
He stressed: “The air strikes will be ending. But it will be done in a responsible manner.”
It’s expected the Liberals will increase the number of Canadian troops training local forces in Iraq, possibly keep some surveillance planes in the air, and enhance the country’s humanitarian assistance in the region.
“We want to do a proper assessment. When you send the treasure of Canada — which is our men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces — into harm’s way, we have to be (acting) in a responsible manner.”
He downplayed a meeting in Paris last week in which Canada was not at the table as his counterparts from seven countries discussed the fight against ISIS.
Defence ministers from the United States, France, Australia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Britain planned the next steps in the war against ISIS.
Some have suggested the alliance is unhappy with Canada’s plan to pull out the CF-18 jets.
But Sajjan said he has had “deep discussions” with his counterparts, has already visited the Middle East twice since becoming minister and will be at a forthcoming meeting of NATO ministers.
mkennedy@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/Mark_Kennedy_
Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said Sunday the federal government is close to deciding how Canada will play a role in the mission in the Middle East against the Islamic State Iraq and the Levant.
Sajjan made the comments to reporters as MPs geared up for their return to Parliament on Monday. The governing Liberals promised during the election campaign to bring home the six CF-18 military jets dropping bombs on ISIL targets in Iraq and Syria.
That combat mission, ordered by the previous Conservative government, was scheduled to end in March, but the Liberals have not pulled back the planes yet or even definitely indicated if they will do so before March.
Conservative critics say Canada is losing influence with its western military allies because of its plan to pull out of the combat air sorties; the NDP is critical of the Liberals for delaying their promise.
Sajjan said the government doesn’t want to rush a decision on the complex matter and that he is close to bringing a thorough plan to cabinet to approve.
“I think Canadians deserve to know,” he said of the government’s plan. “But also, Canadians expect us to be very responsible in making sure that we do an absolutely thorough assessment.
“The last thing we want to be doing is making any type of knee-jerk reaction decisions just for the sake of getting an answer out.”
Sajjan said he has been working with Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion and other ministers on the plan.
“Because this is not just strictly a military issue. It’s political, it’s development, it’s humanitarian. And that’s why we want to make sure we take the time to have proper consultation.”
“We’re being very responsible. We’re working very closely — from the minister level in discussions all the way through our staff in making sure that we have a good synergy. We’re working out the few details right now and we’ll be taking it to cabinet very shortly.”
Sajjan said an announcement will be made “soon” about the timing of the CF-18 pullout from the region.
He stressed: “The air strikes will be ending. But it will be done in a responsible manner.”
It’s expected the Liberals will increase the number of Canadian troops training local forces in Iraq, possibly keep some surveillance planes in the air, and enhance the country’s humanitarian assistance in the region.
“We want to do a proper assessment. When you send the treasure of Canada — which is our men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces — into harm’s way, we have to be (acting) in a responsible manner.”
He downplayed a meeting in Paris last week in which Canada was not at the table as his counterparts from seven countries discussed the fight against ISIS.
Defence ministers from the United States, France, Australia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Britain planned the next steps in the war against ISIS.
Some have suggested the alliance is unhappy with Canada’s plan to pull out the CF-18 jets.
But Sajjan said he has had “deep discussions” with his counterparts, has already visited the Middle East twice since becoming minister and will be at a forthcoming meeting of NATO ministers.
mkennedy@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/Mark_Kennedy_
Thursday, January 21, 2016
Canada Not Alone in Being Left out of ISIS Meeting
By David Pugliese, Defence Watch
The hand-wringing among Canadian defence analysts and opposition critics continues over the decision by the U.S. not to invite Canada to a meeting over developing strategy to combat the Islamic State.
The United States, France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Australia and the Netherlands were at the meeting.
Canada wasn’t invited, prompting speculation by quite a number of commentators that this was a sign that Canada no longer mattered because of its plan to withdraw fighter jets from the coalition.
Former Conservative Defence Minister Peter MacKay took that a step further, telling CTV that the lack of invitation represented the view that Canada’s role, not only in the Iraq mission, but in its presence in the entire world, had diminished.
Who else wasn’t invited to the meeting?
Other nations who have taken part in the coalition bombing campaign against ISIL – Belgium, Denmark and Turkey as well as key Middle East allies Jordan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Denmark had withdrawn its aircraft last year to give its crews a rest but is putting them back in the war this coming spring.
The hand-wringing among Canadian defence analysts and opposition critics continues over the decision by the U.S. not to invite Canada to a meeting over developing strategy to combat the Islamic State.
The United States, France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Australia and the Netherlands were at the meeting.
Canada wasn’t invited, prompting speculation by quite a number of commentators that this was a sign that Canada no longer mattered because of its plan to withdraw fighter jets from the coalition.
Former Conservative Defence Minister Peter MacKay took that a step further, telling CTV that the lack of invitation represented the view that Canada’s role, not only in the Iraq mission, but in its presence in the entire world, had diminished.
Who else wasn’t invited to the meeting?
Other nations who have taken part in the coalition bombing campaign against ISIL – Belgium, Denmark and Turkey as well as key Middle East allies Jordan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Denmark had withdrawn its aircraft last year to give its crews a rest but is putting them back in the war this coming spring.
Is the Answer to ISIS to Create Sunnistan?
Published by the CDA Institute, Blogger - David Law
CDA Institute Security & Defence Blogger David Law, a Senior Associate/Fellow at the Security Governance Group/Centre for Security Governance in Kitchener, comments on proposals of creating a Sunni state (Sunnistan).
On 25 November 2015, John Bolton, US representative to the UN from 2005–2006, neo-con par excellence, published a piece in the New York Times that advocated the creation of a Sunni state in those areas presently occupied by the Islamic State.
There is very little that Mr. Bolton and I share politically but on the issue of the future of this region, we have some common ground. I share his concern that Iraq and Syria are Humpty-Dumpty states that may not be possible to put back together again. The former ambassador argues for the creation of a Sunnistan once IS has been defeated. My approach would be to consider its creation as part of the process of defeating IS.
I am generally not in favour of separating communities and splitting states. The world now counts over 200 statal actors, roughly six times more than at the beginning of World War I. This has allowed many communities, previously cosseted in structures that they had not become part of by choice, to establish their own jurisdictions – and bravo for that that. But we may be close to a point where the benefits to be gained by creating new states designed to resolve identity conflicts are becoming counterproductive. Working with 200-odd states in the international community is difficult enough. Pretty well all of them have significant minorities in their midst. It probably makes more sense to think more creatively about how to deal more effectively with the relationships among states rather than creating new ones.
That said, there come times when it becomes necessary to accept that a state has outlived its usefulness and needs to make way for a new statal structure. For example, while the disappearance of Yugoslavia was a tragic event in a great many respects, there was an objective need, for example, to end Serbia’s control over Kosovo. The Belgrade of the erstwhile Serbian leader Milosevic wanted to maintain its domination over the territory of Kosovo, lands that had been in Serb hands for centuries, but it did not want to accept the Albanian population residing there as people deserving equal treatment with their Serb co-citizens.
The situation in Iraq and Syria is not dissimilar. Syria’s President Assad has relinquished any right to continue to preside over his country. He has lost the allegiance of most of its many ethnic and religious entities. He has made it crystal clear through four years of civil war and over a quarter of a million deaths that his prime objective is to maintain the grip of the Alawite community on the Syrian system of governance. This is what unleashed the peaceful protests in the first place, to which he responded with unbridled force. So, he expects that a minority of some 15 percent of the population can continue to prevail over the vast majority of the rest? There are, of course, minority national and religious communities in Syria that have traditionally enjoyed the protection of the Alawi-dominated government but the overall arithmetic behind the Assad approach is obscene.
The situation in Iraq needs nuance. After decades of dominance of the Sunni minority over the country’s Kurds and Shiites, the former enjoy a more or less functioning administration of their own while the latter preside over the central government of Iraq. Shiite-dominated Bagdad is politically schizophrenic, on the one hand sucking up to Tehran, using the Shiite militias it sponsors to bolster its dominance, on the other, recently bending to US pressure to accept policies that have the potential of giving Sunnis a renewed stake in the country.
The situation in the currently-embattled Ramadi is instructive. This is the main city of Iraq’s Anbar province. Fewer than a hundred kilometres from Baghdad, Ramadi is 90 percent Sunni, the historical heartland of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and hence that part of Iraq most viscerally opposed to the American intervention. The Iraqi army, in a joint effort with local Sunni tribesmen and US aerial firepower, seems now to have succeeded in dislodging IS from the city. But note that in this battle Baghdad agreed not to employ Shiite militias supported by Iran in the campaign, in response to Washington’s concern that their presence would scuttlebutt the effort to roll back the IS.
Assuming that the battle for Ramadi has been won, the decisive question now is whether Baghdad will allow the local Sunni actors that have opposed IS to assume responsibility for the city’s administration. Whether it does or not will send signals across that large part of Sunni Iraq presently under IS occupation.
The bottom line is that Iraq, if it is to survive, needs to move towards a federalist arrangement among its Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds. I fear, however, that the victory in Ramadi is too little, too late. For Iraq, the train may have already left the station.
So, my take is that in certain respects John Bolton is spot on. Syria and Iraq may very well be done states. Have a look at the current situation in Afghanistan and see how the Taliban has made major inroads as the NATO coalition reduced its responsibilities and cut back on its fighting forces. After almost fifteen years of engagement in this beleaguered country, the Western project has been declared bankrupt by events on the ground. The budget for this has been over seven hundred billion USD for the United States alone. To expect one can do better with many fewer resources in Syria and Iraq does not convince.
The West has to do a serious rethink of its role in Syria and Iraq. One needs to find convincing arguments for keeping intact structures whose borders were drawn about a hundred years ago on the back of an envelope by the British and French diplomats, Sykes and Picot. This did not necessarily condemn these states from the outset but their failure to develop adequate power-sharing arrangements for their constituent parts in the interim and the colossal violence this has now engendered may well spell their downfall.
A further consideration is that if the West were to come out in favour of the creation of a Sunnistan, it might just put a fox among the pigeons. The fox would be the idea of an alternative to the IS-championed notion of an international caliphate that would solidify Sunni supremacy not only over other Muslims but over also those of other faiths. The pigeons would be the different groupings that populate the areas currently under IS control. These are essentially three: former Baathists, Sunni tribal groups and the tens of thousands of diaspora jihadists that have joined the ranks of the would-be world caliphate. While some of the Baathists and tribalists may have now accepted the IS discourse, I expect that a broad majority of them just want to step out from under the Alawite domination perpetuated by Damascus or the Shiite one championed by Iraq. They do not need an international caliphate to do so.
Assuming this analysis is correct, where do we go from here? If Damascus and Bagdad fail to adopt formulae giving their main minority communities an effective share of power, the West should profess support for a reordering of statal realities in the region. It should commit itself to helping the new states that would likely emerge – Sunnistan, one or more Kurdish states, an Alawi-dominated entity on the future former Syrian soil – to assume their sovereignty with as much grace and justice as can be assumed under the conditions prevailing in this part of the world, supporting consensual formation of borders, protection for minorities, universal suffrage, and all those other good things that the West has been historically identified with. This would not be a simple or short or easy struggle. But it could be the least painful one.
David Law, a former Head of the NATO Policy Planning Unit, is currently a Senior Associate with the Kitchener-based Security Governance Group, and a Senior Fellow with its sister organization, the Centre for Security Governance. (Image courtesy of Daily Mail.)
CDA Institute Security & Defence Blogger David Law, a Senior Associate/Fellow at the Security Governance Group/Centre for Security Governance in Kitchener, comments on proposals of creating a Sunni state (Sunnistan).
On 25 November 2015, John Bolton, US representative to the UN from 2005–2006, neo-con par excellence, published a piece in the New York Times that advocated the creation of a Sunni state in those areas presently occupied by the Islamic State.
There is very little that Mr. Bolton and I share politically but on the issue of the future of this region, we have some common ground. I share his concern that Iraq and Syria are Humpty-Dumpty states that may not be possible to put back together again. The former ambassador argues for the creation of a Sunnistan once IS has been defeated. My approach would be to consider its creation as part of the process of defeating IS.
I am generally not in favour of separating communities and splitting states. The world now counts over 200 statal actors, roughly six times more than at the beginning of World War I. This has allowed many communities, previously cosseted in structures that they had not become part of by choice, to establish their own jurisdictions – and bravo for that that. But we may be close to a point where the benefits to be gained by creating new states designed to resolve identity conflicts are becoming counterproductive. Working with 200-odd states in the international community is difficult enough. Pretty well all of them have significant minorities in their midst. It probably makes more sense to think more creatively about how to deal more effectively with the relationships among states rather than creating new ones.
That said, there come times when it becomes necessary to accept that a state has outlived its usefulness and needs to make way for a new statal structure. For example, while the disappearance of Yugoslavia was a tragic event in a great many respects, there was an objective need, for example, to end Serbia’s control over Kosovo. The Belgrade of the erstwhile Serbian leader Milosevic wanted to maintain its domination over the territory of Kosovo, lands that had been in Serb hands for centuries, but it did not want to accept the Albanian population residing there as people deserving equal treatment with their Serb co-citizens.
The situation in Iraq and Syria is not dissimilar. Syria’s President Assad has relinquished any right to continue to preside over his country. He has lost the allegiance of most of its many ethnic and religious entities. He has made it crystal clear through four years of civil war and over a quarter of a million deaths that his prime objective is to maintain the grip of the Alawite community on the Syrian system of governance. This is what unleashed the peaceful protests in the first place, to which he responded with unbridled force. So, he expects that a minority of some 15 percent of the population can continue to prevail over the vast majority of the rest? There are, of course, minority national and religious communities in Syria that have traditionally enjoyed the protection of the Alawi-dominated government but the overall arithmetic behind the Assad approach is obscene.
The situation in Iraq needs nuance. After decades of dominance of the Sunni minority over the country’s Kurds and Shiites, the former enjoy a more or less functioning administration of their own while the latter preside over the central government of Iraq. Shiite-dominated Bagdad is politically schizophrenic, on the one hand sucking up to Tehran, using the Shiite militias it sponsors to bolster its dominance, on the other, recently bending to US pressure to accept policies that have the potential of giving Sunnis a renewed stake in the country.
The situation in the currently-embattled Ramadi is instructive. This is the main city of Iraq’s Anbar province. Fewer than a hundred kilometres from Baghdad, Ramadi is 90 percent Sunni, the historical heartland of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and hence that part of Iraq most viscerally opposed to the American intervention. The Iraqi army, in a joint effort with local Sunni tribesmen and US aerial firepower, seems now to have succeeded in dislodging IS from the city. But note that in this battle Baghdad agreed not to employ Shiite militias supported by Iran in the campaign, in response to Washington’s concern that their presence would scuttlebutt the effort to roll back the IS.
Assuming that the battle for Ramadi has been won, the decisive question now is whether Baghdad will allow the local Sunni actors that have opposed IS to assume responsibility for the city’s administration. Whether it does or not will send signals across that large part of Sunni Iraq presently under IS occupation.
The bottom line is that Iraq, if it is to survive, needs to move towards a federalist arrangement among its Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds. I fear, however, that the victory in Ramadi is too little, too late. For Iraq, the train may have already left the station.
So, my take is that in certain respects John Bolton is spot on. Syria and Iraq may very well be done states. Have a look at the current situation in Afghanistan and see how the Taliban has made major inroads as the NATO coalition reduced its responsibilities and cut back on its fighting forces. After almost fifteen years of engagement in this beleaguered country, the Western project has been declared bankrupt by events on the ground. The budget for this has been over seven hundred billion USD for the United States alone. To expect one can do better with many fewer resources in Syria and Iraq does not convince.
The West has to do a serious rethink of its role in Syria and Iraq. One needs to find convincing arguments for keeping intact structures whose borders were drawn about a hundred years ago on the back of an envelope by the British and French diplomats, Sykes and Picot. This did not necessarily condemn these states from the outset but their failure to develop adequate power-sharing arrangements for their constituent parts in the interim and the colossal violence this has now engendered may well spell their downfall.
A further consideration is that if the West were to come out in favour of the creation of a Sunnistan, it might just put a fox among the pigeons. The fox would be the idea of an alternative to the IS-championed notion of an international caliphate that would solidify Sunni supremacy not only over other Muslims but over also those of other faiths. The pigeons would be the different groupings that populate the areas currently under IS control. These are essentially three: former Baathists, Sunni tribal groups and the tens of thousands of diaspora jihadists that have joined the ranks of the would-be world caliphate. While some of the Baathists and tribalists may have now accepted the IS discourse, I expect that a broad majority of them just want to step out from under the Alawite domination perpetuated by Damascus or the Shiite one championed by Iraq. They do not need an international caliphate to do so.
Assuming this analysis is correct, where do we go from here? If Damascus and Bagdad fail to adopt formulae giving their main minority communities an effective share of power, the West should profess support for a reordering of statal realities in the region. It should commit itself to helping the new states that would likely emerge – Sunnistan, one or more Kurdish states, an Alawi-dominated entity on the future former Syrian soil – to assume their sovereignty with as much grace and justice as can be assumed under the conditions prevailing in this part of the world, supporting consensual formation of borders, protection for minorities, universal suffrage, and all those other good things that the West has been historically identified with. This would not be a simple or short or easy struggle. But it could be the least painful one.
David Law, a former Head of the NATO Policy Planning Unit, is currently a Senior Associate with the Kitchener-based Security Governance Group, and a Senior Fellow with its sister organization, the Centre for Security Governance. (Image courtesy of Daily Mail.)
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
Den Tandt: Why Trudeau should keep CF-18’s in the fight against ISIS
Michael Den Tandt outlines here a great argument for why the Liberal Majority should reconsider its withdrawal of RCAF CF-18s from the US-led coalition against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
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| An RCAF CF-18 flies over Iraq during a sortie on OP IMPACT. November 7, 2015. Photo: CAF Combat Camera, OP IMPACT, DND |
There is a straightforward way for the Liberal government to get beyond the tangle in which it now finds itself over its pledge to pull Canada’s CF-18 fighters from the air war against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. That would be to break its promise, make a U-turn and keep them in the fight. This is not only the responsible thing to do; it is the politically smart thing to do, given the other options.
Since the Oct. 19 federal election, the debate has raged. Throughout the back and forth, the claims and counterclaims, Royal Canadian Air Force jets have continued to contribute to the U.S.-led campaign by, yes, dropping bombs on enemy targets. Late last week, Canadian forces took part in a battle that involved CF-18s and special forces ground troops.
In a year-end interview with the Huffington Post, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan committed to withdrawing the fighters within six months, though a parliamentary resolution calls for the air-combat mission to end in March. The reason for not pulling out immediately, Sajjan has said, is that the government does not wish to contribute to a loss of capacity for its allies. Translation: The CF-18s are making a valuable contribution to the overall effort, albeit a small one. If this were not the case, withdrawing them would make no difference to anyone and would have occurred already.
The arguments for keeping the CF-18s in the fight, or not, fall loosely into three groupings: tactical/strategic, philosophical/moral and political. In every case, based on a careful and fair-minded reading of the facts, the case for keeping the previous Conservative government’s policy in place is unassailable.
In military terms, simply put, the Liberals in crafting their policy and sticking to it doggedly have misunderstood the role of aerial combat in modern warfare. Repeatedly, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has spoken dismissively of “dropping bombs,” as though it’s indiscriminate carpet-bombing of residential areas, like something out of the Second World War or Vietnam.
That assumption is false. In this campaign, which even now is modest in scope compared with the rate of missions flown in both Gulf wars and in Yugoslavia in the late 1990s, air power is being used precisely by the allies to degrade and destroy ISIL’s capabilities and allow allied local ground troops to take back territory more easily.
To dismiss the air war as indiscriminate “combat” is shallow in the extreme. On the contrary, the aerial campaign is arguably the last, best hope for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization powers to avoid sending in their own ground troops in large numbers. It is an alternative to a ground war – not a necessary prelude to one. U.S. President Barack Obama, a lifelong pacifist, and French President François Hollande, a socialist, are not war hawks. They are advancing this strategy because they can see no other way of defeating ISIL, short of all-out war.
The philosophical and moral arguments essentially resolve into a discussion of failed foreign involvements in various Middle Eastern and South Asian wars extending centuries back. Many Canadians wonder what was achieved by 12 years of war in Afghanistan. The quagmire in Iraq and Syria, it is often noted, has its roots in president George W. Bush’s failed U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Gen. Colin Powell’s famous admonition, “if you break it, you own it,” went unheeded. The result has been one catastrophe after another, one of which was the rise of al-Qaida in Iraq, which metastasized into ISIL. Yes. Point understood and accepted.
The fact remains that 2015 is not 2003. In 2003, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, beyond being an annoying blowhard and a demented tyrant to his people, threatened no one beyond Iraq’s borders. He had no weapons of mass destruction. Had he had them, he had no will to use them.
ISIL’s self-anointed caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is no Saddam. He’s something much worse. He and his jihadists believe — and this is not opinion, but fact, available to anyone with stomach enough to do the research — that they are warriors for God on a sacred mission to bring about the end of the world. They believe that in the interim, it is their sacred obligation to wipe out all other iterations of Islam, re-introduce slavery and extend their caliphate worldwide. And they pose, as has been demonstrated repeatedly now, a clear and present danger to every pluralistic society, including Canada’s. Pearsonian Liberalism would opt for engagement.
That leaves the political argument, which is this: As long as withdrawing the CF-18s remains government policy, because it is incoherent, it will be a thorn in its side and a fundraising tool for the Conservatives. A flip-flop would cause short-term bruising. Longer term, it would validate the Liberals’ pledge to base policy on evidence, not ideology. And it would help establish them as responsible managers, rather than wishful thinkers.
National Post
Twitter.com/mdentandt
Thursday, December 3, 2015
Fighting ISIS: Britain Expands Air Campaign into Syria
As Canada prepares to withdraw its CF-18 fighter jets from the fight against ISIS sometime during the winter of 2016 - the US Led Coalition is gaining more strength this morning - The British Parliament voted yesterday to expand its mission from Iraq into Syria.
British fighter jets based out of Cyprus are already flying past Syria to bomb ISIS targets in Iraq - and by a vote of 397 to 223; the Parliament votes to allow the RAF to begin targeting ISIS in Syria. It did not take long for the RAF to begin its newly mandated mission - striking ISIS in Syria last night.
Below is the article written by Michele Kambas and Guy Faulconbridge of Reuters
AKROTIRI, Cyprus/LONDON - British bombers made their first strikes on Syria on Thursday, just hours after Britain's parliament voted to target Islamic State targets in Syria, a government source said.
Tornado bombers took off from the RAF Akrotiri air base in Cyprus and made strikes on targets in Syria, the source said. The bombers were back at base.
"A strike was made from over Syria," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The source declined to give further operational information about the targets or the number of aircraft involved, citing national security.
A Reuters witness in Cyprus saw four jets leaving in pairs from the air base within an hour of each other. All four had since returned.
RAF Akrotiri has been used as a launchpad for attacks on Islamic State targets in Iraq for just over a year, and late on Wednesday Britain's parliament broadened its scope for targets within Syria.
After more than 10 hours of tense debate, members of parliament voted in favour of the air strikes by 397 to 223.
Addressing parliament on Wednesday, Prime Minister David Cameron said high-precision, laser-guided Brimstone missiles attached to the Tornado GR4 bombers would help to make a real difference by hitting the de facto Islamic State capital of Raqqa and its oil-trading business.
France and the United States are already bombing Islamist militants in Syria, while Russia has bombed mainly other rebels, according to conflict monitors and Western officials, in an intervention launched on Sept. 30 to bolster its ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The West says Assad must go.
Cyprus, 100 km (60 miles) from Syria, is the closest European Union member state to turmoil in the Middle East.
In October, two boatloads of Middle Eastern migrants, including Syrian refugees, washed ashore at Akrotiri, a jutting peninsula on Cyprus's southern coast.
Britain, a former colonial power, retains two sovereign military bases in Cyprus.
British fighter jets based out of Cyprus are already flying past Syria to bomb ISIS targets in Iraq - and by a vote of 397 to 223; the Parliament votes to allow the RAF to begin targeting ISIS in Syria. It did not take long for the RAF to begin its newly mandated mission - striking ISIS in Syria last night.
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| An RAF Tornado Fighter takes off from Cyprus on its way to Iraq. Photo BBC |
Below is the article written by Michele Kambas and Guy Faulconbridge of Reuters
AKROTIRI, Cyprus/LONDON - British bombers made their first strikes on Syria on Thursday, just hours after Britain's parliament voted to target Islamic State targets in Syria, a government source said.
Tornado bombers took off from the RAF Akrotiri air base in Cyprus and made strikes on targets in Syria, the source said. The bombers were back at base.
"A strike was made from over Syria," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The source declined to give further operational information about the targets or the number of aircraft involved, citing national security.
A Reuters witness in Cyprus saw four jets leaving in pairs from the air base within an hour of each other. All four had since returned.
RAF Akrotiri has been used as a launchpad for attacks on Islamic State targets in Iraq for just over a year, and late on Wednesday Britain's parliament broadened its scope for targets within Syria.
After more than 10 hours of tense debate, members of parliament voted in favour of the air strikes by 397 to 223.
Addressing parliament on Wednesday, Prime Minister David Cameron said high-precision, laser-guided Brimstone missiles attached to the Tornado GR4 bombers would help to make a real difference by hitting the de facto Islamic State capital of Raqqa and its oil-trading business.
France and the United States are already bombing Islamist militants in Syria, while Russia has bombed mainly other rebels, according to conflict monitors and Western officials, in an intervention launched on Sept. 30 to bolster its ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The West says Assad must go.
Cyprus, 100 km (60 miles) from Syria, is the closest European Union member state to turmoil in the Middle East.
In October, two boatloads of Middle Eastern migrants, including Syrian refugees, washed ashore at Akrotiri, a jutting peninsula on Cyprus's southern coast.
Britain, a former colonial power, retains two sovereign military bases in Cyprus.
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
Defence Minister Visits CAF in Kuwait
Press Release: Government of Canada
OTTAWA – Defence Minister Harjit S. Sajjan today wrapped up a successful visit to Kuwait where he met with Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) personnel currently deployed in the region as part of Canada’s contribution to the multinational Coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Minister Sajjan used the occasion to pay tribute to the troops, thanking them for their dedication and service.
While in Kuwait, Minister Sajjan also met with his counterpart, His Excellency, Sheikh Khaled Al-Jarrah Al-Sabah, and other senior officials. During their discussions, the Minister underscored Canada’s ongoing commitment to working with allies and partners to counter global terrorism, and expressed his appreciation to Kuwait for hosting Canadian Armed Forces personnel engaged in the campaign. This support is vital to the mission.
OTTAWA – Defence Minister Harjit S. Sajjan today wrapped up a successful visit to Kuwait where he met with Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) personnel currently deployed in the region as part of Canada’s contribution to the multinational Coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Minister Sajjan used the occasion to pay tribute to the troops, thanking them for their dedication and service.
While in Kuwait, Minister Sajjan also met with his counterpart, His Excellency, Sheikh Khaled Al-Jarrah Al-Sabah, and other senior officials. During their discussions, the Minister underscored Canada’s ongoing commitment to working with allies and partners to counter global terrorism, and expressed his appreciation to Kuwait for hosting Canadian Armed Forces personnel engaged in the campaign. This support is vital to the mission.
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| CAF Members pause to remember WO. Patrice Vincent - in Kuwait, October 20, 2015. The CAF Camp is named in his honor. Photo: CAF Combat Camera |
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
Canada in Iraq: RCAF Strikes 3 ISIS Positions near Ramadi
Written by The Associated Press
Two Canadian fighter jets successfully struck three Islamic State fighting positions near the Iraqi city of Ramadi on Tuesday, according to the Department of Defence.
The CF-18 Hornets struck the ISIS positions with precision-guided munitions during two separate airstrikes, the department said in a statement.
The Canadian aircraft are part taking part in the U.S.-led coalition campaign against ISIS. The airstrikes are being conducted in support of Iraqi security forces.
Two Canadian fighter jets successfully struck three Islamic State fighting positions near the Iraqi city of Ramadi on Tuesday, according to the Department of Defence.
The CF-18 Hornets struck the ISIS positions with precision-guided munitions during two separate airstrikes, the department said in a statement.
The Canadian aircraft are part taking part in the U.S.-led coalition campaign against ISIS. The airstrikes are being conducted in support of Iraqi security forces.
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| A Royal Canadian Air Force Air Weapon Systems Technician, deployed as part of Air Task Force – Iraq, prepares munitions for loading to a CF-188 Hornet, at the Camp Patrice Vincent flight line in Kuwait, during Operation IMPACT on August 1, 2015. Photo: CAF Combat Camera - OP IMPACT KW02-2015-0163-001 |
Tuesday's airstrikes are the second round involving Canadian jets since the Nov. 13 terror attacks in Paris killed at least 129 people and wounded at least 350 others. ISIS has claimed responsibility for Friday's attacks in the French capital. The extremist group also claimed responsibility for twin suicide bombings in Beirut, which killed 43 people the day before.
After the terror attacks, many questioned whether Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would keep his election campaign promise to withdraw the jets before the end of the government’s previously set commitment of March 2016.
Trudeau reiterated his position on Monday, stating that Canada will focus its efforts on training local troops to fight ISIS, instead of continuing to participate in the air campaign. He added that Canada will increase the number of special trainers it has in Iraq, up from the current number of 69.
The prime minister's announcement came as French President Francois Hollande and U.S. President Barack Obama pledged to ramp up the assault against ISIS.
On Monday, Hollande spoke during a special session of Parliament, where he said the country was at war.
During the speech, he asked French lawmakers to vote on a bill extending the state of emergency for three months, and asked for changes to the constitution to help "destroy terrorism."
France has launched more airstrikes in the wake of the violence that rippled across Paris last Friday. Hollande said Monday that he would be meeting with Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin later this month to discuss how to combat ISIS.
Meanwhile, Obama acknowledged Monday that the attacks in Paris represented a "sickening setback," but said he won't commit to a large-scale presence of U.S. troops on the ground. He said sending in a large military presence would result in a permanent occupation in Syria and Iraq.
Currently, Canada has contributed six CF-18 Hornet fighter jets, two Aurora surveillance planes and approximately 600 Canadian Armed Forces personnel to the coalition.
After the terror attacks, many questioned whether Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would keep his election campaign promise to withdraw the jets before the end of the government’s previously set commitment of March 2016.
Trudeau reiterated his position on Monday, stating that Canada will focus its efforts on training local troops to fight ISIS, instead of continuing to participate in the air campaign. He added that Canada will increase the number of special trainers it has in Iraq, up from the current number of 69.
The prime minister's announcement came as French President Francois Hollande and U.S. President Barack Obama pledged to ramp up the assault against ISIS.
On Monday, Hollande spoke during a special session of Parliament, where he said the country was at war.
During the speech, he asked French lawmakers to vote on a bill extending the state of emergency for three months, and asked for changes to the constitution to help "destroy terrorism."
France has launched more airstrikes in the wake of the violence that rippled across Paris last Friday. Hollande said Monday that he would be meeting with Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin later this month to discuss how to combat ISIS.
Meanwhile, Obama acknowledged Monday that the attacks in Paris represented a "sickening setback," but said he won't commit to a large-scale presence of U.S. troops on the ground. He said sending in a large military presence would result in a permanent occupation in Syria and Iraq.
Currently, Canada has contributed six CF-18 Hornet fighter jets, two Aurora surveillance planes and approximately 600 Canadian Armed Forces personnel to the coalition.
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