Conflict in Darfur, Sudan - The Mega Thread

[North Star]

What is disappointing in the Canadian press is the complete lack of analysis on the "peace" deal itself.

The Sudanese People's Movement/Army and Khartom government may have signed on, but that may actually mean very little. The Justice and Equity Movement (JeM) under the leadership of former a former Sudanese politician who was muscled out by Bashir, has refused to sign. None of their strategic goals have been addressed, and it appears will not be for the foreseeable future. It is therefore within their interest to collapse the deal and recapture international attention. Meanwhile, the level of control Khartom has over the Janjaweed militias hasn't really been assessed. Does Khartom actually have the "will" to "disarm" their former allies? Do the militias themselves feel satisfied with the results of the fighting? Probably not.

So, we have one whole side left out of the deal, and another that can't seem to control it's own proxy forces. Now, throw in to this mix Al-Qaeda and the transnational Fundamentalist-Islamist movement. They are very hostile to the idea to any intervention and have even made declarations stating that should western forces show up in the Sudan, they consider it another "front" against the west. Given suspicions about the Janjaweed's cross membership in Al-Qaeda and the Mujaheedeen (cultivated during OBL's years in the Sudan), is it wise for us to get involved?

 

[Teddy Ruxpin]

Someone needs to direct Ms. McQuaig to the editorial...yet more shockingly inaccurate commentary from "academics" and the press.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1147470613160&call_pageid=970599119419

Surely we can spare 600 of our 18,000 troops to do what we do best — peacekeeping, says Linda McQuaig

May 14, 2006. 01:00 AM

Leaving aside politics, it's hard to imagine why Canada is sending troops to Afghanistan and not to Darfur.
It's not clear what good we're doing in Afghanistan, where we're aggressively going after "scumbags" — according to our top general, Rick Hillier — as part of Washington's dubious "war on terror."
Compare this to the life-saving role we could play in Darfur, in western Sudan.
One can quibble over whether what's happening in Darfur is a genocide or just a series of massacres, but there's no disagreement that hundreds of thousands of people are at risk of being slaughtered by vicious, government-backed militias known as the janjaweed.
Some 200,000 people have already been killed and another 2 million driven from their homes.
An international intervention in Darfur could make an enormous difference, possibly even averting a Rwanda-style genocide.
While the janjaweed, mounted on horseback and camels, easily kill and terrorize the unarmed people of Darfur, they're no match for a modern army.
Peter Langille, a defence analyst at the University of Western Ontario, notes that the Canadian army's fighting vehicles, the Coyote and Lav III, are equipped with top-of-the-line sensors and firepower that could easily stop the janjaweed in their tracks.
Canada is well equipped to play a leading role in a UN mission to Darfur. Such a mission could be carried out by a special UN standby force known as SHIRBRIG, which was created in 2001 to deal with just this sort of crisis.
Canada was one of the moving forces behind SHIRBRIG, and one of 15 nations agreeing to support it. A Canadian general heads it up.
But Ottawa has refused to authorize Canadian troops for a SHIRBRIG mission to Darfur, to assist overwhelmed African Union troops.
Langille argues that a SHIRBRIG force of some 6,000 troops — with Canada contributing about 600 — could head off a genocide and get food to millions who may soon starve.
But there's strong political resistance from Canada's military establishment, which has worked doggedly — and successfully — to get Canada out of UN peacekeeping and involve us more in the "big leagues" of U.S. military operations.
Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor, a former general who's part of the military establishment, insisted last week that with 2,300 Canadian troops in Afghanistan, we're stretched too thin to get involved in Darfur.
But the Canadian army has 18,000 troops. Langille notes that in the mid-1990s, we managed to deploy more than 4,500 troops abroad with the same size army — and a much smaller defence budget.
We could certainly spare 600 out of our 18,000 troops for a UN mission to Darfur.
But that might revive powerful feelings in the Canadian public about the vital role Canada can play in UN peacekeeping, feelings that our military leaders want to extinguish.
As long as our military establishment is calling the shots, playing in the "big leagues" with the Americans will be the top priority, even as the defenceless die in Darfur.

Emphasis is mine...

I do find it interesting that she seems to be calling for the use of "firepower" to deal with the Janaweed... Is she advocating the invasion of the Sudan in the absence of a UN-organized deployment?

Linda, read the Ruxted editorial regarding the complexities of Darfur and a potential deployment and please try to remember who really "calls the shots" regarding military deployments - it certainly isn't anyone in uniform.  Your editorial is based on half-truths, a selective memory and out and out slander.  Once again the media fails to meet even the low standard I've set for it.  :

 

[Good2Golf]

Someone needs to direct Ms. McQuaig to the editorial...yet more shockingly inaccurate commentary from "academics" and the press.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1147470613160&call_pageid=970599119419

Surely we can spare 600 of our 18,000 troops to do what we do best — peacekeeping, says Linda McQuaig

May 14, 2006. 01:00 AM

Leaving aside politics, it's hard to imagine why Canada is sending troops to Afghanistan and not to Darfur.
It's not clear what good we're doing in Afghanistan, where we're aggressively going after "scumbags" — according to our top general, Rick Hillier — as part of Washington's dubious "war on terror."
Compare this to the life-saving role we could play in Darfur, in western Sudan.
One can quibble over whether what's happening in Darfur is a genocide or just a series of massacres, but there's no disagreement that hundreds of thousands of people are at risk of being slaughtered by vicious, government-backed militias known as the janjaweed.
Some 200,000 people have already been killed and another 2 million driven from their homes.
An international intervention in Darfur could make an enormous difference, possibly even averting a Rwanda-style genocide.
While the janjaweed, mounted on horseback and camels, easily kill and terrorize the unarmed people of Darfur, they're no match for a modern army.
Peter Langille, a defence analyst at the University of Western Ontario, notes that the Canadian army's fighting vehicles, the Coyote and Lav III, are equipped with top-of-the-line sensors and firepower that could easily stop the janjaweed in their tracks.
Canada is well equipped to play a leading role in a UN mission to Darfur. Such a mission could be carried out by a special UN standby force known as SHIRBRIG, which was created in 2001 to deal with just this sort of crisis.
Canada was one of the moving forces behind SHIRBRIG, and one of 15 nations agreeing to support it. A Canadian general heads it up.
But Ottawa has refused to authorize Canadian troops for a SHIRBRIG mission to Darfur, to assist overwhelmed African Union troops.
Langille argues that a SHIRBRIG force of some 6,000 troops — with Canada contributing about 600 — could head off a genocide and get food to millions who may soon starve.
But there's strong political resistance from Canada's military establishment, which has worked doggedly — and successfully — to get Canada out of UN peacekeeping and involve us more in the "big leagues" of U.S. military operations.
Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor, a former general who's part of the military establishment, insisted last week that with 2,300 Canadian troops in Afghanistan, we're stretched too thin to get involved in Darfur.
But the Canadian army has 18,000 troops. Langille notes that in the mid-1990s, we managed to deploy more than 4,500 troops abroad with the same size army — and a much smaller defence budget.
We could certainly spare 600 out of our 18,000 troops for a UN mission to Darfur.
But that might revive powerful feelings in the Canadian public about the vital role Canada can play in UN peacekeeping, feelings that our military leaders want to extinguish.
As long as our military establishment is calling the shots, playing in the "big leagues" with the Americans will be the top priority, even as the defenceless die in Darfur.

Emphasis is mine...

I do find it interesting that she seems to be calling for the use of "firepower" to deal with the Janaweed... Is she advocating the invasion of the Sudan in the absence of a UN-organized deployment?

Linda, read the Ruxted editorial regarding the complexities of Darfur and a potential deployment and please try to remember who really "calls the shots" regarding military deployments - it certainly isn't anyone in uniform.  Your editorial is based on half-truths, a selective memory and out and out slander.  Once again the media fails to meet even the low standard I've set for it.  :

Teddy, it really, REALLY pains me to see the press throw out the "what are we doing/achieving in Afghanistan" crap and imply that we are wasting our effort there and could spend it better where we could operate more like the apparent center of demographical Canadian values would like us to be -- boy scout-like peacekeeping...a notion that is well, well past its prime!!! Perhaps Ms. McQuaig could read some of the writings of one of her contemporaries to get a better understanding of the question she asks as to "...what good we are doing in Afghanistan, ... then move on to considering the entire situation in a more considered manner:

Christine Blatchford has written about a significant contribution that mainstream Canadian Press almost seems (dis?)honour-bound to ignore!  Small strategic team making big difference

Small strategic team making big difference

May 8, 2006 - Globe and Mail, A1

By Christine Blatchford

The smallest and arguably most influential group of Canadians working in Afghanistan was born about a year ago in an informal meeting in Chief of the Defence Staff Rick Hillier's car.

And, in a lovely Canuck touch, the discussion between General Hillier and Colonel Mike Capstick unfolded as they went through the drive-through of an Ottawa Tim Hortons.

Gen. Hillier told Col. Capstick that he'd been talking to Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, who had asked, "Whatever happened to those guys who were always around?"

"Those guys" were senior Canadian military people working for Gen. Hillier during his stint, in 2003-2004, as the commander of the International Security Assistance Force, now run by NATO, which has been in Afghanistan since 2002 at the request of the Afghan government and with the blessing of the United Nations.

Gen. Hillier asked Mr. Karzai if he wanted more guys like that. He said he did, and last June, Col. Capstick found himself assigned to find them.

The resulting group of 16 -- they are French and English; navy, air force and army; male and female -- is known as the Strategic Advisory Team, or SAT.

And while Canadian journalists embedded with the 2,300 troops in Afghanistan regularly detail how the military effort is progressing, or not, almost no one has reported on the SAT soldiers who are embedded with Afghan leaders trying to rebuild their country.

Divided into three teams, the soldiers' chief task, as Andy Tamas puts it, is to strengthen the institutions, frail as they may yet be, of the Afghan state.

If Mr. Tamas is uniquely qualified -- he has 35 years under his belt in the development field and was working in Afghanistan on two UN projects in 1998, the time of the Taliban -- he is also uniquely positioned to assess how Canada's least well-known asset in that impoverished and beleaguered country is doing.

Mr. Tamas, 62, is one of only two civilians on the SAT.

The other is Elizabeth Speed, a public servant who has worked for two decades in the federal Department of National Defence.

Mr. Tamas is the only team member who had never worked intimately with the military before, not to mention, lived alongside them as he does now, in a small compound near the Canadian embassy in Kabul's Wazir Akbar Khan district.

"It's been a double immigrant experience for me," he says. "I'm in Afghanistan and I'm living with another tribe [soldiers], so to speak."

At bottom, the Canadians are embedded in three key areas: with the Afghan National Development Strategy and the 18-member "working group" of Afghans led by Ishaq Nadiri, President Karzai's senior economic adviser; in the civil service commission, where they are helping locals tasked with building a public service that is fair and open to all Afghans; and in Mr. Karzai's office, where they assist the chief of staff and function as a sort of kitchen cabinet.

In a country that has been at war one way or another for almost three decades, where tribalism is the tradition, and where just four years ago virtually nothing remained of the government that had operated in the 1960s, the Canadians are there to help Afghans, as Mr. Tamas says, "turn their 'we-gotta-fix-everything now' list into some kind of organized, doable sequence."

"There is a tendency to drop everything to deal with short-fuse tasks," says Lieutenant-Commander Marta Mulkins, one of three Canucks embedded in the working group. "We help mitigate some of these by asking how it fits into the plan." That is, implementing the goals of the Afghanistan Compact agreed upon with the international community in London this past January.

"One can understand that in a country where folks have lived day-to-day for so long," LCdr. Mulkins says, "maintaining a strategic view on anything has to be relearned."

She calls it "a hopeful process and one which does stand a chance," chiefly because of the "smart, educated and highly motivated people with whom we work" and because of the international oversight "which links funding to progress made by the country towards the Afghanistan Compact goals" of security, stability, governance, rule of law and human rights and economic and social development.... [more at GlobeandMail.com]

Many of you have mentioned the clear fact here numerous times yet much media sees fit to ignore a "small detail":

The Sudanese government has not approved non-AU UN members to contribute to any peacekeeping force whatsoever.

Yet, large portions of the media like to portray our contributions in Afghanistan as an "occupation" of a sovereign country.  They conveniently ignore that NATO and coalition forces are there in support of UN SCRs  #1368, 1373, 1378, 1383, 1444, 1589 and most recently (Jan 31, 2006) 1659 (a resolution that endorses an activity that I was directly involved with, and am justifiable proud to have contributed to).  The coalition forces continue to serve the country at the request of the democratically-elected government of Afghanistan. 

As far as I know, there is no such willingness on the part of the Sudanese government, a chartered member of the UN, to allow non-AU nations within the borders of its nation. 

If UN member nations thought that it was the right thing to do to enter the Sudan without the country's invitation, then at the very least it should be done under the UN's authority (most likely through its' Security Council's endorsement).  Otherwise, the Western world is guilty of unilaterally acting without international endorsement.  This seems to be more than a bit hypocritical of the media.

I'm not at all against taking acting to stop what has the potential to be a repeat of the genocide that we say in Rwanda.  If the Sudanese government is somehow complicit in allowing this to occur because it will not authorize non-AU peacekeepers, then that is an issue that must be clearly addressed before further action can be considered and planned for.

Cheers,
Duey

 

[MarkOttawa]

One wonders how Ms. McQuaig would consider a NATO force in Darfur "UN peacekeeping".  In any event as of this August our forces in Afstan will be part of a NATO force mandated by the UNSC--so what is the problem there?  But I'm sure such facts are irrelevant to Ms McQuaig's agenda.

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

My apologies--I was wrong that SHIRBRIG is UN-oriented and not NATO.

Mark
Ottawa

 

[medicineman]

I seem to recall this is how we ended up in the mess that is still Somalia, and the Balkans - by allowing foreign policy to be controlled by CNN (not to mention the Film Actors Guild  ;D).  What I find rather ironic now is that the drought and famine in Sudan in the 90's was going on and nobody gave a rat's because of Somalia.

MM

 

[GO!!!]

It seems to me that if the goal was to prevent the infiltration of armed janjaweed into certain areas of Sudan, the correct response would be of sending a great number of section sized patrols (be they military or PMC) to live in the affected areas, armed with a prepondrance of dismounted firepower and round the clock fast air and indirect fire on call.

The Janjaweed enter into a certain area and are immediately engaged by marksmen/snipers at range, immediately before being incinerated by high accuracy indirect fire or fast air. The friendlies could have access to a large, airmobile QRF and a strong point if they got in over their heads. The end result would be a huge number of enemy killed, at a relatively low cost to the west (say 25 sections of light infantry, coy size QRF, helo tpt and M777 equipped battery.

Each time a camp is attacked by the janjaweed, they would be hunted and killed. Eventually, they would run out of morale or men.

 

[Long in the tooth]

I once wasted several valuable hours reading "Shooting the Hippo" by Linda McQuaig.  Without going into to much detail, let it suffice to say that aside from her "voodoo economics" viewpoint (which include a policy of hyperinflation to solve our unemployment policies), she is also economical (selective) with the facts.  I give about as much credence to her expertise in military and foreign afairs as I do my cat.

 

[George Wallace]

KISS!

I don't think KISS would work just as you seem to think in this instance.

What is the population of this country?

How many cities, towns, villages, and camps are there in this country?

How large a territory do you figure on covering?

What is the Strength of the Enemy (janjaweed)?

Who equips the janjaweed?

Who fininaces the janjaweed?

How mobile are the janjaweed?

Where are their home bases?

What support would the Government of Sudan give you?

What support would the local provincial and municipal governments give you?

What support would village elders give you?

How long do you figure on preparing for this Op?

How many villages do you figure on covering with only 25 Sections?

How long do you figure on staying in the Sudan?

There are a lot more questions.......................

 

[NL_engineer]

Take a look at this map http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/su.html, even if we do go in, we will probably be there for a wile; or until the US takes care of some of the nabours.

If we are going to deploy, I hope the Government has answered Georage Wallace's questions.

just my $0.02

 

[GO!!!]

George,

The gist of my suggestion was that if Canada is to make a contribution to Sudan, it should be in the form of plenty of well armed men, whose only mission is to kill the janjaweed - no humanitarian mission, no aid, no blue helmets. Cut out the cancer and let it heal.

 

[tomahawk6]

The only hope for Sudan is regime change and thats not going to happen. Africa's many states have shown their inability to govern their people in a fair and equitable manner. If the people had a chance to vote I wonder how many would vote for a return of their colonial masters ?

 

[Kirkhill]

Judging by the Sierra Leone experience, quite a few Tomahawk6.

The problem is the "Imperialists" are no longer interested and, as in the days when the winds of change blew, it is the minority that decides the situation in any event.  What is it in Northern Ireland - 250 active IRA members,  a couple of thousand facilitators and cast of thousands cheering them on from the cheap seats?

 

[George Wallace]

Back to Dallaire:

Monday, 15 May 2006
Canada should spare troops for Darfur: Dallaire
CTV.ca News Staff

Retired Canadian general Romeo Dallaire thinks Canada has the capability to send troops to the troubled Darfur region of Sudan despite concerns that the country does not have the manpower for another military mission.

Speaking on CTV's Question Period on Sunday, Sen. Dallaire agreed that the Canadian Forces have been stretched thin by years of budget cuts and the ongoing mission in Afghanistan.  But, he argued that pullbacks from other missions meant Canada could spare a force for Sudan.

"I think it is almost reflective of a banana republic if we can't, as a leading middle power, be able to move forces in those two mission and do it with the capabilities we have," he said.

"In the current situation, after the last two years where the Canadian Forces have been pulling out of UN missions in order to lick their wounds, I believe we can go in as part of a developed world contingent to reinforce the African Union (peacekeepers) for a short period of time."

More than 200,000 people have been killed and two million driven from their homes in Darfur because of a campaign of government-sponsored terror against non-Arab tribes. A ceasefire between government-backed militias and rebels went into effect last Monday and the government has indicated it would be open to UN peacekeepers getting involved.

On Monday, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor told a Senate committee that Canada is stretched too thin to send troops to Darfur. But, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Wednesday that deployment was a possibility, although unlikely.

Dallaire said Canada has not done enough to prevent the ethnic cleansing.

"We, like the rest of the developed world, did not do anything for Darfur...we sort of pussy-footed with the Sudanese government in regards to holding them accountable for what they and their militias were doing."

Rock uncertain on outcome of peace accord

Allan Rock, Canada's outgoing ambassador to the UN, said it was too early to know if the recent peace accord will succeed.

"It is just word on paper unless it is implemented," Rock told Question Period on Sunday.

"This morning there are fresh reports of attack by militia on civilians.  The agreement provides those militia are to be disarmed."

Rock, who was in Nigeria to witness the signing of the agreement, said it was crucial that other nations get involved in making sure the treaty holds.

"There's reason to doubt the sincerity of the government of Sudan, based on the record.  That's why the international community and the United Nations are going to have a very significant role to play in making sure that there's follow-through and implementation.

http://sympaticomsn.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060514/qp_dallaire060514

 

[George Wallace]

From a link on the same page:    http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060508/darfur_update_060508?hub=QPeriod&s_name=&no_ads=

UN humanitarian chief flees Darfur refugee camp
Updated Mon. May. 8 2006 11:38 PM ET

Associated Press

NYALA, Sudan -- The UN humanitarian chief hurriedly left a Darfur refugee camp Monday when demonstrators demanding the deployment of UN peacekeepers attacked a translator, accusing him of supporting the feared Janjaweed militia, a UN spokeswoman said.

Jan Egeland cut short his visit to Kalma camp, near the city of Nyala in south Darfur, spokeswoman Dawn Blalock said. Some in a crowd of about 1,000 protesters manhandled a translator in Egeland's entourage who they suspected had previously worked for the pro-government militia blamed for widespread atrocities in Darfur, she said.

The demonstrators thought the translator had misinterpreted what they were saying to members of Egeland's entourage, Blalock said.

The translator was not injured, but colleagues put him into a van for his own safety, Blalock told The Associated Press by phone.

The demonstrators then picked up sticks and broke the windows of the van and another vehicle in Egeland's convoy, which left the camp to return to Nyala.

The translator, who was not identified, is employed by Oxfam which had several staffers travelling with Egeland. The British-based non-governmental organization (NGO) promptly withdrew its six staffers from Kalma camp.

"We did not evacuate,'' Blalock stressed. "The program was cut short because tensions were too much.''

Egeland, the UN undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, had gone to Kalma to meet leaders of at least 90,000 residents of the camp as well as representatives of the NGOs. His visit came days after Sudan's government and the main rebel group in the country's western Darfur region signed a peace agreement to end fighting which has killed nearly 200,000 people since 2003.

An Associated Press reporter in the camp said Egeland was met by a huge crowd chanting pro-UN, pro-U.S. and anti-government slogans.

The demonstrators, mostly women, shouted: "Yes to international troops!'' -- a reference to the western proposal for UN peacekeepers to be deployed in Darfur.

As the entourage was leaving the camp, they attacked a UN vehicle with sticks and knives, because they thought the translator had said something that did not reflect what they had said in Arabic against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. The violence prompted Egeland and his entourage to quickly leave the camp.

Until the signing of the peace accord on Friday, the Sudanese government had refused to host a large UN peacekeeping force to take over from the relatively small African Union operation that is now operating in Darfur.

Blalock said there had been tension in Kalma camp because of the absence of a camp co-ordinator. The government expelled the last co-ordinator, an official of the Norwegian Refugee Committee, in early April, she said.

After his arrival in Darfur on Sunday, Egeland warned that the peace treaty would not be easy to implement.

"We are now in the centre of the war which is still going on,'' Egeland told Associated Press Television News. "The world should have no illusions that peace will break out easily here in Darfur. We have to have an enormous effort from the international community and the parties themselves to enforce this peace agreement.''

Egeland was speaking during a visit to another camp for some of the two million people who have fled their homes during the three-year rebellion and counterinsurgency. Another 180,000 have died, mainly from disease and hunger.



The United Nations says that rebel-held areas near the camps that Egeland visited Sunday had seen major attacks by the pro-government militia that had forced some 200,000 people to flee in the past three months.

Combatants seemed to have been expecting a treaty to come out of the long-running negotiations in Nigeria and were jockeying to take control of territory before a ceasefire.

Egeland said Sunday that thousands of people had been displaced by fighting in recent days and added there could be more fighting.

Aid workers have repeatedly complained that the government has prevented them from working, and that fighting has made it impossible for them to help civilians.

Egeland was barred by the Sudanese government from visiting Darfur and Sudan's capital of Khartoum in April.

Decades of low-level tribal clashes over land and water in Darfur erupted into large-scale violence in early 2003 when members of the African ethnic tribes rose in revolt and demanded regional autonomy. The government is accused unleashing the Janjaweed who have been blamed for widespread killing, rape and destruction.

The government has repeatedly denied supporting the Arab militia.



This is not a less active State than Afghanistan.  There are just as many convoluted military and terrorist problems here as there are in Afghanistan.  For any Leftie, Opposition Party member, Tree Hugger, member of the Press, or any other who may think that moving our Troops from Afghanistan to Darfur will be safer and that we can fill a more 'Humanitarian' role there with our 'Kinder, Gentler Army', the facts don't support it.  It is just as dangerous and perhaps even more so, than Afghanistan.  We can't be taking on ever problem of the world on a whim.  Let's start with one and sort it out, before we move on to another.  Don't start on one and drop it for another.  It will solve neither.

 

[mainerjohnthomas]

I was in back in the 90's when our UN deployments had eaten so much of our operating budget that units were forced to cut training to support the troops overseas.  The good Senator wants a return to those bad old days?  Our training is what keeps us alive.  Skimp on training, just to afford bodies on the ground, and you will get bodies IN the ground.  I hope Mr Harper holds firm on not gutting our capacity on another long term deployment like Darfur.  At a time when the CF is trying to rebuild after decades of having its infrastructure gutted, we cannot allow ourselves to be committed overseas to the point that we lack the ability to handle new recruits, maintain training schedules and standards, and respond in force to domestic emergencies.  Being so committed abroad that we are essentially paralyzed at home is not a viable defence policy.

 

[Journeyman]

Sen. Dallaire agreed that the Canadian Forces have been stretched thin by years of budget cuts and the ongoing mission in Afghanistan.

"I think it is almost reflective of a banana republic if we can't, as a leading middle power, be able to move forces in those two mission and do it with the capabilities we have," he said.

I see the identical logic arguing with a 9 year old: "You can't go to the store because it's closed." "I know, but I want to go to the store"  The reality is acknowledged, then ignored :

"In the current situation, after the last two years where the Canadian Forces have been pulling out of UN missions in order to lick their wounds, I believe we can go in as part of a developed world contingent to reinforce the African Union (peacekeepers) for a short period of time."

Pulling out observers in ones and twos does not free up additional personnel to knit a new battalion, I don't care where you learned math.

Allan Rock, Canada's outgoing ambassador to the UN, said it was too early to know if the recent peace accord will succeed. "It is just word on paper unless it is implemented."

And that's different from how many countless UN resolutions, declarations, and hand-wringing photo ops?

The likelihood of seeing any measure of success in Darfur is a dubious hope. It will require combat troops, with an unambiguous mandate to stop the militias. Believing this will happen without employing firepower (aka "killing") is delusional. There must be a reality check that involves someone pointing out the emperor's nakedness - - the African Union has accomplished nothing. Accept the reality that the genocide will continue without developed nations' combat efforts.....and the inevitable, and already heard, wail that such efforts amount to racism.

Is the UN capable of such unvarnished truth? No.
Can Canada support such a deployment right now? No.
Would Canada be willing to commit to such an operation, if it could? "You bet! Our (mythical) peacekeeping culture demands it....we'll form a committee to conduct a staff check on this "combat stuff"...well actually, maybe we could provide Comms, we've done that before...no? how about Logistics?.....and some staff officers, lots of staff officers...OK, we can provide two staff officers....but someone else has to get them there."

In the end, I think the key phrase is...

"I think it is almost reflective of a banana republic..."

Oui, mon general.... truer words have seldom been spoken in our nation's capital; this is known as "reaping what you sow." Please remember that expression if pronouncements from your Liberal-sinecure pulpit do contribute to putting additional Canadian troops into such a no-win deployment.  But that's unlikely, because the UN's inability to apply hard solutions, the Sudanese government's refusal to apply necessary measures, and the inevitable end state of the genocide will keep our banana republic-like diminished military capabilities from being showcased before the world.

Is anyone else out there feeling embarrassment?

 

[MarkOttawa]

Journeyman: Actually I'm embarrassed to live in a banana monarchy.

Mark
Ottawa

 

[Journeyman]

I'm embarrassed to live in a banana monarchy.

Well, technically....it's a cabane à sucre monarchy.......a constitutional cabane à sucre monarchy ;D

 

[Mike Bobbitt]

Please post all replies to the "The Truth About Darfur" Editorial here.