By: David Pugliese, The Ottawa Citizen
Canada is helping Belize to determine its defence policy even as tensions between the central American nation and neighbouring Guatemala continue to simmer over the killing of a 13-year boy by Belize soldiers.
Top military officers from Belize came to Ottawa in February for meetings and to receive advice from the Department of National Defence and Canadian Forces on their country’s future defence strategy.
Belize is embroiled a border dispute with Guatemala, which deployed 3,000 troops in April to a disputed area between the two countries.
Luis Soto / Associated PressTwo men stand on a portion of a bridge damaged in Melchor de Mencos, Guatemala, on the Peten border with Belize, Thursday, Aug. 4, 201
Brig.-Gen. David Jones, commander of the Belize Defence Force (BDF), says the strategic defence review will outline the way ahead for the nation’s military for at least the next five years.
“It’s going to look at the tasks the government wants the BDF to achieve, how they are going to achieve it, and then to put together those resources that they need to achieve it,” he said this year. “So with the help of the Canadian government we are finalizing that document.”
Feliz Enrique of the Belize defence ministry said this week the U.S. and Britain are also being consulted.
Canadian officials have been helping Belize with its strategic review for several years.
The February trip allowed officials from Belize to seek “additional expertise in areas such as capability based planning, investment planning, accrual accounting, budgeting, and full life-cycle costing for equipment acquisitions,” said Ashley Lemire, a spokeswoman for the Department of National Defence.
“Moving forward, Canada and Belize have agreed to continue cooperation on defence planning, recognizing that Canada is currently undertaking its own review.”
The Guatemala troop deployments occurred after the 13-year-old was shot dead.
Guatemalan officials claimed the youth and his family were attacked as they planted crops near the border.
But Belize’s government said security forces investigating illegal land clearing in a national park had detained a Guatemalan man.
Later that night, the Belizean patrol was attacked and returned fire in self defence. The boy’s body was found the next morning.
Belize is of growing importance to the Canadian government due to the increasingly precarious security situation in Central America
On May 19, Belize accused Guatemalan troops of kidnapping a Belizean farmer. It has asked the Organization of American States to investigate that and other live fire incidents on the border.
The shootings are the latest incidents in a dispute between the two countries over Guatemala’s claims to territory governed by Belize.
Canada’s role in Belize’s security has increased over the years because of concerns Mexican drug cartels were making inroads in the country.
The Canadian Forces has delivered non-lethal aid – binoculars, military clothing, helmets and boots – to Belize security forces. Canadian special forces teams have also helped train the BDF.
“Belize is of growing importance to the Canadian government due to the increasingly precarious security situation in Central America, particularly along the Belize-Mexico border,” the department said a March 2012 briefing note prepared for then-defence minister Peter MacKay.
Ottawa Citizen
dpugliese@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/davidpugliese
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
All signs point to UN mission in Africa
By: Matthew Fisher, The Ottawa Citizen
Getting logistics right will be priority No. 1
LIKE THE FRENCH, THE CANADIAN MILITARY NEEDS TO BE CAREFUL ABOUT BECOMING OVERSTRETCHED. — COLUMNIST MATTHEW FISHER
Colombia and South Sudan are the longshot options for Canada’s first major UN military operation since Jean Chrétien sent troops to East Timor 16 years ago.
A reasonable case can be made for Colombia, where the government and rebels have just signed a peace accord that may end a war that has gone on for years. But Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion and Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan have made it clear the government has its heart set on a mission in French West Africa to further Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s ambition to gain a seat on the UN Security Council.
Only time will tell whether it was worthwhile in Canadian blood and treasure to deploy on an open-ended mission to Mali, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo or other options equally fraught with danger, such as Niger or Burundi. Factored into the equation when that reckoning comes will be the true value to Canada of the UN appointment when, like the other 10 non-permanent members, it would only be admitted to the inner sanctum for two years and would be powerless to do anything there in the face of the veto powers of the five permanent members.
As it is almost certain Canada will become involved in French West Africa, Ottawa has been keen to begin that mission with French-speaking troops. This makes sense, but could seriously complicate the training and readiness regimes of the country’s three combat brigades.
Since early August, the Canadian Army’s high-readiness brigade has been built around the Edmonton-based Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. But the first force to be deployed to Africa may have to be drawn from the Quebec-based Royal 22nd Regiment, the Vandoos, some of whom returned only weeks ago from a deployment to eastern Europe.
Not much has been heard from Gen. Jonathan Vance, chief of the defence staff of the Canadian Armed Forces, about the potential perils of a mission in a region where Canadian deployments to Rwanda and Somalia have had difficulties and where the UN’s current peacemaking operations have been so rife with allegations of grave sexual misconduct, incompetence and cowardice, they can only be described as a total disaster.
Once the Canadians’ destination is revealed in September, Vance, who is a famously straight shooter, is likely to begin making it clear to the troops and the public what lies ahead.
Among the unspoken military concerns is that this is an open-ended mission and little or no help can be expected from the Americans. That may sound great to some Canadians. But if things go south, as they might, nobody except perhaps the French, who are already badly stretched by combat operations in Africa and the Middle East and in dealing with the terrorist threat at home, may have our backs.
One of the reasons Canadian forces would prefer to go to Mali may be because that is where the French have the most troops and the most robust military capability. It is also where Germany and the Netherlands have quietly sent about 1,000 troops over the past year, although those countries do not see their contributions as part of a bid for a Security Council seat.
Like the French, the Canadian military needs to be careful about becoming overstretched. As African operations involving about 600 ramp up, it must also sustain about 800 troops in Kuwait and the Kurdish part of Iraq. It will soon send about 450 combat troops on a new NATO mission to Latvia to to try to contain Russia’s irredentist impulses on its western borders.
With only five C-17 heavylift aircraft and oceans between these disparate missions and Canada, getting the logistics right will be job No. 1. Much of the planning will fall to Maj.-Gen. Chuck Lamarre.
The logistician responsible for the massive undertaking of bringing all Canada’s equipment back from Kandahar, he is now Vance’s director of staff and his right arm on operations.
Given that the Trudeau government intends to keep Canadian Forces in Africa for many years and that those troops will require scores of heavy armoured personnel carriers, weapons, a field hospital and helicopters, something to look for soon may be an announcement Canada intends to establish a regional logistics hub, most likely in the Senegalese port of Dakar. It would be something akin to the ones that already exist in Kuwait and Cologne.
Identifying personnel and assembling the tens of thousands of nuts and bolts required to deploy to a part of the world where infrastructure is almost totally lacking will take time and patience. That will give Canadians the opportunity to ponder whether the African mission is an altruistic endeavour to do good in a deeply troubled part of the world or a grand bid to enhance Canada’s chances of winning the Security Council seat.
Getting logistics right will be priority No. 1
LIKE THE FRENCH, THE CANADIAN MILITARY NEEDS TO BE CAREFUL ABOUT BECOMING OVERSTRETCHED. — COLUMNIST MATTHEW FISHER
 |
| CHAD HIPOLITO / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILESThe Quebec-based Royal 22nd Regiment, the Vandoos, some of whom returned weeks ago from Europe, may be the first force to be deployed to Africa, writes Matthew Fisher. |
A reasonable case can be made for Colombia, where the government and rebels have just signed a peace accord that may end a war that has gone on for years. But Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion and Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan have made it clear the government has its heart set on a mission in French West Africa to further Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s ambition to gain a seat on the UN Security Council.
Only time will tell whether it was worthwhile in Canadian blood and treasure to deploy on an open-ended mission to Mali, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo or other options equally fraught with danger, such as Niger or Burundi. Factored into the equation when that reckoning comes will be the true value to Canada of the UN appointment when, like the other 10 non-permanent members, it would only be admitted to the inner sanctum for two years and would be powerless to do anything there in the face of the veto powers of the five permanent members.
As it is almost certain Canada will become involved in French West Africa, Ottawa has been keen to begin that mission with French-speaking troops. This makes sense, but could seriously complicate the training and readiness regimes of the country’s three combat brigades.
Since early August, the Canadian Army’s high-readiness brigade has been built around the Edmonton-based Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. But the first force to be deployed to Africa may have to be drawn from the Quebec-based Royal 22nd Regiment, the Vandoos, some of whom returned only weeks ago from a deployment to eastern Europe.
Not much has been heard from Gen. Jonathan Vance, chief of the defence staff of the Canadian Armed Forces, about the potential perils of a mission in a region where Canadian deployments to Rwanda and Somalia have had difficulties and where the UN’s current peacemaking operations have been so rife with allegations of grave sexual misconduct, incompetence and cowardice, they can only be described as a total disaster.
Once the Canadians’ destination is revealed in September, Vance, who is a famously straight shooter, is likely to begin making it clear to the troops and the public what lies ahead.
Among the unspoken military concerns is that this is an open-ended mission and little or no help can be expected from the Americans. That may sound great to some Canadians. But if things go south, as they might, nobody except perhaps the French, who are already badly stretched by combat operations in Africa and the Middle East and in dealing with the terrorist threat at home, may have our backs.
One of the reasons Canadian forces would prefer to go to Mali may be because that is where the French have the most troops and the most robust military capability. It is also where Germany and the Netherlands have quietly sent about 1,000 troops over the past year, although those countries do not see their contributions as part of a bid for a Security Council seat.
Like the French, the Canadian military needs to be careful about becoming overstretched. As African operations involving about 600 ramp up, it must also sustain about 800 troops in Kuwait and the Kurdish part of Iraq. It will soon send about 450 combat troops on a new NATO mission to Latvia to to try to contain Russia’s irredentist impulses on its western borders.
With only five C-17 heavylift aircraft and oceans between these disparate missions and Canada, getting the logistics right will be job No. 1. Much of the planning will fall to Maj.-Gen. Chuck Lamarre.
The logistician responsible for the massive undertaking of bringing all Canada’s equipment back from Kandahar, he is now Vance’s director of staff and his right arm on operations.
Given that the Trudeau government intends to keep Canadian Forces in Africa for many years and that those troops will require scores of heavy armoured personnel carriers, weapons, a field hospital and helicopters, something to look for soon may be an announcement Canada intends to establish a regional logistics hub, most likely in the Senegalese port of Dakar. It would be something akin to the ones that already exist in Kuwait and Cologne.
Identifying personnel and assembling the tens of thousands of nuts and bolts required to deploy to a part of the world where infrastructure is almost totally lacking will take time and patience. That will give Canadians the opportunity to ponder whether the African mission is an altruistic endeavour to do good in a deeply troubled part of the world or a grand bid to enhance Canada’s chances of winning the Security Council seat.
Vance: CAF Sexual misconduct an ongoing problem
By: David Pugliese, The Ottawa Citizen
Canada’s top soldier says sexual misconduct is still a problem in the military, with six people convicted of such offences in the last eight months and another 24 subjected to severe administrative action.
Canada’s top soldier says sexual misconduct is still a problem in the military, with six people convicted of such offences in the last eight months and another 24 subjected to severe administrative action.
 |
| FRED CHARTRAND / THE CANADIAN PRESSChief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jonathan Vance said the military is still tallying how many leaders have been released from the Canadian Forces because of sexual misconduct, saying it is still a problem in the military. Six people have been convicted of such offences in the last eight months. |
“Incidents of harmful sexual behaviour are still occurring,” Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jonathan Vance said Tuesday.
“We’ve removed people from command positions. We’ve dismissed people from the Canadian Armed Forces.”
Vance said the military is still tallying how many leaders have been released from the Canadian Forces because of sexual misconduct.
“We do know that leaders have been removed,” he said. “They are in the media right now. I don’t want to speak about them because they are before the courts.”
Vance said he expects more bad news when details of a survey of military staff come in. “I expect results to be sobering when we get results in the fall,” he said. “Quick fixes will not work.” Vance launched Operation Honour, or Op Honour, last year to deal with sexual misconduct in the ranks after a scathing report by former Supreme Court justice Marie Deschamps who found sexual harassment and misconduct, including assaults, appeared to be widespread in the Canadian Forces.
Her April 2015 report raised warnings about a “sexualized culture” that subjected women in uniform to abuse ranging from sexual jokes and harassment to rape. She also found sexual misconduct “endemic” in the Canadian Forces, but condoned by the military leadership.
During her year-long investigation, Deschamps interviewed hundreds of full- and part-time military personnel, as well as commanding officers, military police, chaplains, nurses and social workers.
The interviews pointed to what she described as a “hostile sexualized environment” in the military, particularly among recruits and the junior ranks.
“At the most extreme, these reports of sexual violence highlighted the use of sex to enforce power relationships,” noted Deschamps’ report, “and to punish and ostracize a member of a unit.”
The military’s leadership came under particularly harsh criticism. Deschamps found military personnel “became inured to this sexualized culture as they move up the ranks,” with officers turning a blind eye to inappropriate conduct and senior non-commissioned officers “imposing a culture where no one speaks up.”
“Underlying all these concerns is a deep mistrust that the chain of command will take such complaints seriously,” her report noted.
There have been concerns about how seriously some in the military take the issue of sexual abuse.
Then-chief of the defence staff Tom Lawson, who has since retired, came under fire last year for his claim that sexual harassment was still an issue in the Canadian Forces because people were “biologically wired in a certain way.” His comment sparked widespread outrage and Lawson apologized.
The Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont., was also in the headlines after it emerged that a guest speaker on sexual misconduct was belittled and harassed as she tried to conduct a seminar. The general in charge of the college eventually apologized for what was acknowledged as “unprofessional behaviour.”
Some recruits at the Royal Military College, as well as other Canadian Forces personnel, including individuals at the National Defence headquarters in Ottawa, have dubbed Vance’s initiative Op Honour as “Hop On Her” — a play on words suggesting sexual aggression.
Vance said Tuesday he understands that there are those who are skeptical of ongoing efforts to stop sexual misconduct but the situation is improving.
“We’ve made a good start.”
“We’ve removed people from command positions. We’ve dismissed people from the Canadian Armed Forces.”
Vance said the military is still tallying how many leaders have been released from the Canadian Forces because of sexual misconduct.
“We do know that leaders have been removed,” he said. “They are in the media right now. I don’t want to speak about them because they are before the courts.”
Vance said he expects more bad news when details of a survey of military staff come in. “I expect results to be sobering when we get results in the fall,” he said. “Quick fixes will not work.” Vance launched Operation Honour, or Op Honour, last year to deal with sexual misconduct in the ranks after a scathing report by former Supreme Court justice Marie Deschamps who found sexual harassment and misconduct, including assaults, appeared to be widespread in the Canadian Forces.
Her April 2015 report raised warnings about a “sexualized culture” that subjected women in uniform to abuse ranging from sexual jokes and harassment to rape. She also found sexual misconduct “endemic” in the Canadian Forces, but condoned by the military leadership.
During her year-long investigation, Deschamps interviewed hundreds of full- and part-time military personnel, as well as commanding officers, military police, chaplains, nurses and social workers.
The interviews pointed to what she described as a “hostile sexualized environment” in the military, particularly among recruits and the junior ranks.
“At the most extreme, these reports of sexual violence highlighted the use of sex to enforce power relationships,” noted Deschamps’ report, “and to punish and ostracize a member of a unit.”
The military’s leadership came under particularly harsh criticism. Deschamps found military personnel “became inured to this sexualized culture as they move up the ranks,” with officers turning a blind eye to inappropriate conduct and senior non-commissioned officers “imposing a culture where no one speaks up.”
“Underlying all these concerns is a deep mistrust that the chain of command will take such complaints seriously,” her report noted.
There have been concerns about how seriously some in the military take the issue of sexual abuse.
Then-chief of the defence staff Tom Lawson, who has since retired, came under fire last year for his claim that sexual harassment was still an issue in the Canadian Forces because people were “biologically wired in a certain way.” His comment sparked widespread outrage and Lawson apologized.
The Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont., was also in the headlines after it emerged that a guest speaker on sexual misconduct was belittled and harassed as she tried to conduct a seminar. The general in charge of the college eventually apologized for what was acknowledged as “unprofessional behaviour.”
Some recruits at the Royal Military College, as well as other Canadian Forces personnel, including individuals at the National Defence headquarters in Ottawa, have dubbed Vance’s initiative Op Honour as “Hop On Her” — a play on words suggesting sexual aggression.
Vance said Tuesday he understands that there are those who are skeptical of ongoing efforts to stop sexual misconduct but the situation is improving.
“We’ve made a good start.”
Nation Star-struck by Blue Helmets
By: Michael Den Tandt, National Post
There is a planet, considerably closer than Proxima Centauri B, where the spirit of redshirted, Stephen-Harperhating partisania lives on, undimmed by last year’s change of power. It is a land that time forgot, mystical and unsullied. It is a land of … oh heck, it’s at One Yonge Street, the editorial boardroom of the Toronto Star.
In this ineffable high country of the mind, the Canada of 30, 40 and 50 years ago lives on, as though locked in amber. Lester B. Pearson, jovial and stolid, bestrides a convention stage next to the electric young patrician, Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Bad guys and bank robbers wear natty suits and hats. And peacekeeping, Canada’s singular contribution to planetary justice, bestrides the world like a colossus.
Why, we had 3,300 soldiers in Cyprus, the Golan Heights, Cambodia and the former Yugoslavia “in 1993 alone,” the Star’s editorial enthused Sunday, as it celebrated Canada’s imminent return to its blue-helmeted United Nations-supporting past, with 600 soldiers bound for peacekeeping duty in various parts of Africa. Canada is back, indeed. It is way, way back.
But, could trouble be afoot? “Peacekeeping is more complicated now,” the editorial continues, with a worldweary droop to its rhetorical shoulders, “requiring a combination of military, political, humanitarian and development skills. Forces in conflict are rarely composed of well-disciplined armies; instead peacekeepers often find themselves dealing with a chaotic mix of tribal militias, terrorist groups, broken states and unprincipled governments.”
Having unburdened herself or himself of this revelatory gem, the Star’s editorial writer gets bullet-chewing tough — on the former federal government, the one not currently sending any Canadian soldiers anywhere.
“It’s wise to re-engage carefully, especially given Canada’s record of relative inaction in peace operations under former prime minister Stephen Harper. Favouring isolation over UN activism, he allowed a celebrated tradition of Canadian peacekeeping to wither.” Terrible!
However, the Star’s writer concludes with evident joy, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals have set the stars back on their proper course. “The Liberal government is going a considerable way in correcting Harper’s neglect. With millions of innocent civilians at imminent risk of brutalization and death in war zones around the world, Canada has a humanitarian duty to take meaningful action in easing the threat.”
To call the foregoing nonsense understates it some. That The Star saw fit to print this is amazing, even in a time when newspaper editorial writers are called upon to dash off their offerings in minutes, like performance art.
Where to begin? A briefing book provided to Foreign Affairs minister Stéphane Dion following his appointment to cabinet, obtained by Postmedia’s David Akin via access to information, outlined the status quo ante — peacekeeping at the close of the Harper era.
There were five small Canadian “peace-support” missions underway, under UN auspices, in October 2015 — in the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Haiti, Cyprus and Israel/ Lebanon. Canada ranked 68th among 124 countries in troop contributions to UN operations — and was the ninth-largest contributor, worldwide, to the UN’s annual peacekeeping budget, with an annual outlay just shy of US$240 million.
Additionally, the document shows, Canadian soldiers were contributing in small numbers to the Multinational Force and Observers mission in the Sinai, the Office of the U.S. Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the NATO Kosovo Force, as well as European Union support operations in the West Bank and Ukraine. Hardly a portrait of neglect.
More importantly, this portrayal of Canadian military history — which I have heard repeated in various iterations by Grit partisans for years, running into decades — contains bomb-cratersized holes. Most egregiously, it airbrushes the laudable peace-building aspects of the Afghan mission from 2002 to 2014, as well as the failures of peacekeeping in Somalia and Rwanda in the mid-1990s, from the frame.
It was a Liberal government, that of Jean Chrétien, that exacerbated the Somalia debacle with its shoddy handling of the aftermath, and its wrong-headed disbanding of the Airborne Regiment. The same government presided over the catastrophic failures of the Rwanda mission. It was also a Liberal government that launched the Afghan mission, both in its post-9/11 initial phase in 2002 and its more robust humanitarian and combat phase beginning in late 2005. Liberals enthusiastically backed the Afghan mission — until the day Harper took power in 2006, after which they began enthusiastically bashing it. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan knows this history well, having served with distinction in Afghanistan.
The prime minister, his defence and foreign ministers are not to blame for a bad editorial, granted. But they do share responsibility for perpetuating a transparently false construct of a glorious peacekeeping past that hasn’t corresponded to Canadian soldiers’ reality for at least the past 25 years.
Should the coming deployments be ramshackle, the rules of engagement prohibitive, the demands impossible, these ministers will take the blame. And they will deserve it, having had ample occasion to learn from their predecessors’ mistakes — or talk to a few veteran sergeants, perish the thought, and hear them tell the reality of peacekeeping, versus the otherworldly myth.
There is a planet, considerably closer than Proxima Centauri B, where the spirit of redshirted, Stephen-Harperhating partisania lives on, undimmed by last year’s change of power. It is a land that time forgot, mystical and unsullied. It is a land of … oh heck, it’s at One Yonge Street, the editorial boardroom of the Toronto Star.
In this ineffable high country of the mind, the Canada of 30, 40 and 50 years ago lives on, as though locked in amber. Lester B. Pearson, jovial and stolid, bestrides a convention stage next to the electric young patrician, Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Bad guys and bank robbers wear natty suits and hats. And peacekeeping, Canada’s singular contribution to planetary justice, bestrides the world like a colossus.
Why, we had 3,300 soldiers in Cyprus, the Golan Heights, Cambodia and the former Yugoslavia “in 1993 alone,” the Star’s editorial enthused Sunday, as it celebrated Canada’s imminent return to its blue-helmeted United Nations-supporting past, with 600 soldiers bound for peacekeeping duty in various parts of Africa. Canada is back, indeed. It is way, way back.
But, could trouble be afoot? “Peacekeeping is more complicated now,” the editorial continues, with a worldweary droop to its rhetorical shoulders, “requiring a combination of military, political, humanitarian and development skills. Forces in conflict are rarely composed of well-disciplined armies; instead peacekeepers often find themselves dealing with a chaotic mix of tribal militias, terrorist groups, broken states and unprincipled governments.”
Having unburdened herself or himself of this revelatory gem, the Star’s editorial writer gets bullet-chewing tough — on the former federal government, the one not currently sending any Canadian soldiers anywhere.
“It’s wise to re-engage carefully, especially given Canada’s record of relative inaction in peace operations under former prime minister Stephen Harper. Favouring isolation over UN activism, he allowed a celebrated tradition of Canadian peacekeeping to wither.” Terrible!
However, the Star’s writer concludes with evident joy, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals have set the stars back on their proper course. “The Liberal government is going a considerable way in correcting Harper’s neglect. With millions of innocent civilians at imminent risk of brutalization and death in war zones around the world, Canada has a humanitarian duty to take meaningful action in easing the threat.”
To call the foregoing nonsense understates it some. That The Star saw fit to print this is amazing, even in a time when newspaper editorial writers are called upon to dash off their offerings in minutes, like performance art.
Where to begin? A briefing book provided to Foreign Affairs minister Stéphane Dion following his appointment to cabinet, obtained by Postmedia’s David Akin via access to information, outlined the status quo ante — peacekeeping at the close of the Harper era.
There were five small Canadian “peace-support” missions underway, under UN auspices, in October 2015 — in the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Haiti, Cyprus and Israel/ Lebanon. Canada ranked 68th among 124 countries in troop contributions to UN operations — and was the ninth-largest contributor, worldwide, to the UN’s annual peacekeeping budget, with an annual outlay just shy of US$240 million.
Additionally, the document shows, Canadian soldiers were contributing in small numbers to the Multinational Force and Observers mission in the Sinai, the Office of the U.S. Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the NATO Kosovo Force, as well as European Union support operations in the West Bank and Ukraine. Hardly a portrait of neglect.
More importantly, this portrayal of Canadian military history — which I have heard repeated in various iterations by Grit partisans for years, running into decades — contains bomb-cratersized holes. Most egregiously, it airbrushes the laudable peace-building aspects of the Afghan mission from 2002 to 2014, as well as the failures of peacekeeping in Somalia and Rwanda in the mid-1990s, from the frame.
It was a Liberal government, that of Jean Chrétien, that exacerbated the Somalia debacle with its shoddy handling of the aftermath, and its wrong-headed disbanding of the Airborne Regiment. The same government presided over the catastrophic failures of the Rwanda mission. It was also a Liberal government that launched the Afghan mission, both in its post-9/11 initial phase in 2002 and its more robust humanitarian and combat phase beginning in late 2005. Liberals enthusiastically backed the Afghan mission — until the day Harper took power in 2006, after which they began enthusiastically bashing it. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan knows this history well, having served with distinction in Afghanistan.
The prime minister, his defence and foreign ministers are not to blame for a bad editorial, granted. But they do share responsibility for perpetuating a transparently false construct of a glorious peacekeeping past that hasn’t corresponded to Canadian soldiers’ reality for at least the past 25 years.
Should the coming deployments be ramshackle, the rules of engagement prohibitive, the demands impossible, these ministers will take the blame. And they will deserve it, having had ample occasion to learn from their predecessors’ mistakes — or talk to a few veteran sergeants, perish the thought, and hear them tell the reality of peacekeeping, versus the otherworldly myth.
Dallaire: Put the Focus on Child Soldiers
This could be our new peacekeeping project, writes Roméo Dallaire.
The strategic and deliberate use of child soldiers continues to sustain conflict and sets countries on a course for years of violence, human rights abuses and ongoing threats of mass atrocity.
— Roméo Dallaire
Twenty-two years ago, I was the force commander of the UNAMIR peacekeeping mission before, during and after the Rwandan genocide. I witnessed first-hand, in one of humanity’s darkest hours, the horrific impacts of conflict and genocide. This experience has produced an unrelenting drive in me as a humanitarian to both prevent conflict and protect peace.
 |
| JUSTIN LYNCH/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS South Sudan’s government has recruited child soldiers for a renewed conflict, according to a United Nations document. |
With this experience as a backdrop, it was with immense pleasure that I recently returned from a five-country fact-finding mission to Africa with Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan and esteemed colleagues Justice Louise Arbour and Ambassador to the United Nations Marc-André Blanchard. Over a week, we reached out to the highest authorities in Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to understand how Canada can re-engage in peace support operations in the region.
We undertook this trip, in the words of Minister Sajjan, to discover the ground truth about conflict. It is only through an intimate understanding of how and why conflict persists that we will be in a position to effectively contribute to its prevention.
The most obvious observation, without a doubt, was the brutal fact that war has radically changed. Therefore, our tactics and approach must change also.
Today, children are both the primary drivers and victims of conflicts around the globe and particularly in Africa. From Mali to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia, children continue to swell the ranks of both state and non-state armies. It is in this complex and ambiguous conflict environment that Canada will eventually re-engage in peace support operations.
The strategic and deliberate use of child soldiers continues to sustain conflict and sets countries on a course for years of violence, human rights abuses and ongoing threats of mass atrocity.
At the height of the Rwandan genocide, when I first faced the use of child soldiers, I had neither the knowledge nor tactics required to confront this threat adequately and preventively. Today, troop-contributing countries deployed in peace support operations remain undertrained to counter the most prevalent threat in most conflicts today: the extensive recruitment and use of child soldiers.
At every turn of our trip, Minister Sajjan deliberately sought out specific gaps that Canada could fill by collaborating with nations in building local capacity with the aim of contributing to conflict-prevention and peace-support operations.
As a nation, Canada is well-positioned to engage in the realities that face peace support operations — particularly in meeting the need for capacity-building with regard to children used as weapons of war. Canada, through the Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative, is already engaged in countries such as Uganda by building a capacity to counteract the recruitment and use of child soldiers in peace-support operations throughout the region.
This focus on the recruitment and use of child soldiers should be underpinned by an upfront children’s-rights approach in peace-support operations. When children and their rights are elevated as part of a larger strategy and methodology to peace-support operations, points of collaboration can be found and efforts amplified. It is not only through children that many conflicts are now unfortunately fought, but it is where the promise of lasting peace resides.
Canada’s return to the field, praised and impatiently awaited by all countries we visited, is caveated with a clear request to bring innovative thinking, tools and longterm commitments to instilling new skills and knowledge that will support the efforts of all toward peace and preventing conflict.
Over the coming months and years, under the direction of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Canada will continue to re-engage with the United Nations and the African Union on their respective peace support operations. Collaborative and concerted efforts — specifically protecting children through enhancing the role of military, peacekeepers and police to prevent the recruitment and use of child soldiers — should be a priority in the prevention of conflict.
Canada is indeed wellpositioned to engage in the realities that face peace support operations, particularly in meeting the need for capacity-building with regard to children used as weapons of war.
We undertook this trip, in the words of Minister Sajjan, to discover the ground truth about conflict. It is only through an intimate understanding of how and why conflict persists that we will be in a position to effectively contribute to its prevention.
The most obvious observation, without a doubt, was the brutal fact that war has radically changed. Therefore, our tactics and approach must change also.
Today, children are both the primary drivers and victims of conflicts around the globe and particularly in Africa. From Mali to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia, children continue to swell the ranks of both state and non-state armies. It is in this complex and ambiguous conflict environment that Canada will eventually re-engage in peace support operations.
The strategic and deliberate use of child soldiers continues to sustain conflict and sets countries on a course for years of violence, human rights abuses and ongoing threats of mass atrocity.
At the height of the Rwandan genocide, when I first faced the use of child soldiers, I had neither the knowledge nor tactics required to confront this threat adequately and preventively. Today, troop-contributing countries deployed in peace support operations remain undertrained to counter the most prevalent threat in most conflicts today: the extensive recruitment and use of child soldiers.
At every turn of our trip, Minister Sajjan deliberately sought out specific gaps that Canada could fill by collaborating with nations in building local capacity with the aim of contributing to conflict-prevention and peace-support operations.
As a nation, Canada is well-positioned to engage in the realities that face peace support operations — particularly in meeting the need for capacity-building with regard to children used as weapons of war. Canada, through the Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative, is already engaged in countries such as Uganda by building a capacity to counteract the recruitment and use of child soldiers in peace-support operations throughout the region.
This focus on the recruitment and use of child soldiers should be underpinned by an upfront children’s-rights approach in peace-support operations. When children and their rights are elevated as part of a larger strategy and methodology to peace-support operations, points of collaboration can be found and efforts amplified. It is not only through children that many conflicts are now unfortunately fought, but it is where the promise of lasting peace resides.
Canada’s return to the field, praised and impatiently awaited by all countries we visited, is caveated with a clear request to bring innovative thinking, tools and longterm commitments to instilling new skills and knowledge that will support the efforts of all toward peace and preventing conflict.
Over the coming months and years, under the direction of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Canada will continue to re-engage with the United Nations and the African Union on their respective peace support operations. Collaborative and concerted efforts — specifically protecting children through enhancing the role of military, peacekeepers and police to prevent the recruitment and use of child soldiers — should be a priority in the prevention of conflict.
Canada is indeed wellpositioned to engage in the realities that face peace support operations, particularly in meeting the need for capacity-building with regard to children used as weapons of war.
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