Attack ups the ante for Canada’s Mali peacekeepers
French deployments stretched too thin at home and abroad
Canada’s impending peacemaking mission to Africa took on a more urgent tone Thursday night when a Tunisian man drove a truck through crowds enjoying Bastille Day fireworks on Nice’s palm-lined waterfront.
French President François Hollande immediately announced the country’s already overstretched armed forces would mobilize 10,000 troops and every member of the army reserves to guard French streets, border crossings and airports.
France needs Canada’s help — and Canada will answer the call. The army and air force will be heavily involved in Africa and no unit more so than the French-speaking brigade built around the Royal 22nd Regiment, the Van Doos.
The Trudeau government intends to send troops to French West Africa. Mali is their most likely destination, but the Central African Republic and other nearby countries are in the mix.
Ottawa and Paris have been talking for some time about where Canadian soldiers would fit into one of France’s multiple troop deployments there. The Dutch and the Germans are already been helping France with the UN mission in Mali. That is because even before the Nice attack, the Hollande government was having difficulty sustaining the tempo of its African missions as well as operations against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in the Middle East and terrorists on French soil. It is why the Royal Canadian Air Force has spent a lot of time in Africa, using its C-17 Globemasters to provide essential logistical support for French forces.
Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan had intended to travel to French West Africa next month to help hammer out the details of Canada’s mission. That trip may have to be moved up.
This will not be a benign peacekeeping mission. French West Africa has become a terrifying place, with Islamic terrorists flooding south across the Sahara from the chaos of Libya to cause mayhem, anarchy and despair in half a dozen impoverished countries.
In 2005-06, then-defence minister Bill Graham and Gen. Rick Hillier, then Canada’s top soldier, went across the country to prepare Canadians for the likelihood of casualties in an impending combat mission in southern Afghanistan. That mission resulted in the deaths of 158 soldiers and many victims of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Sajjan and Gen. Jonathan Vance must in the same way now prepare Canadians for the dangerous slog ahead in Africa. The two men were just together in eastern Europe working out how and when Canadian combat troops would take command of a NATO battalion that will deploy to Latvia.
They know each other well and are well suited to the task. Sajjan served three tours in Afghanistan, where he was an army intelligence operative working deep in Taliban heartland. Vance twice commanded Task Force Kandahar, developing an effective anti-insurgency strategy that was much admired by Canada’s allies.
The African mission that is shaping up is not at all the one Prime Minister Justin Trudeau envisaged when he pledged during last fall’s federal campaign to return the country to traditional peacekeeping. There will be nothing traditional about Canada’s deployment of up to 1,000 troops.
Canada’s blue berets will not stand there between opposing forces who seek peace. Jihadists control much of northern Mali, where, as in Afghanistan, tours will be made worse by temperatures that go as high as the 50s C.
Only a few weeks ago, China gave a hero’s funeral to one of its dead from Mali. In all, 21 blue berets have died there recently.
There will be a jumble of unfamiliar terrorist groups to reckon with, too. Groups in and near Mali include the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, which has been at war with fellow Touaregs from Ansar Dine, which imposes strict Shariah law, and Ansar Dine’s offshoot, the Islamic Movement of Azawad. There is also is a branch of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, which styles itself the Movement of Oneness and Jihad in West Africa.
Casting a pall over everything is ISIL. It has established a strong presence just north of Mali and is directly connected to or inspired many of the recent attacks in France, Belgium, Turkey and Lebanon. A further complication is that the UN estimates there are 475,000 internally displaced people.
And that is the good news. The Central African Republic, where Muslims are at war with Christians, has its own list of terrorist groups and is generally regarded as even more hazardous for peacekeepers than Mali.
Sending troops in harm’s way will not be the only reckoning for the Trudeau government. Everything that Canada is doing or will be doing militarily in the Middle East, eastern Europe and to help the French in Africa will cost big money.
Whether the prime minister likes it or not, the terrorist attacks in Nice and so many horrors elsewhere are going to demand an increase in defence spending.