How many?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 1, 2010 at 12:21 PM - 5 Comments

Aside from a fire alarm, Question Period was highlighted, if that’s the right word, yesterday by various attempts to coax the government side into providing specific information on the transfer of children detained in Afghanistan. Jack Layton, Jean Dorion and Bob Rae all failed to find the right combination of words that unlocks such secrets—notably on the question of how many children have been transferred.

The number of detainees transferred by Canadian Forces was, until this past September, a matter of operational security. Since then the Canadian Forces has committed to releasing such data.

Although some types of Afghanistan detainee-related information remain OPSEC in nature, basic statistical information such as number of persons detained, released, transferred and deceased, does not pose OPSEC concerns. Additionally, the CF has determined that releasing cumulative detainee-related statistics would not pose a threat to Canadians or our allies in the field. In light of these considerations, and in the interest of accuracy and transparency, historical detainee data will now be released on an annual basis – once per calendar year after being protected by the CF for a period of 12 months.

Mitchel Raphael on the Belinda connection to MacKay's hot date

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 1:00 PM - 8 Comments

MacKay’s new romance?
There was much buzz about Defence Minister Peter MacKay’s date for the True Patriot Love fundraiser for Canadian troops held in Toronto. MacKay arrived at the dinner with former Miss World Canada Nazanin Afshin-Jam. Rumours of a romance have been reported. The interesting twist is that back in 2006, Afshin-Jam was on the Hill talking to MPs and fighting to save the life of another Iranian who shares her first name, Nazanin Fatehi. Fatehi stabbed one of the men who attempted to rape her and was sentenced to hang. (She was eventually released.) One of the MPs who helped Afshin-Jam at her Ottawa press conference was former Liberal MP (and former MacKay girlfriend) Belinda Stronach.

Coffee, compost and the PMO
The closest coffee place to the PMO, which is in the Langevin Block, used to be a Tim Hortons. A while back it was replaced with a Bridgehead café, known for its fair trade and organic coffees. Not only does Bridgehead have recycling bins, it has compost bins as well. Bridgehead staff say they see a lot of PMO staffers come in and also note that NDP Leader Jack Layton gets his hot beverages there too. When PM spokesperson Dimitri Soudas was spotted with a Bridgehead hot apple cider, he said his choice of coffee purveyor was based purely on convenience and was in no way a political statement.

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Flying into trouble

By Chris Sorensen and Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 23, 2010 at 10:10 AM - 62 Comments

Using its Airbus A380s, Emirates wants to offer daily flights to Toronto; Rovinescu accuses Emirates of being a foreign predator | Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg/Getty Images; Darryl Dyck/CP

In early October, Canada’s armed forces learned they had just one month to pack up and move a key Mideast military base used to support the war in Afghanistan. Located in the United Arab Emirates, Camp Mirage has been used primarily as a transfer point for Canadian Forces flying to and from Kandahar. For the past eight years, it had provided the Forces with a safe place to land and refuel hulking Hercules transport planes while weary soldiers relaxed at a makeshift camp, complete with a ball-hockey rink.

But the desert oasis, a short drive from Dubai’s beaches and air-conditioned shopping malls, ceased to be part of the military’s operations as of Nov. 3, following a high-level spat between Ottawa and the U.A.E. over commercial airline flights between the two countries.

It was an abrupt end to a long-standing strategic relationship between the countries, and it sent the military scrambling. “It’s a pain in the ass for all these guys who are supposed to be doing other things,” says Douglas Bland, the chair of defence management studies at the School of Policy Studies at Queen’s University. “Now they have to stop, pack up and move all of this equipment.” At no small cost: by some estimates $300 million.

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Pinky swear

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, November 20, 2010 at 11:08 AM - 19 Comments

Lawrence Cannon assures that Canada will withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014.

“We might be pressured obviously, but I think the prime minister has made this perfectly clear. March of 2014 is when we will be leaving,” Cannon said at a news conference.

Given the precedent in this regard, this almost certainly means we’ll be there until 2017.

'Defence policy if necessary, but not necessarily defence policy'

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, November 19, 2010 at 11:56 AM - 12 Comments

Randall Wakelam wonders about what we’re doing and where we’re going.

Conventional wisdom was that voters have, at most, a six-month memory for inexplicable government decisions. Do politicians today employ that same wisdom? If they do, it would certainly explain how and why we buy fighter aircraft without a clear explanation of need; why we allowed ourselves to lose Camp Mirage in the UAE because of civilian landing rights in Calgary and Vancouver that have nothing to do with security and defence matters; and why we are now staying on in Afghanistan for three years in a yet to be defined mission.

The least we could do

By Andrew Coyne - Thursday, November 18, 2010 at 3:00 PM - 52 Comments

Chris Wattie/Reuters

Watching Peter MacKay at the press conference confirming that Canadian troops would indeed remain in Afghanistan past the 2011 deadline, albeit in a “classroom” role, I was reminded how much of human behaviour is governed by the furniture.

He was, after all, behind a desk, in a briefing room. There were microphones, and flags, and reporters seated in rows. We are familiar with such scenes, and we associate them with official statements of some seriousness. And so everyone felt obliged to act as if there were some reason to believe a word of what MacKay was saying: as if there were some more-than-accidental likelihood of the policy the government chooses to pursue in future corresponding to the policy being announced today.

Why? Why would we attach any credibility to a formal announcement of policy by a minister of national defence with troops in the field? Just because he said it? There is some context here, after all. The policy the minister was announcing is the diametric opposite of the one that every minister in this government, including the Prime Minister, had sworn blood oaths to for the last two years: that every last soldier, apart from the odd embassy guard, would be withdrawn from Afghanistan by July 2011—no ifs, ands, or training missions. Which policy was itself the diametric opposite to that to which the government had previously committed itself, namely that we would not “cut and run” from Afghanistan before the job was done, that such missions could not be subject to “arbitrary timetables.”

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The Commons: Why bother?

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 at 7:00 PM - 63 Comments

The Scene. The Prime Minister leaned on his left elbow and chatted happily with the Foreign Affairs Minister and the Environment Minister. He seemed entirely undaunted by the prospect of what was surely about to happen, unmoved by the gravity one might have applied to the moment at hand.

A short while later, the Liberal leader stood and asked the Prime Minister en français to assure the House that Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan will not be involved in combat after July 2011. The Speaker then turned the floor over to the Right Honourable Prime Minister. And Mr. Harper here stood and, acknowledging for the first time on Canadian soil a complete and total reversal of his most recent position on this country’s involvement in a nine-year-old war, confirmed as much.

With his second opportunity, Michael Ignatieff, switching to English, sought not only a confirmation, but a guarantee. “Mr. Speaker, 20,000 Canadians served in Afghanistan since 2001, 153 brave soldiers did not survive and their sacrifices must not be in vain. We need to be clear about this new engagement of Canada after 2011,” he said, putting his hands together in front of his face as if in open prayer. “Can the Prime Minister guarantee that this is not going to involve combat, that it is going to be out of Kandahar and that the training will occur in safe conditions in Kabul?”

“The answer,” Mr. Harper responded, “is yes to all of those questions. As the Minister of National Defence, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and others have said, we are looking at a non-combat mission that will occur. It will be a training mission that will occur in classrooms behind the wire in bases. The government has been very clear and we do think this is a way of ensuring we consolidate the gains that we have made and honour the sacrifices of Canadians who have served in Afghanistan.”

Here then is how Prime Minister Stephen Harper committed Canadian military forces for another three years to the defining international conflict of this generation—a thousand people in all, at a total cost to the nation of something like $1.5-billion. Continue…

After 2011

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 at 1:24 PM - 30 Comments

The government has now confirmed—via news conference—that up to 950 personnel will remain in Afghanistan to train the Afghan military through 2014. The training will take place within facilities around Kabul. The cost will be approximately $500-million per year. The official announcement and explanation are here.

A new Canadian Press-Harris Decima poll has Canadians split on such an extension and largely opposed to a Canadian military presence in Afghanistan.

Gone, but not forgotten

By Julia Belluz - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 at 4:00 PM - 2 Comments

Ceremony for Justin Boyes in Kandahar | Sgt. Tim Jordan/Combat Camera

When Justin Boyes of Saskatoon announced to his mother Angela that he was going to join the Reserves, she did not approve. “This wasn’t in our plan of what we wanted for our kids,” she says. That was in January 2001, and after Sept. 11, Angela was begging her boy to quit. “Please, please, please,” she said to him. “Quit today. Go down there and quit today.”

But Justin was committed. As a teenager, he’d read about genocide and human rights violations in places like Rwanda and Afghanistan, and he wasn’t going to sit idle. So Angela resolved to support him. Still, she says, “I had a foreboding in my heart. I knew our lives were going to be affected by this.”

On Oct. 18, 2009, Justin arrived in Kandahar for his second tour of duty. The 26-year-old was leading a platoon focused on mentoring Afghan National Police officers. Ten days later, Angela’s phone rang. It was Justin’s younger brother, also a soldier, calling to say that Justin had been killed by an IED blast. “That can’t be,” she recalls saying to her son. “I had researched what would happen if the boys were hurt or killed—what the process would be—and I read that it would always involve someone coming to the door.” Within minutes, her doorbell rang.

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'Heroes in our midst'

By Irwin Cotler - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Thomas Manuel (left) with David Johnston; Medal of Bravery | Adrian Wyld/CP/ Sgt Serge Gouin/Rideau Hall

While the media was suffused last week with the gruesome evidence of Russell Williams’s criminality, a remarkable and inspiring event took place in Ottawa. Although it went largely unreported in the mainstream national media, it represents—as someone fortunate to witness it first-hand—the best, and I would say authentic, face of Canada.

I am referring to the awarding of Canadian Bravery Decorations to those who risked their lives to save others, and in some instances even lost their own lives in the effort. People from across the country—ordinary Canadians who engaged in extraordinary acts of courage—were presented with decorations from newly installed Governor General David Johnston in the Rideau Hall ceremony.

In the words of the Governor General, “Behind every one of these beautiful medals is an amazing story. A story of a life saved, a family preserved, a community strengthened. Stories, too, of fear overcome, because bravery is not the absence of fear, it is the judgment that something else—and someone else—is more important than fear.” Regrettably, space constraints allow me to highlight the heroism of only some of the 53 persons honoured.

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From zero to a thousand

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, November 8, 2010 at 3:36 PM - 20 Comments

Whatever the Prime Minister said in January, and what the Foreign Affairs Minister dismissed in June, the government is now said to be thinking about leaving a thousand soldiers in Afghanistan—about a third of the size of our current deployment.

Up to 750 trainers and at least 200 support staff would work outside the combat zone at a training academy or large training facility for Afghan soldiers and police officers, the CBC’s James Cudmore reports. They would remain in Afghanistan until 2014 at the latest.

Susan Delacourt wonders where the Prime Minister is at this seemingly important moment.

The Commons: Sergeant Harper deploys his decibels

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 28, 2010 at 6:50 PM - 0 Comments

The Scene. Flirting dangerously with a public demonstration of intellect, Ralph Goodale opened with a reference to Einstein. “The definition of insanity,” Mr. Goodale mused, referring to the father of modern physics, “is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

This could’ve been understood as a comment on most of the actors in our political process, but in this case was apparently intended as a reference to the Prime Minister. ”In the case of the Chinook military helicopters, the Conservative sole-sourced, untendered, non-competitive process caused overruns of 100 percent and at least five years delay. The Auditor General says that fiasco could well be repeated on the F-35 purchase; sole-sourced, untendered, non-competitive,” the Liberal deputy continued. “Why will the government not listen to Sheila Fraser, define the specifications and get competitive bids?”

The Prime Minister stood here to dismiss this. “Mr. Speaker, of course, nothing could be further from the tooth,” he shrugged, quickly correctly himself to say “truth.” Continue…

From the battlefield to the boardroom

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, October 28, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Fred Chartrand/CP/ Photograph by Andrew Tolson

As a man who believes that poor leaders have their uses—in the way they make what not to do so blindingly clear—Rick Hillier certainly found a target-rich environment during his career in the Canadian Forces. The former chief of defence staff, Canada’s highest-ranking soldier, Hillier, 55, left the armed forces in 2008, and now, a self-described “failure at retirement,” is fully occupied with philanthropic work, writing, and providing strategic and leadership advice for various companies. But he hasn’t forgotten what he calls the Forces’ dark decades, particularly the budget-squeezing ’90s, and the panicky, money-driven decisions they spawned, like selling the military’s eight Chinook helicopters to the Dutch air force. Years later, “nothing pissed me off more,” Hillier writes in his new book, Leadership: 50 Points of Wisdom for Today’s Leaders, than having to be ferried about in Afghanistan by a Dutch copter with its painted-over maple leaf still visible underneath.

But the most “vivid lessons I remember,” Hillier says over the phone from St. John’s, where he’s chancellor of Memorial University, came from the way some officers responded to the situation. “That senior officer who apologized to his men after his command ended that he’d spent too much time in the office? When I heard him say that, I promised myself I would spend half of every day mixing with the people under me, looking them in the eye and listening to them.”

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The Commons: Stephen Harper lets it all out

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 at 6:44 PM - 0 Comments

The Scene. The Prime Minister is a busy man and so he cannot always attend to the House. His appearance today, for instance, was his first in a week. And this, it seemed, was long overdue—not so much for us, this place and our democracy, but for him. Indeed, judging from his subsequent behavior he arrived quite pent up, needing very much, from a spiritual perspective, to openly air his concerns and grievances.

This is perhaps the best way to understand the man’s outbursts—as a natural and necessary unburdening, a shouty rebalancing of his chakras. So let us think of this as somehow healthy. If only so that we might say these proceedings serve some purpose.

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Behind Robert Semrau's dismissal

By Michael Friscolanti - Saturday, October 9, 2010 at 12:20 PM - 0 Comments

Robert Semrau arriving at the court this week with his wife, Amelie; Photograph by Blair Gable

Two years after shooting a severely wounded enemy fighter on the battlefields of Afghanistan, Capt. Robert Semrau has finally received his punishment: a demotion in rank, and dismissal from the Canadian Forces. The 36-year-old infantry officer—whose controversial case sparked a furious, nationwide debate about the ethics of mercy killing in a war zone—will not spend any time in a prison cell. But his career in uniform is now over.

Well, almost over.

It will take a few weeks to fill out all the paperwork, and until then, Semrau (now officially a second lieutenant) will continue reporting for duty at CFB Petawawa—setting the stage for what is sure to be an awkward farewell tour. The judge may have said that he “failed as a leader” and behaved in a “shockingly unacceptable” fashion, but the Moose Jaw, Sask., native remains a respected figure within the rank and file of his regiment, as evidenced by the dozens of fellow officers who lined the gallery at his Oct. 5 sentencing hearing. And sometime over the next month, when he leaves the base for the last time, there will be plenty of hugs and handshakes to go around.

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Michaëlle Jean has a few final words

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, September 30, 2010 at 10:33 AM - 0 Comments

The Governor General has posted a farewell message, looking back on her term and casting ahead to her foundation and her work with the UN.

Her parting speech to the Canadian Forces, delivered during a ceremony in Ottawa yesterday, is also available here.

'In the interest of accuracy and transparency'

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 9:05 AM - 0 Comments

Previously considered a matter of operational security, the Canadian Forces has now disclosed the number of detainees taken in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2008—as well as how many were transferred and how many were released—and promises to release new numbers, with a 12-month delay, on an annual basis from here on.

As the Canadian Press notes, the percentage of detainees who were released without being transferred steadily increased over the last three years on record.

'Voiced with clarity'

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, August 20, 2010 at 4:53 PM - 0 Comments

Gen. Walter Natynczyk comments on Col. Pat Stogran’s previously stated concerns.

“He has certainly voiced with clarity what the issues are,” said Natynczyk, who held the news conference with his Dutch counterpart, Gen. Peter Van Uhm, who has been on an official visit to Canada…

Natynczyk also encouraged soldiers to speak out, whether at parliamentary committees, to the media or in public, about the issues they face and the needs they have, because every soldier is different. ”Everyone’s had a different war, a different fight. Their family circumstances are different,” he said. “I think the bottom line is we can’t do enough for our soldiers, our wounded soldiers.”

Breaking the ice

By Anthony Davis - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 11:40 AM - 0 Comments

Anthony Davis

An enemy soldier was on the ground dying. A Canadian army reserve medic knelt beside him. “He’s critical,” he told his commander. “He’s got about 10 minutes left.” Capt. John Grebenc of the Loyal Edmonton Regiment ordered him to do what he could for the soldier, part of a rebel band that this company of 70 army reservists had been ordered to kill or capture. The medic went through the motions of administering morphine. “There,” he assured his patient, “your last minutes on Earth are going to be nice and pleasant.”

The supposedly unconscious “Stromian” soldier—the word was concocted by Canadian Forces intelligence officers—couldn’t help but grin. He would not win an Oscar for this bit of acting. The scene, one of many staged over the course of a week in May during a training program near Yellowknife, was more about manoeuvres than method acting.

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Take their word for it

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, July 5, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 0 Comments

Two new allegations of detainee abuse come to light in British court proceedings.

Canadian officials say the abuse allegations, from last summer, were promptly investigated and found groundless: An internal probe by Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security exonerated the NDS interrogator involved. They contend the handling of the allegations demonstrates that Canadian safeguards in detecting claims of abuse and demanding investigations are working…

In a series of exchanges with The Globe and Mail, both the Canadian Forces and the Foreign Affairs Department declined to provide any substantiation or documents, from either the initial follow-up visit that produced the allegations of abuse or the subsequent NDS investigation that dismissed them, to buttress the conclusion that the Afghan detainees had lied about being beaten and that the interrogators had been properly investigated and cleared.

Rules of engagement

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, June 1, 2010 at 10:51 AM - 51 Comments

Rob Anders explains why he signed a greeting card to Canadian soldiers with the inscription, “When in doubt, pull the trigger.”

In an interview, Anders conceded he left the message on the card, arguing “it’s a common military expression” that isn’t meant to alarm anyone. ”It’s just another way of saying keep safe and defend yourself,” he told the Calgary Herald, believing the issue is being overblown.

The Board of Inquiry report (IV)

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, May 14, 2010 at 1:47 PM - 4 Comments

Earlier this week, I posted the thoughts of Sebastien Jodoin of Amnesty International in response to the recent Board of Inquiry report. I then wrote to the offices of General Walter Natynczyk and Defence Minister Peter MacKay and offered to post any response to Mr. Jodoin’s comments. Today, a letter arrived from Rear-Admiral Davidson.

Here is that letter in its entirety.

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The Board of Inquiry report (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, May 8, 2010 at 6:37 PM - 2 Comments

As Rear Admiral P.A. Maddison explained yesterday, there was apparently belief among Canadian Forces that violence was a “cultural norm” among Afghan authorities, but there was no “observation” or “expectation” that detainees were being abused.

Perhaps further to this point, Major General David Fraser testified last November at the Afghanistan committee that, while commander of Task Force Afghanistan in 2006, he received no report of abuse or torture. Speaking to the Board of Inquiry though, Major General Fraser (cited as Comd TFA) did, along with other sources, acknowledge some rather critical assessments of the Afghan National Security Forces. Those observations, found within Part III of the BOI report, are reprinted below. Continue…

“His rifle was pointed toward the chest”

By Michael Friscolanti - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 10:28 PM - 9 Comments

Cpl. Steven Fournier snapped two photographs of the injured Taliban fighter, just in case the bearded man turned out to be a high-value target. It was Oct. 19, 2008, and as the camera clicked, Capt. Robert Semrau stood nearby, hovering over the badly wounded insurgent. “As I crouched down, I can hear a moan and a groan,” Fournier testified on Tuesday. “He wasn’t dead yet.”

Satisfied with his pictures, Fournier switched off the digital camera, grabbed his gun and began to walk away. He took only a few steps before the gunfire rang out. “I hear two shots behind me, in quick succession,” said Fournier, who immediately turned back around. “I see Capt. Semrau bringing his rifle to a slung position while he closes his ejection port. His rifle was pointed toward the chest of the person lying on the ground.”

Semrau is facing four charges, including second-degree murder, for the alleged “mercy killing” of an unarmed enemy fighter in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Military investigators never found the man’s corpse, and there is no forensic evidence linking his death to the captain’s C-8 rifle. But 18 months after the unprecedented charges were first laid, Fournier’s dramatic testimony offered the first real glimpse of what may have happened that day.

Semrau and Fournier were part of the same four-man Operational Mentor and Liaison Team (OMLT), a special unit of Canadian soldiers attached to a company of troops from the Afghan National Army (ANA). Their job was to “advise” the Afghans on basic soldiering skills, but they had no authority to give orders. On that particular morning, Semrau’s team was on patrol with ANA soldiers in a dangerous region near Lashkar Gah when they stumbled across the wounded man lying on a dirt path. It appeared as though he’d been shot out of a tree by a U.S. Apache helicopter.

Fournier said the unnamed insurgent had a “fist-sized laceration” in his stomach, and that one of his feet was mangled and bloody. “It was held on by some flesh and rotated 180 degrees,” he said. According to Fournier, the ANA commander on scene (Capt. Shafiqullah) said the enemy fighter was too wounded for medical treatment, and ordered his troops to continue moving south. “If Allah wants him, he will die,” Fournier quoted the captain as saying. “If not, he will live.”

The Geneva Conventions and the Canadian Forces Code of Conduct compel our troops to administer First Aid to all casualties, friend or foe. Under questioning from Capt. Tom Fitzgerald, the lead prosecutor, Fournier admitted that neither he nor Semrau provided any medical assistance to the man, even though they were equipped with pressure bandages and tourniquets. But Fournier also hinted at what could be a key part of Semrau’s defence: because the Canadian OMLT team had no authority over the Afghans, they could not overrule Capt. Shafiqullah’s decision to keep moving.

Fournier also said it would have been unsafe to dispatch an ambulance or a Medevac chopper into such an unsecured area. “Capt. Semrau said we would not treat him based on what the ANA commander said,” Fournier testified. “He said we should comply with what the ANA said.”

Minutes after encountering the man on the path, ANA soldiers found another Taliban fighter nearby—this one clearly dead. It was then that Fournier suggested photographing both casualties for intelligence purposes. Semrau agreed, but in a sign of just how careful the Canadians were with their Afghan hosts, he asked Capt. Shafiqullah’s permission. The ANA commander reluctantly agreed, but only on the condition that Fournier photograph the men’s faces, and not their wounds.

Fournier, still a private at the time, snapped two pictures of the dead man first, then headed back toward the other casualty lying on the path. Semrau followed, as did an Afghan interpreter nicknamed “Max.” As they came closer, Fournier said he could see the man move his arm and roll slightly on his side.

Fitzgerald asked Fournier what happened after he took the second set of photos.

“Capt. Semrau tells myself and our interpreter that we can head back because we don’t have to see this.”

“Did he explain what he meant by that statement?” Fitzgerald asked.

“I understood it to mean I don’t have to stand here and watch a man die, sir.”

Semrau is the first Canadian soldier ever accused of homicide on the front lines of a war, and if convicted, faces a mandatory life sentence with no chance of parole for ten years. The 36-year-old has pleaded not guilty.

Fournier is scheduled to continue his testimony Wednesday morning.