Where Canada falls short on peacekeeping
Adam Sweet was the last person to speak with the Calgary Herald’s Michelle Lang before she and four soldiers were killed and a female diplomat was seriously injured in Afghanistan by one of the largest homemade bombs ever made by the Taliban.
That tragedy, a few days after Christmas in 2009, still weighs heavily on Sweet.
The former Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) officer’s experiences in Kandahar and Kabul are particularly relevant today with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau poised to tell the UN on Monday in New York about Canada’s looming deployment of soldiers on a peacekeeping mission in French West Africa.
The military aspect of that African operation has received attention. However there has been almost no discussion about the public servants who will be sent there as part of Canada’s whole-ofgovernment project.
It is Sweet’s conviction that the dozens of civilians sent to Kandahar by the Harper government were “woefully unprepared” for what they found there.
Having left CIDA only three years ago to become senior adviser on strategy and policy for the Edmonton Economic Development Council, he doubted that much has changed as the Trudeau government gears up to send civilians into harm’s way — this time most likely in Mali.
“I am embarrassed to admit I seriously questioned whether I should have been there,” said Sweet, who was only 24 when he embarked on the first of several tours in Kabul and Kandahar in 2009.
Sweet was with Lang that morning when she set out on what was her first and last land journey “outside the wire.”
“Michelle was very excited and nervous about going on patrol,” Sweet said, his voice choked with emotion. “She was a phenomenal person and incredibly brave. As much as I could, I felt responsible for her. She told me not to worry. That she’d see me when she got back.”
When Lang was killed, “there was nobody to walk or talk you through it on the government side. I was responsible for her belongings. It was very hard for me to go through someone’s personal effects, knowing that she was dead.”
Before going to Afghanistan, his preparations included a couple of days of what he described as excellent military training in Kingston and a couple of days of cross-cultural training in Ottawa, which in hindsight were “a complete joke.”
“I do not believe that any of that properly prepared us for Afghanistan. Nor do I believe the government of Canada took proper care of its own when we came home.”
Sweet returned from Afghanistan for the last time in the summer of 2011 but it was not until months later that he and his colleagues were examined at a 36-hour retreat. He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder in 2014.
“Look, I did not see guys step on landmines or get shot,” Sweet said. “I experienced nothing like the soldiers on the scene did with Mi- chelle and the others. But it would be a lie for me to say that I was not affected a lot by the events of that day.”
While there were several “compassionate colleagues” in Ottawa who took an interest in his well-being, there was “no formal help for us and no help to prepare our families for what life might be like for us after we served in Afghanistan,” Sweet said.
“I hope the government has learned from this. I know that they didn’t in the first few years after Afghanistan.”
Sweet praised Ben Rowswell, who served for a year as Canada’s top diplomat in Kandahar, and Canada’s former ambassador to Afghanistan, Chris Alexander, who later became a member of former prime minister Stephen Harper’s cabinet, for their leadership in integrating the military and civilian components of the mission. There were, however, problems that sometimes impeded the work of the public servants, he said.
One of them was that each of the public servants received a week’s vacation after every seven weeks. Those breaks, each of which came with about $5,000 to cover expenses while on holiday, led to problems with continuity on projects they were working on. Unlike the soldiers, who usually went three or four months without a day off, the public servants’ collective bargaining agreement also required they get overtime pay for hours beyond a normal working week in Ottawa.
Still, Sweet was proud of the work that he and his colleagues from CIDA and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) did in Kandahar and has remained a strong believer in civilian-military co-operation in war zones.
“There is a value to a deployable non-military face that understands NGOs, governance, civilian policing and how to build a command structure in a civilian government,” he said.
“Things like mapping relationships between the government and tribal leaders is really important.”
Married now to Katherine Heath-Eves, who also served with DFAIT in Afghanistan, Sweet said if they were not the parents of a young son, “I would volunteer without a moment’s hesitation to go to Africa.”
IT WOULD BE A LIE FOR ME TO SAY THAT I WAS NOT AFFECTED A LOT BY THE EVENTS OF THAT DAY. — ADAM SWEET, FORMER CIDA OFFICER