National Defence Committee on March 9th, 2009

[BGen G. Champagne]

I'll try to categorize this according to your three questions, and if I don't answer all of your points, please remind me.

In terms of our counter-IED effort, as I explained, we have a wide spectrum of capabilities. We have a counter-IED team here in Canada, which keeps going back and forth. It goes through the lessons learned of what's needed in the field, in terms of surveillance, reconnaissance, and detection. This can be translated in terms of types of vehicles or intelligence, including other means of intelligence, which I don't really want to go into in great detail here. But when you're talking specifically about dogs, if you look at the operation that was ongoing this weekend, there was a dog in the trenches that was going after IEDs. So we use the full spectrum.

Unfortunately, sometimes some of the soldiers are not necessarily privy to the full spectrum that we have, because a lot of this is happening around them and not necessarily with them.

Do you want me to go into more detail?

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

That's good.

[BGen G. Champagne]

In terms of my experience in Srebrenica and how it relates to Afghanistan, first, I don't have experience yet in Afghanistan. Hopefully, I'll be deploying this summer. But in comparing the two, I'll go back to the whole-of-government approach, or the COIN manual mentioned by your colleague.

In the case of Srebrenica, what was important was that I, as the commander, could only deal with international organizations. It was a lot of simpler than it is in Afghanistan, because you had the enclave there, with the Bosnians on the one side and the Serbs on the other. But the efforts in the enclave dealt with the different international organizations, which is different from what it is in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, the strength we have is the fact that it is all Canadians, and we're all focused on the same objective with the same priorities, and we have the projects that we're working on. This makes it a lot easier. At the same time, Afghanistan is a war zone that is quite different from the one in the old days of Bosnia. Bosnia was a war zone too, but not as complicated as the one in Afghanistan, because in Afghanistan it's asymmetrical, whereas over in Bosnia you still had the different groups, but they were distinct. In Afghanistan it's not the same.

Does that explain it?

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

That's great.

[BGen G. Champagne]

In terms of the border flag meetings, I believe we've had about three in the past 12 months. These are extremely important. They happen in the Spin Buldak area. They normally include the commander of JTFA and the RoCK, and the Afghan commander and the Pakistani commander. And then they discuss the issues along the border and how they can improve the situation there. Based on that, they each go back to their organizations and try to put in place some of the agreements they've reached.

Now, we don't normally share those agreements outside of that group, because it's really between the two of them. It's really at this low level, but it still has an effect, because at least we have the Pakistani and Afghan commanders on each side with whom we can discuss the border issues.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

And the militaries with areas of operation adjacent to Iran, are they experiencing the same sort of insurgency?

[BGen G. Champagne]

I wouldn't try to comment on that.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Okay.

The Americans are pledging an additional 17,000 troops. We know that part of the reason the surge worked in Iraq was that it was coupled with significant changes to the local political situation, namely the awakening of their councils.

What kinds of operations do we see the Americans doing in Afghanistan to help change the security and the dynamics on the ground?

[BGen G. Champagne]

First of all, I'd like to clarify that the term “surge” was probably one that they used in Iraq, but it is not a term they use in Afghanistan. It is not a surge in Afghanistan. They're coming in to help in large numbers, and they know they're going to be there for the long run. That's a little bit different from the case in Iraq, where they had a surge in order to do certain things.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Mr. Champagne, you have 15 seconds remaining.

[BGen G. Champagne]

Merci, monsieur.

In terms of exactly what they want to do, they're still discussing it. The commander of CENTCOM, who is responsible for that theatre of operations, is still going through his assessment. Once he's finished with his assessment, it will obviously go through his own chain of command. And once the order is out, then we'll have more clarity.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much, Mr. Champagne for your presentation.

If all the members agree, we will suspend for five minutes, and after that we're going to go in camera for our committee business.

Thank you.

[Proceedings continue in camera]