The effects of Political correctness on Canada's military.
Training isn't the problem
Politics, not a lack of skills, is why our troops are leaving Kabul
Lewis MacKenzie
The Ottawa Citizen
Friday, June 25, 2004
Canada turned down a U.S. request last week to extend the tour of our 2,000 soldiers in Kabul until the fall so they could provide a rapid-reaction force during the Afghan elections in September. It's necessary to have such a force on standby to move throughout Afghanistan to deal with the inevitable attempts by terrorists and certain warlords to interfere with the democratic process.
Unfortunately, it was left to a junior Defence department spokesman to explain why Canada would not agree to the U.S. request: "What the Americans are looking for is not exactly what our troops are trained for."
This need not have been such a highly embarrassing admission, as it is blatantly untrue. There are reasons why our contingent is incapable of taking on such a role, but it has nothing to do with a lack of training. On the contrary, they are the best-trained troops for such a mission in the multinational force.
In 2001, immediately following the 9/11 attacks, then-prime minister Jean Chretien pledged that we would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our U.S. friends in the war on terror, starting with the dispatch of the 3rd battalion of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry to join the U.S. brigade operating out of Kandahar.
Unfortunately, he neglected to tell President George W. Bush that we would only be with them for six months. As the alarm went off indicating the six months were up, he brought the battalion home, indicating that we did not have the resources to replace or extend the 800 soldiers.
Yet a few months later, when it looked like the U.S. was going to intervene in Iraq and Canada would be asked to participate, Mr. Chretien ordered 4,000 soldiers (2,000 per six-month mission) to serve with the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul for a year. Magically, the soldiers were found (and conveniently the shelves were emptied for any potential Canadian contribution to Iraq).
Canada would not be directly involved in the war on terror, but would contribute to the establishment of some degree of security in and around Kabul. This would help Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his government survive, at least in the capital, as his movements outside of Kabul are few and far between due to the risks involved.
Regrettably, a considerable degree of inflexibility was built into the organization of the Canadian contingent and a very un-Canadian solution was chosen. It was decided that the soldiers would live in a large encampment with creature comforts previously unknown and deemed unnecessary on other missions -- Internet cafe, exercise tents, individual living compartments, a sewer and water system, extensive air-conditioning, etc.
Despite the fact that Afghani-stan qualified as an operational theatre, civilian contractors were brought in to run the logistics support system for the soldiers. Meals, accommodation, ammunition control, overall maintenance of vehicles and equipment were all centralized in a static civilian component that could not deploy outside of Kabul.
Erroneously assuming that the Canadian mission to Afghanistan would not change and that the umbilical cord to the civilian supply system would always be available, the infantry battalion was required to leave behind in Canada its own internal supply capability provided by its service support company -- which normally provides the services offered by the civilian contractors in a more austere manner, but is considerably more flexible and mobile and can deploy into high-risk areas.
I can appreciate that our government might not want to respond positively to the recent U.S. request. To do so would mean that we would take on an expanded role that would see our soldiers move throughout Afghanistan during the election process to confront any attempts to interfere with the democratic process. Any increased support for the United States during the current election would be seen as a negative for the government, given its anti-U.S. Iraq policy rhetoric.
When National Defence was told to come up with an excuse for our not agreeing to the U.S. request for us to rejoin the war against terror, the response should not have been that our troops were not trained for such a role. An honest -- but politically unacceptable -- response would have gone something like this:
"Sorry, the need to find more savings in our defence budget forced us to contract out the logistics support for our soldiers to a static civilian organization and that restricts them to operations less than 70 kilometres from Kabul. We also have a massive administration and security overhead in Kabul, which means that out of our 2,000 personnel, only about 300 are available for taking any potential fight to the enemy. That reality is extremely unfortunate because the 3rd Battalion Royal 22 Regiment soldiers in their light infantry role would be as good as any elite unit in the world at tracking down and eliminating the terrorists who would threaten the election process and the security of Afghanistan. They spend most of their time training for such a task and would prefer it to patrolling the streets of Kabul."
The lessons we can learn from this are: (1) we should think of our soldiers' morale and pride when politically correct excuses are made for all the world to see; and, (2) we should not fool around with the well-proven organization of an infantry battalion on the assumption that a particular role in a particular mission area will not change. It will, as it should but can't in Afghanistan.
Lewis MacKenzie is a retired major-general in the Canadian Forces.
