HEAT ON SYRIA MISSION
Harper rebuffs legal questions about the right to bomb country
Prime Minister Stephen Harper brushed aside questions Wednesday about Canada’s legal right to bomb Syria, ridiculing the opposition by saying he wasn’t worried about “lawyers from ISIL taking the government of Canada to court.”
The Conservatives and opposition MPs begin debate Thursday on a motion to expand Canada’s war against the Islamic State by ordering air strikes against ISIL targets in Syria. Previously, Canadian warplanes had been restricted to operating in Iraq. Only the U.S. and five allied Arab countries have dropped bombs in Syria.
The government says it will not seek the Syrian government’s permission to drop bombs, given its view that Bashar Assad has lost legitimacy as Syrian president. But the opposition wants to know whether such attacks, inside another country without that government’s authorization, would violate international law.
In a heated exchange in the House of Commons, NDP leader Tom Mulcair asked Harper if the Iraqi government had requested Canadian help to protect its citizens by bombing ISIL in eastern Syria. Such a request was key to the U.S. government’s legal justification for conducting air strikes without the Syrian government’s permission last September.
Mulcair also asked if Canada had informed the United Nations of its plan to launch such attacks in Syria, as is required under Article 51 of the UN Charter. Article 51 lets countries respond to any armed attack against them, or at the request of a country that has been attacked. It was also central to the U.S. position last year.
Harper did not specifically answer either question. Instead, he said Canada was following the “same legal basis” as the U.S. and other allies.
“I’m not sure what point the leader of the NDP is making,” the prime minister added. Then, to laughter from government benches, he added, “If (Mulcair) is suggesting that there is any significant legal risk of lawyers from ISIL taking the government of Canada to court and winning, the government of Canada’s view is the chances of that are negligible.”
Mulcair responded, “Extraordinary, Mr. Speaker, living in a Canada, where that sort of idiocy passes for an argument.” The comment drew a mild rebuke from House of Commons Speaker Andrew Scheer.
A Conservative source later told the Citizen the government will be sending a letter to the UN in the coming days.
Questions about the legality of air strikes in Syria, and whether Canada might be breaking international law, were swirling even before Harper and Mulcair faced off during question period.
Flanked by a group of Iraqi-Canadians in the foyer outside the House of Commons, Defence Minister Jason Kenney told reporters that the military’s top lawyer, the judge advocate general, had assessed that dropping bombs in Syria was justified under Article 51 of the UN Charter.
Not only had Iraq asked the U.S. and its allies to stop ISIL from launching attacks from eastern Syria, he said, “I would further state that Canada has an independent right of self-defence here insofar as this organization has explicitly targeted Canada.
“It’s a very clear principle, a customary principle in international law that if a sovereign government is unable or unwilling to control part of its territory from which hostile attacks are being launched, that there is therefore a ( justification) in Article 51,” Kenney added.
But Mulcair accused the government of essentially hiding behind the U.S. when it comes to defending the legality of strikes in Syria.
“The only thing (Kenney) has been able to put up as the beginning of an answer was, ‘Well, the Americans are doing it, it must be allowed,’” Mulcair said. “That’s not really a justification in international law.”
The U.S.’s own legal defence for bombing Syria was questioned when air strikes began in Syria last September. In a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at the time, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power said ISIL was a threat to Iraq, the U.S. and many other countries.
She said countries “must be able to defend themselves,” as laid out in Article 51, “when, as is the case here, the government of the state where the threat is located is unwilling or unable to prevent the use of its territory for such attacks.”
Power wrote that the Syrian government “has shown that it cannot and will not confront these safe havens effectively itself,” and as a result, the U.S. had launched “necessary and proportionate military actions in Syria in order to eliminate the ongoing ISIL threat to Iraq.”
International law experts were divided over the U.S. government’s argument. Some said it reflected legitimate concerns about the threat posed by ISIL. Others argued the U.S. was using an overly broad interpretation of Article 51, and that the Syrian government has been taking military action against ISIL.
The Syrian government initially warned that any air strikes within its borders would be viewed as an act of war. But it has held its fire as the U.S. and Arab allies have conducted 1,262 bombing attacks within Syria, as compared to 1,631 in Iraq.
The only known incident came when an unarmed American drone was shot down by Syrian forces earlier this month. The drone was reportedly flying in a part of the country U.S. forces had previously avoided.
Kenney downplayed any concerns that Canadian warplanes could be shot down. “The military advice I have received is that the Syrian government has no radar detection capabilities in that part of Syria and that ISIL has no equipment that could reach aircraft operating at these altitudes,” he said. “That’s why we assess the risk as being modest.”
Canada currently has nearly 70 special forces troops training Kurdish forces in northern Iraq, as well as six fighter jets, two surveillance aircraft, an air-to-air refuelling plane and 600 support personnel participating in the U.S.-led bombing campaign against ISIL.