War is Africa's natural condition. Can we change that?

Since the end of the colonial era, there has always been war in Africa. With one or two exceptions, such as Botswana, you can't point to a map of sub-Saharan Africa without finding a country that has at some point been wracked by riot, revolution, war or even genocide. It's the nature of the people -- emotional, excitable, easily led and predisposed to mindless and horrendous violence. I know it's politically incorrect to say that, but read the histories of Liberia, Ghana, Nigeria, Moçambique, both Congos, South Africa -- the list goes on -- and see if that's not right. Check out How De Body by Dutch journalist Teun Voeten (St. Martin's Press, New York, 2002) for a graphic description of how things were in Sierra Leone in the 1990s. We'll come back to that book in another post.

Right now there's a "civil" war going on in the Congo which was formerly known as Zaïre and has its capital at Kinshasa. The government's writ runs only in the capital region. The rest of the country is divided amongst a number of cruel and evil warlords, fighting for control of the immense mineral wealth that includes "blood diamonds". In spite of the efforts of United Nations "peacekeepers", the Congo has never, repeat never known peace since it was "liberated" from the Belgians.

In west Africa, most of which was (and in some ways still is) run by the French, another "civil" war rages in Mali. What? Never heard of it? If you've ever been told to go to Timbuktu, well, that's in Mali. You could look it up. That war has racial and religious overtones (surprised?) with the Muslim Arab(ish) north pitted against the Christian/animist African (read: black) south. The UN stepped in to referee that vicious conflict a couple of years ago, and so far hasn't had much luck keeping the combatants from each other's throats.

In June of this year, Canada's loopy prime minister Trudeau, in yet another act of virtue-signalling at the expense of his people, sent a couple of hundred Canadian troops to Mali, where Canada has no dog in the fight but is going to jump in anyway. The Canadian contingent consists of a few helicopters and support crews, whose task is to medevac other UN soldiers who get caught in the crossfire. So far they've flown exactly two (2) missions, both on 9/11.

Yesterday Maj-Gen. Dave Fraser (Retd), who led Canada's troops in the ill-fated Afghanistan mission, admitted on CTV's Power Play that the Canuck peacekeeping mission in Mali has "no prospect of immediate success." He told host Don Martin, "The political overtones and what's going on in this country and this mission are ugly. This is not going to be short mission." No kidding!

Although Mr Socks promised that Canadian soldiers and airmen (not many female troops could be persuaded to go) would not be placed in harm's way, since they would only be flying medical evacuation missions and providing support from the skies, the likelihood of some poor non-com coming home in a body bag is increasing, as the security situation in the shithole has deteriorated sharply in recent months. Says the retired general, "It’s as bad, if not worse, than what we experienced in Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria."

Continuing in mililtary-speak, Maj-Gen. Fraser said, "It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that this mission isn’t going in the right direction from a trajectory point of view." He explained that the key issue is a lack of leadership. Despite no-worse-than-usual elections this summer, he said the insurgents are winning the fight on the ground. That's because "Peacekeeping can't be effective without a strong civilian government leadership that’s running the government, that's actually providing oversight for the military and the police forces and that’s not happening fast enough." For "fast enough", read "at all" and that's all ye need to know.

At the end of the day, the general warned, this hurts some people more than others. In a brilliant statement of the obvious, he said, "The local people are the ones who are going to be adversely affected." Can the problem be solved? Yes, says Maj-Gen. Fraser, if the United Nations changes its approach. "The UN's not getting the locals to get the leadership or the women engaged fast enough, and they're going to lose this race." If nothing changes, he said, the situation can only continue to deteriorate. So the answer to Walt's headline question is, errr, probably not. Which begs the question of what we're doing there!

Further reading: "Mal y soit qui Mali pense", 15/1/13. Kudos to Ed. for that brilliant headline, which only a monarchist would get!

Going after Taliban was a mistake, sez former general

A lot of Americans (and Canadians) think that the Canadian Armed Forces kind of let the side down by withdrawing their half-dozen aging CF-18s from the US-led mission against ISIS. When it comes to fighting Islamic terrorism (their argument goes) the Canucks will hold your coat until your nose starts to bleed. This is not true. Let me set the record straight.

True, the government of Jean Chrétien declined to join in Dubya's invasion of Iraq, presumably because they thought it was a huge mistake but (being Canadian) wewre too polite to say more than "We'll take a pass on this one. Maybe next time." The wisdom of this decision is apparent in retrospect. If you don't find it so, take a look at Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. You'll find a link to the full-length documentary in "Republican voters: WATCH 'Fahrenheit 9/11'!", WWW 17/2/16.

All the same, the Canadian government took a lot of flak -- figuratively speaking -- from within and without the Great Not-so-white North. So much so that when the Paranoid States of America decided to go into Afghanistan to chase after Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, they decided they'd better get into the scrap to make up for missing the first round. Little did they know that they'd have to fight not just al-Qaeda but the Taliban, since the Taliban controlled huge swathes of Armpitistan, including Kandahar province, one of the toughest targets. Sure enough, that's where the Canucks wound up. They lost proportionately more soldiers than the USA, beginning with four killed by "friendly fire" from the USAF. Some friends, eh!

Major-General Dave Fraser (seen here getting a gong from former Governor-General Michaëlle Jean) commanded both the Canadian task force and the expanded mission of the "Coalition of the Willing" to extend the authority of former Afghan president Krazi Karzai beyond the capital of Kabul in 2006. That was just over 4 1/2 years into the Afghan war and three years into the larger, bloodier struggle in Iraq after the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

Today, in an interview marking the 10th anniversary of the Canadian deployment into Kandahar, Maj-Gen. Fraser had some rather astonishing things to say about the commission. He told Canadian Press that the West made a mistake deposing the Taliban regime in the aftermath of 9/11, and should have simply trained its guns on al-Qaeda. "We thought, naively, that regime change was the solution to the problem," he said. "Looking backwards, I would have actually left the Taliban government in power and said (to them) 'Stay out of the way. We’re here to find Al Qaeda. And as long as you stay out of the way, the special forces will go in there, they will do what is necessary to get Al Qaeda and we will leave.' Had we done that, we wouldn’t be where we are today."

Back then, no-one seemed to appreciate how profound the power vacuum was, he went on, and that the West was creating for itself "a 30- or 40-year problem" not only in Afghanistan but throughout the Middle East.

Maj-Gen. Fraser said the West has only repeated the same mistakes over the last decade. "We repeated it in Iraq," he told CP. "In Libya, we didn’t put any ground troops in and we created an even bigger mess because there’s no government whatsoever in Libya. We went back into Iraq and now for the very first time the international community is beginning to appreciate that regime change is not the solution. [That's] why we’re not pushing to do a regime change in Syria."

Right. Has anyone told the Prez, the Pentagon and the folks at Foggy Bottom about this? To take Maj-Gen. Fraser's argument to the logical conclusion, which is... wait for it... that Western meddling in what is basically a Muslim civil war is only making things worse for the people of the Middle East, and for the West as well? Has anyone learned anything from the events of the last 10 or 20 or 25 years? Errr, apparently not.

Footnote: Is Michaëlle Jean's ADC looking at her chest or what? Whatever happened to Her Serene Highness anyway? Last we heard she was swanning around Paris as the UN's "special ambassador" for her native Haïti. Is it possible she finally went home to share the misery of the poorest state of the Western Hemisphere? Errr, apparently not.