When Should the "Blue Helmets" Walk Away?

Despite the fact that all signs point towards a Canadian deployment to Mali as part of Canada's "Return" to Peacekeeping - I came across this interesting essay about the UN's current operations in the Sudan, and perhaps it is time for the UN to consider other options. Something to consider before Canada deploys peacekeepers?

By: RICHARD GOWAN

The renewed crisis in South Sudan is turning into a decisive test for the United Nations. There is a growing international outcry over reports that local forces raped and killed civilians almost in front of UN peacekeepers. The Security Council has struggled to persuade the South Sudanese government to accept the deployment of an additional 4,000 troops with a robust mandate to stabilize the capital, Juba. Having initially rejected the proposal, which has strong African support, President Salva Kiir now seems willing to at least consider the reinforcements. There are tensions in the Security Councilover how to handle Kiir: the U.S. wants a tough line, but China and Russia insist on respect for that South Sudan’s sovereignty.

Kiir and his advisers profoundly distrust the UN. According to a leaked South Sudanese document they believe that “The UN Secretary General [Ban Ki Moon] has constantly advanced negative views against the Government of the Republic of South Sudan and its leadership,” and even pursued a “regime change strategy.” This is unjust. A few outside analysts have advanced ambitious and probably unworkable plans to turn South Sudan into an international protectorate on the Kosovo model. But the UN is largely struggling to stay on top of the crisis and get aid to the suffering, rather than plotting to overthrow Kiir.

Deployment map of UNMISS, United Nations Mission in the Republic of South Sudan (Map No. 4456R23, July 2016) - ©UN Cartographic Information Section

The grim reality is that, far from being in a position to depose the president, the UN has little choice but to work with him and his allies. The alternative could be a severe increase in violence, with peacekeepers in the firing line. This is neither a new or unique dilemma. In “The Peacekeeping Quagmire”, published by the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs exactly a year ago, I argued that the UN’s “greatest strategic weakness” in South Sudan was its ties to an insecure and often aggressive leader such as Kiir.

Yet, as I noted then, peacekeeping forces have ended up in similarly dangerous relationships with other leaders, including Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir and the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Joseph Kabila. While Kiir may be in the news today, there are also growing fears that Kabila’s efforts to quash political opposition and secure an unconstitutional third term as president in the DRC this year will also lead to serious violence – and once again, a large UN peace operation will be on the frontline trying to keep order.

These crises are a reminder that, in trying to understand why UN peace operations succeed or fail, it is necessary not only to look at the technical details of their mandates and functions (DDR, SSR, and so forth) but also at political personalities and dynamics. The 2015 High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO) argued that the UN must emphasize the “primacy of politics” in all its peacemaking efforts. But what happens when politicians are fundamentally unwilling or unable to work constructively with international peacekeepers? As I argued last year, and still believe today, there may be times and places where the UN has to walk away from countries where local political elites set ethically unacceptable conditions for keeping blue helmets on the ground, whatever the dangers of retreating.

This line chart shows the increase in the number of uniformed personnel deployed (red line) and UN authorized levels of uniformed personnel (blue line) of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) from its inception (August 2011) to present.

In January 2015, protests broke out in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in response to an attempt by President Joseph Kabila to circumvent constitutional term-limits and run for a third term as head of state. Security forces killed dozens. Kabila backed down but many Congolese and foreign observers thought this retreat is only temporary. The violence raised concerns not only about the DRC’s political future but also about Kabila’s relationship with the United Nations.

The UN has deployed peacekeepers in the DRC since 1999 and in July 2016 had more than 18,000 troops and police on the ground. It oversaw the president’s two previous electoral victories in 2006 and 2011, although his supporters were widely believed to have rigged the latter. UN troops have assisted the Congolese army, which has an ugly track record of human rights violations, in efforts to defeat militias in the east of the country. Yet if the UN and Kabila have developed a symbiotic relationship, it is also an abusive one. The President and his advisers have accused the peacekeepers of failing to fight hard enough in the east and accused the UN of “neo-colonization”.

The UN Stabilization Force in the DRC (MONUSCO) has become an emblem of the flaws of the UN’s broader peacekeeping project. The organization in July 2016 had more than 101,000 uniformed personnel worldwide, a record. Some of the largest and highest-profile UN missions, including those in South Sudan and Darfur, are trapped in quagmires of endemic violence and dysfunctional politics. UN contingents are often under-equipped and under-motivated, reducing their tactical impact. Yet the UN’s greatest strategic weakness in these cases is that it has become entangled in fractious and arguably unethical relationships with national leaders who, driven by greed or fear, have little real interest in stable, open and inclusive political systems.

The DRC is by no means the worst case. In South Sudan, President Salva Kiir has marginalized the UN mission (UNMISS) since the country slumped into civil war in December 2013. In July 2016, the peacekeepers are sheltering an estimated 200,000 civilians on their compounds but can do little more. In Darfur, troops and militias loyal to President Omar al-Bashir regularly harass peacekeeping patrols. UN officials have allegedly covered up cases where government troops have attacked international personnel.

The Security Council has regularly renewed the mandates for these missions and the UN continues to work with Kabila, Kiir and Bashir. Having aspired to instill democracy and good governance in countries like the DRC and South Sudan, the UN has ended up propping up unreliable and even autocratic leaders in the absence of better alternatives. Peacekeepers have to try to defend civilians from precisely the governments and security forces they are meant to partner with.

It might be honest to declare defeat in Darfur or announce that the UN will pull out of DRC or South Sudan if national leaders do not engage in less destructive politics. But the risk of renewed chaos after the peacekeepers hangs heavily over the Security Council: Nobody wants to close a mission and see massacres spread as the last peacekeepers leave. How did the UN get into this mess? Can it ever escape it?

FROM ELECTIONS TO AUTOCRATS?

To understand how the UN finds itself in its current predicament, as argued in previous articles, it is necessary to have a sense of both irony and tragedy. The irony is that the UN’s dilemmas arise from earlier efforts at democratization and humanitarian protection by the UN a little more than a decade ago. The tragedy is that in cases such as the DRC and the Sudans, UN officials, having lost whatever political leverage they initially had, are stuck trying to mitigate cycles of violence that they can foresee but not prevent. Some historical context is necessary here.

Twenty years ago, the UN’s reputation nosedived in the wake of Rwanda and Srebrenica. Blue helmet missions dwindled as alternatives such as NATO took the lead in the Balkans and swathes of Africa, including the DRC, toppled into conflict. Yet from 1999 on, the Security Council and then Secretary-General Kofi Annan collaborated to revitalize UN peacekeeping to manage crises and instill peace, above all in battered African countries such as Sierra Leone and Sudan. The UN also took on small trouble spots elsewhere, like Haiti, Kosovo and Timor-Leste. But Africa has been the priority: over 80,000 of the personnel now under UN command are on the continent.

The new generation of UN missions not only managed to bring a series of bloody conflicts under control but also looked like an effective force for democracy promotion. The peacekeepers facilitated technically impressive elections in cases such as Liberia and the DRC. “Helicopters were deployed, bulletins were printed and electrical generators were sent to remote voting centers,” former UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Marie Guéhenno recalls of the Congolese effort in a new memoir, The Fog of Peace. “For the presidential elections, some 50,000 polling stations were opened.” Yet as Guéhenno underlines, the sheer scale of these processes obscured far deeper political challenges to democratization.

Almost everywhere the UN deployed in the early 2000s, it found it hard to grasp, let alone unpick, complex local political alliances and patronage systems. In some cases, power-brokers were able to delay elections for long periods: The UN sent a mission to Côte d’Ivoire with a mandate to prepare for polls in 2004, but was unable to deliver on this until 2010. Elsewhere, national leaders took advantage of elections to consolidate their power and do down their rivals. Guéhenno noted in his book that Joseph Kabila pushed his rival in the 2006 elections, Jean-Pierre Bemba, out of the DRC by force. “At enormous and unsustainable cost,” he adds, “the international community consolidated the presidency through elections and largely ignored the other institutions of state,” limiting parliamentary and legal restraints on Kabila.

This focus on bolstering a leader rather than more credible institutions points to a deeper challenge for the UN. Officials sometimes opt for a version of the Great Man theory of history, emphasizing the personal qualities and weaknesses of the leaders they have to work with. Alan Doss, a UN veteran who led the UN mission in Liberia in 2005-2007 and that in the DRC from 2007 to 2010, concludes that while peaceful states require strong institutions, “strong institutions also require strong men and women capable of making a qualitative difference to the way those institutions function.”

Doss contrasts the “particularly effective” Liberian president and former World Bank official Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (elected on the watch of UN peacekeepers in 2006) with the “reluctant communicator” Kabila. Recent research affirms that leadership is indeed an important factor in shaping weak states. But peacekeepers and aid agencies have arguably invested too much political capital in individual leaders, raising their sense of entitlement and compromising the UN’s impartiality.

Even the widely admired Johnson Sirleaf, a joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011, has been accused of taking unfair advantage of her position. She appointed three of her sons to senior positions, including a senior position in the Central Bank. The tensions inherent in peacekeepers’ relations with national leaders were much more brutally illustrated in Liberia’s neighbor Côte d’Ivoire in 2010-2011. President Laurent Gbagbo did a fine job of neutering the UN mission in his country, reducing it to a bit part in internal political dialogues. When Gbagbo lost the long-delayed Ivorian elections in 2010, and the UN validated the results, he took the offensive, unleashing mobs on both his political foes and ill-prepared peacekeepers.

The UN mission came close to collapse in 2011 but, reinforced with Ukrainian attack helicopters, eventually helped to restore order in tandem with French forces. Gbagbo surrendered and was later transferred to the ICC. For a brief moment, the UN’s actions seemed to confirm its credentials as a robust defender of democracy.

Yet the Ivorian crisis may have been the exception to a rule: In general, UN missions fail to respond decisively to national leaders’ abusive tendencies. Leaders such as South Sudan’s Salva Kiir have found more effective ways to assert their leverage.

THERE MAY BE TIMES AND PLACES WHERE THE UN HAS TO WALK AWAY FROM COUNTRIES WHERE LOCAL POLITICAL ELITES SET ETHICALLY UNACCEPTABLE CONDITIONS FOR KEEPING BLUE HELMETS ON THE GROUND, WHATEVER THE DANGERS OF RETREATING.

The case of Kiir is striking because he once looked like a natural partner for the UN. Having first deployed peacekeepers to facilitate the end of the intra-Sudanese civil war in 2005, the UN oversaw an unexpectedly smooth independence referendum in the south in 2011. Almost 99 per cent of voters supported secession from Khartoum. The Security Council gave UNMISS an explicit mandate “to help establish the condition for the development in the Republic of South Sudan, with a view to strengthening the capacity of the Government of South Sudan to govern effectively and democratically.” This sounded like vote of confidence in Kiir’s leadership. But their relations with the authorities in Juba soured. The UN worried that the government was growing rapacious and unaccountable. The government complained that the peacekeepers were not doing enough to stop Sudan aiding to revolts on its territory.

James Copnall paints a nuanced portrait of Kiir’s position. “The man with ultimate responsibility for South Sudan,” he writes, “probably never imagined himself running a country.” John Garang, the charismatic leader of the South Sudanese independence movement, died in a helicopter crash in 2005. Kiir has had to keep his supporters satisfied. “Generals and politicians have built multi-story houses in South Sudan and abroad,” Copnall complains, “and drive cars the size of ordinary people’s huts. Corruption has become a defining feature of the new country.” Catering to such an avaricious political base, Kiir bridled at criticism from UNMISS.

These tensions peaked in 2013, when violence between Kiir’s supporters and backers of his former deputy, Riek Machar, spiraled out of control. Kiir scape-goated the UN, accusing it of bidding to form a “parallel government” while his supporters have harassed UNMISS convoys and allegedly shot down one of its helicopters (Machar’s forces have also threatened the UN, and there is a proliferation of armed groups that answer to neither leader). The government and its regional allies cut the UN out of peace talks in Ethiopia. The Security Council ordered UNMISS to focus on protecting civilians – including those on its bases – monitoring human rights and facilitating aid. The dream of close coordination between Kiir and the UN had given way to a more minimalistic focus on saving lives.

COMPROMISE AND COMPLICITY

It is hard to quibble with saving lives in a crisis. But what should the UN do over the longer term when its relations with national governments have gone off the rails? In many cases, international officials choose to temporize, hoping that they can nudge abusive leaders towards better governance over time. The leaders themselves may find this irritating (Joseph Kabila has refused to meet top UN officials for months at a time) but they do have incentives not to cut off relations completely. The presence of a peacekeeping force offers them some extra security and, perhaps most temptingly, may facilitate international aid. As Giulia Piccolino and John Karlsrud point out, the UN finds itself in a state of “mutual dependency” with these abusive leaders. If Bashir, Kabila or Kiir were to turn against the UN completely, peacekeeping would become impossible. But they would also lose “the opportunity to blame the international peace operation for everything that is not working.”

Nonetheless, abusive leaders can extract a high price from the UN for maintaining even the tenuous cooperation. In the DRC, Kabila has pushed the peacekeepers to assist a series of military offensives against militias in the east of the country. The UN has frequently worried that these are likely to cause unjustifiable human and political harm, and international NGOs have highlighted the presence of notorious alleged war criminals in Congolese officer corps. But UN officials have argued that it is necessary to play along to limit the damage of these adventures. “We were left with no choice, either we were in or we were out,” an anonymous official explained to Human Rights Watch after one notably brutal operation in 2009. “We believed that being on the inside would give us a better chance to protect civilians.”

The UN has tried to place some conditions, such as the vetting of senior personnel, on its Congolese military counterparts, creating new frictions. Kabila’s relations with MONUSCO reached a nadir after the UN failed to halt rebels from seizing the city of Goma in late 2012. The following year, the Security Council tried to regain his trust by mandating a special brigade to neutralize militias in the eastern DRC. Kabila also agreed to enter a regional political dialogue aimed at resolving the east’s problems, and the brigade was initially successful. Yet by early 2015, both the military and political processes were losing steam as Kabila prepared for the 2016 elections.

At least Kabila and MONUSCO remain nominally on the same side. In Darfur, the Sudanese government has sometimes treated the joint UN-African mission (UNAMID), launched with Western backing in 2007, as an enemy. The government views the UN with suspicion, believing that it aims to dismember the state. The International Criminal Court’s 2009 decision to indict President Bashir for war crimes in Darfur further poisoned relations. In early 2014, Foreign Policy released leaked UNAMID emails about attacks by the Sudanese military and pro-government irregulars on its personnel. The army even threatened to bomb a UN convoy. Yet the investigation found that, fearing a rupture, “the UN leadership has routinely withheld information linking Khartoum to threats – let alone violence – against UN personnel.”

UN officials insist that their presence does still provide some security for imperiled Darfuris. But this leaves deeper strategic questions open. At what point do efforts to maintain relations with abusive leaders and regime become morally and politically unsustainable? Does such collaboration contribute to protecting civilians over the long term, or does it simply allow abusive rulers to fortify their positions?

CONCLUSION: TIME TO GO?

UN officials are fully conscious of these dilemmas. They are able to identify how they might have been avoided. If the UN had not rushed to early elections in so many cases, or focused less on national politics and more on local conflict dynamics, it might not be in so many quagmires today. It should not have cultivated certain leaders so naively. The Security Council should never have sent peacekeepers to some places, like Darfur, at all. There are important lessons from these past mistakes for current and future UN deployments. But while the organization has recently been tasked with stabilizing Mali and the Central African Republic, it still has to grapple with its “legacy operations” in the DRC, the Sudans and West Africa.

Having tried to parlay with Bashir, Kabila and Kiir, the Security Council and UN officials are losing patience. While divisions between the West, Russia and China have complicated diplomacy in the Security Council, in March 2015 it established a sanctions regime for South Sudan that could be used to freeze Kiir’s assets. In February the same year, MONUSCO suspended its backing to a Congolese anti-militia operation over the involvement of two generals accused of human rights abuses. The U.S. has also leant on Kabila, with President Obama calling his Congolese counterpart to discuss how his “legacy as a leader who brought the DRC out of war and set it on a path of continued democratic progress would be consolidated by free and fair elections in 2016.” (A date for these polls remains to be set.)

If Kabila ultimately concludes that he cannot run for a third term in office – or hold onto power by a ruse such as delaying the polls – it will send a signal that national leaders cannot ignore international opinion and the UN indefinitely. But there is no guarantee that his successor will be vastly more accommodating towards the UN: the Congolese elite is divided between relatively pro-Western moderates and hardliners who might prove tougher on MONUSCO. If Kabila does go, it will also make Bashir and Kiir even more suspicious that the UN plans to oust them as well.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Kabila and Bashir launched parallel campaigns to downsize the UN forces on their territory in late 2014. The Congolese president proposed cuts to MONUSCO of a quarter (6,000 personnel) or more. Bashir called for plans for a complete end to the “burden” of UNAMID. In both cases, the Security Council responded with smaller cuts, but the UN set up a working group with the African Union and Sudanese authorities to explore exit strategies for UNAMID. It is likely that the UN’s representatives in the DRC, Darfur and South Sudan will face endless negotiations over further reductions to these missions. A series of gradual reductions could render the peacekeepers less operationally and politically robust, leaving them ever more vulnerable to bullying and manipulation.

The Security Council and UN officials should maintain, and be willing to threaten, the nuclear option of withdrawing peacekeeping forces more rapidly in those cases where national leaders grow too confrontational or autocratic. While it may be hard to imagine pulling peacekeepers out of countries where civilians remain at risk, there have to be moral limits to the sort of regimes that peacekeepers are asked to fight and die for. The longer the UN continues to prop up leaders and governments that treat the organization with contempt, the more that contempt will be deserved.

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Richard Gowan is a non-resident fellow at the Center on International Cooperation and a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. | Twitter: @RichardGowan1

DRS Meets the FWSAR Training Challenge

© 2016 FrontLine Defence (Vol 13, No 4)

The topography of Canada is perhaps the world’s foremost challenge for search and rescue operations. If the C-27J Spartan is chosen to become the nation’s next fixed-wing search-and-rescue (FWSAR) aircraft, the mission of DRS Technologies Canada Ltd. will be to help make that challenge more manageable.

Participating in a joint venture known as Spartan Aviation Services between corporate parent Leonardo-Finmeccanica and General Dynamics Mission Systems—Canada, DRS Technologies Canada, as the prime contractor and systems integrator for training systems, leads a group of Canadian companies. The group would build a training centre in Comox, British Columbia, and design a training program for it.

DRS has developed an integrated training solution that combines elements from established suppliers across Canada for the training of all FWSAR aircrew members and maintenance personnel. The Comox location on the eastern shore of Vancouver Island is considered ideal because of its proximity to nearby mountain ranges as well as other government and military training centres that will play a key role in the training program.



“Our training solution brings together first-class Canadian experience and suppliers that will provide state-of-the-art training support systems to meet Fixed-Wing SAR needs,” said Steve Zuber, vice president and general manager of DRS Technologies Canada, Ltd. “Our ultimate goal is to ensure excellent training for these crews who provide a vital service for Canadian citizens.”

The DRS solution combines top-tier training elements from established suppliers located across Canada. They include Bluedrop Training and Simulation of Halifax and TRU Simulation + Training of Montreal. Bluedrop would supply sophisticated courseware to meet the design requirements established by DRS and TRU. TRU would design and deliver training devices, including a full flight simulator. ATCO Structures and Logistics of Calgary, another member of the Spartan team, would design, build and maintain the training center.

DRS also would design and build an operational mission simulator, a sensor station simulator, and a mission procedures trainer. A virtual maintenance trainer would be built by Leonardo Aeronautics(formerly Alenia Aermacchi), the manufacturer of the C-27J Spartan. The training devices would be based on a common architecture, which would support the maximum re-use of the software simulated, optimizing the in-service support and minimizing costs due to configuration changes.

Canada is an imposing challenge for search and rescue operations but certainly one within the realm of modern aircraft and well-trained crews. If the C-27J Spartan is chosen to become the nation’s next FWSAR aircraft, the mission of DRS Technologies Canada Ltd. will be to deliver an integrated training system solution to support the SAR mission.



A rugged and maneuverable multi-mission aircraft, the Spartan offers some of the most up-to-date features available in aviation today. It can transport troops and cargo; air-drop paratroopers, equipment and material; and carry out medical evacuation and special missions. Designed for short takeoffs and landings, the Spartan could use a wide range of airfields, including truncated and unprepared Arctic strips that lack support equipment.

The Team Spartan proposal includes a commitment to deliver 100% of contract-value industrial offsets and benefits in the form of long-term jobs and far-reaching investments in Canadian firms and technology.

“This is a vital mission for Canada and we are bringing together the best Canadian companies to ensure mission success,” Zuber said.

If the C-27J is selected, Team Spartan will manage the integrated logistic support for the aircraft through Spartan Aviation Services, a joint venture company led by General Dynamics Mission Systems-Canada and Leonardo Aircraft, and headquartered in Ottawa, ON. It will be the Canadian in-service support integrator for the aircraft. In addition to overseeing all of the training system operations, Spartan Aviation Services will have the support of a strong Canadian partner network across the country.

Canada to host Defence Ministers Summit on Peacekeeping

By: David Pugliese, Defence Watch

Canada will host a summit of defence ministers to discuss peacekeeping as it continues its strategy to play more of a role in United Nations operations.

But Conservative MPs are criticizing the Liberal government for continuing to keep Canadians in the dark on where and when Canadian troops and police will be headed to on such missions.

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, currently in the United Kingdom to attend a UN defence ministers’ conference, said Canada will be taking a leadership role in such missions. Canada, he noted in a conference call with journalists Thursday, will host next year’s ministerial summit.

But Sajjan noted that no decisions have been made yet on the UN operations that Canada will take part in.

“We are at the early stages of getting the information,” he said. “Our military teams are still doing their work.”

Sajjan noted he hopes to have such details ready by the end of the year.

But Conservative MP James Bezan, the official opposition’s defence critic, said Sajjan should have used the UN conference to provide details about the peacekeeping strategy. “Before sending any Canadian Armed Forces personnel to war zones, Canadians expect to know when, where and why our troops are being deployed,” Bezan said at a news conference Thursday in Ottawa.

Bezan noted that such missions could “place Canadian troops in some of the most dangerous regions in the world” and that the public is entitled to more details.

The Liberal government recently announced it would free up 600 Canadian military personnel and more than 100 police for possible deployment on United Nations peace operations.

Sajjan wrapped up a fact-finding mission to Africa in mid-August, having visited the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania.

A military team has also been sent to Mali to collect information and the Canadian government has been considering participating in the UN operation in that country. That mission currently involves around 10,000 soldiers taking part in an effort to stabilize Mali. Various armed groups, including Islamic insurgents, have been conducting sporadic attacks in that country.

The mission in Mali is considered among the most dangerous now being conducted by the UN.

The Canadian Army will also be sending troops to Niger to conduct training for that country’s soldiers.

A small team of Canadian special forces soldiers is currently handling the training of Niger’s military personnel. They will continue that role in the fall, working alongside Canadian Army staff as they set the stage to hand over responsibility for the training to the regular forces.

The UN summit in the United Kingdom over the last several days brought together defence ministers and senior officials from nearly 80 countries to discuss how to improve the UN’s ability to conduct operations and nations contributions to such missions.

At the conference, Sajjan said a strategy for lasting peace has to focus on eliminating the factors that contributed to war in the first place. He pointed specifically to the issue of preventing the recruitment of child soldiers, something the future stability of Africa depends on.

“We know that child soldiers, for instance, represent a near endless supply of fighters for radical groups bent on exploiting them,” he explained at the conference. “In some African nations, the population under 25 years is nearly 60 per cent. Not only are these youth the most vulnerable victims of conflict, they are the very fuel that powers the militias who enslave them.”

He noted that youth in Africa have to be provided with economic opportunity.

Police officers must also be integrated in peace support missions, as will other trained professionals focused on the prevention of sexual violence and human rights abuses, Sajjan added.

Liberals won’t hold parliamentary vote on peacekeeping deployment

By: Steven Chase, The Globe and Mail

The Liberal federal government is refusing to commit to a parliamentary vote on troop deployments for what it promises will be a return to a major peacekeeping role for Canada – one or more missions that could hold significant peril for soldiers in an era in which stabilizing conflict zones has grown more dangerous.

The government shifted message on this matter within a matter of hours on Thursday. Early in the day, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan told The Globe and Mail that the Liberals would not put the matter to a vote in the House of Commons.

The government is currently considering options for a major new peacekeeping deployment and Mr. Sajjan said in a taped interview that the government had already received an election mandate from voters to deploy soldiers to United Nations operations.


Asked twice whether there would be parliamentary votes on peacekeeping deployments, he replied: “No. We will be deciding in cabinet and moving forward as quickly as possible on this.”

But later in the day, after questions from journalists on a teleconference, Mr. Sajjan declined to answer whether MPs would be asked to vote on peacekeeping deployment.

Instead, he said the cabinet will determine how things will proceed. “Once we have that discussion, a process will be decided on,” he said.

His office later said the government was not ruling out a parliamentary vote.

In the Globe interview, Mr. Sajjan said Liberals campaigned in 2015 on a revived commitment to UN peacekeeping and Canadians expect this government to proceed as they promised.

“The Prime Minister, even during the [2015] campaign – we’ve been very prominent about the importance of multilateral organizations and our re-engagement on peace operations with the United Nations.”

Mr. Sajjan was in London for a summit of defence ministers from 80 countries on efforts to bolster UN peacekeeping operations.

He announced that Canada will host the next UN Peacekeeping Defence Ministerial in 2017. This summit is a new forum, inaugurated this year in London, to improve UN efforts to resolve conflicts.

The Liberals are fully within their rights to send soldiers abroad without consulting the Commons, but the past decade saw former prime minister Stephen Harper hold votes in some instances – for extensions or deployments of combat missions.

The government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged last month to make up to 600 troops available for UN peacekeeping missions – and to spend $450-million for peace and security projects around the world – but it has yet to decide where Canadian soldiers will be posted.

Canada is expected to commit soldiers to a peacekeeping operation in Africa and options include Mali, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan.

Mr. Sajjan said the government plans to put more focus on bringing gender equality between male and female soldiers to peacekeeping operations – including more leadership roles for women – and said the London meeting has offered evidence that the idea has gone “mainstream” because many other countries are discussing this as well. “You have many other nations who weren’t even allowing females into combat roles [that] are talking about the importance of it now,” he said.

The Defence Minister said he is still gathering information before a decision is made on a new peacekeeping deployment and he could not provide a timeline. “Let’s put it this way: It won’t be years,” he said. “It will be moving much faster.”

He said he would like to make an announcement this year, but he will not commit to a schedule for a decision until he knows that a deployment would make a meaningful contribution.

The Liberals have come under fire this year for limiting debate on legislation on medically assisted dying.

NDP foreign affairs critic Hélène Laverdière called on the Liberals to hold a vote on any peacekeeping deployment. “For a government that wants to consult on every issue, I do not understand why they wouldn’t consult Parliament when it comes to combat or peacekeeping missions.”

Conservative defence critic James Bezan said the Liberals are making commitments without sufficiently informing Canadians.

“Any use of the Canadian military must be in our national interest, not to secure a position on the United Nation’s Security Council or to fulfill the Prime Minister’s political aspirations. The Liberals must clearly lay out the details and risks of the mission before deploying Canadian personnel to a war zone.”

Philippe Lagassé, an associate professor of international affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa, said he is not a fan of parliamentary votes on military missions partly because there are no clear rules on when they are necessary. “In Canada, the practice is effectively to vote when the executive thinks it’s in its political interest to do so. Is that the best approach?”

He said the Commons could make “take note” debates on deployments mandatory.

Canadian soldiers’ participation in peacekeeping has dwindled over time to about 100 today – a significant decline from historical levels. Current deployments include about 30 in support of UN peacekeeping missions and 70 posted to a non-UN multinational peacekeeping operation in the Sinai Peninsula. The Liberals accused the former Conservative government of turning its back on peacekeeping.

Asked why Canada is pledging only 600 troops for peacekeeping when in the past this country has fielded many more soldiers for such operations, Mr. Sajjan said Canada would have the capacity to deploy more if necessary.

“We have the flexibility for more, but it’s better to be pragmatic about decisions like this,” he said.

He said Canada must also retain the capacity to deal with threats such as Islamic State militants. About 830 Canadian Armed Forces members are being deployed to improve the security of Iraq and surrounding areas.

Canada is also sending a battle group to Latvia as part of a move by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to counter Russian aggression in that region.

At one point in 1993, about 3,300 Canadian troops were deployed in UN peacekeeping operations, but some experts say that was an unusually high commitment.

Stephen Saideman, a professor of international affairs at Carleton University, said the Liberals should consider a peacekeeping commitment in Colombia that could follow a ceasefire signed between Bogota and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to end a half-century-old guerrilla war. Prof. Saideman said this deployment could end up proving “less violent and less costly” than an African mission.

Sajjan says submarines critical for defence, but no decision on upgrades

By: Lee Berthiaume, The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan says the navy's submarines are "critical" for Canada's defence, but that the government has not decided whether to spend more money to keep them for the long term.

"Our submarines do play a critical role for sovereignty, but no decision has been made at this time," Sajjan said from London, where he was attending a peacekeeping conference. "As we complete the defence policy review, we'll have recommendations in there on the route we will be proceeding."

Documents obtained by the Canadian Press show that the first submarine will reach the end of its service life in 2022, with the other three retiring one by one until 2027.

The navy estimates that extending their usefulness would cost between $1.5 billion and $3 billion, depending on the upgrades that are made and how long they are to remain in service.

The Liberal government is currently developing a new defence policy, which will spell out what jobs the military will be expected to perform. That will have direct bearing on the types of equipment purchased in the coming years.

But any investment is likely to stoke controversy as the submarines have been plagued by technical problems since they were bought used from the United Kingdom in 1998 for what the Chretien government described as a bargain $750 million.

While naval officials say they have managed to fix many of the problems and have started using the ships in earnest, two were docked early this year over concerns about shoddy welding. Another had to be repaired after breaking down en route to a training exercise in Norway in June.

At the same time, the government is preparing to shell out billions for new fighter jets while the army has been clamouring for cash for new light and heavy trucks. Half of its current truck fleet has been parked because of age and maintenance costs.

The navy is also waiting to see how much money it will get for new surface warships, which are slated for construction at the same time the submarine life extension would take place. The budget was previously set at $26 billion for up to 15 vessels, but recent estimates have put the cost much higher.

Meanwhile, Sajjan said the government is looking at information submitted by various fighter jet companies at the end of July, but would not say when a decision will be made on replacing the aging CF-18s.

"Our staff is actually crunching through a lot of that data just now," he said. "I want to make sure to give them the opportunity to synthesize that information.

"I want to make sure we have all the right information so that we can pick the right process. This decision will be coming in months, and not longer than that."

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