National Defence Committee on May 1st, 2018

[MGen (Ret'd) David Fraser]

Yes. We have to get our private sector to invest. The best way to fight corruption is what we did in Afghanistan. We created a banking system, an electronic banking system. By creating an electronic banking system, we paid everybody using this thing because everyone had it. The Germans came in, built a telecommunication system better than in Canada. If you read my book, you'll see how Canada built a bank and we gave Afghans banking and stopped corruption. Technology is the solution.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

MP Gallant.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I will be directing my questions to General Fraser.

A report by the United States federal aviation authority states that extremist militant groups in Mali are suspected to possess or have access to MANPADS, the portable air defence systems. They may have originated from the conflict in Libya. So far, we've been told that they don't have the capability yet to know how to use them, but we understand that these MANPADS can fire ammunition that can reach 25,000 feet. With our government deploying six helicopters to Mali, would you be at all concerned about the presence of these weapons?

[MGen (Ret'd) David Fraser]

You're always concerned about any weapon system, but as soon as you hear about MANPADS, it becomes a new level of concern. We had this threat in Afghanistan and we always—going back to the question about intelligence—tried to gain an understanding of how many of these systems were in the country and whether they had used them. Understanding the pattern of use is important because it's always a threat and you have to take everything into account.

Understanding the human geography, you see that these are status symbols. Somebody who walks around with one of these things is a pretty important guy. Once you fire, it's gone. You want to walk around with it, but you use it and it's gone. Going back to understanding the culture, you need to know how they view these things, and that can help mitigate some of that risk. It's a concern that we should all be cognizant of.

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

How would you characterize the capabilities and threat level of the terrorist groups who are taking the fight to the UN forces in Mali?

[MGen (Ret'd) David Fraser]

It's a direct threat and everyone should be concerned about it. As soon you leave the ground and you're starting to fly around in either a rotary wing or fixed-wing aircraft, you have a MANPADS threat, and you have to take that into consideration.

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

In Mali, we have a situation where various Islamist rebel groups not only oppose the presence of peacekeepers but go out of their way to attack them. How should this be addressed?

[MGen (Ret'd) David Fraser]

We should address it through diplomatic means and relationship building. Going out and having military operations and killing them is easy but that's not going to resolve anything. Every time you kill somebody, you create 10 new insurgents. You've disenfranchised a whole bunch of families and they come after you.

You have to talk to the locals and try to find out who these people are. Everybody knows who they are, and you need to build a relationship, create a dialogue, try to find the moderates within those groups and talk to them. We try to get them to come over and we give them legitimacy and a voice in the conversation. That's one way to address it. You don't want to address it directly through combat operations. You have to address it through diplomacy and through negotiations. That's the only way you're going to be able to resolve this.

You're always going to have the few out there who you're going to have to give a life choice. You make the first two choices for them because they just not will not come around. They're just bent on not liking us. This is why it's so important to build a relationship with the host nation and try find somebody you can work with. As T.E. Lawrence said back in 1914, 1918, whatever, it's better to let them figure it out for themselves, even imperfectly, than it is to try to do it for them.

We can't fix this problem. It's their problem. Let's help them.

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

Our military witnesses told us that, essentially, our people would be staying inside the wire. It would be a separate encampment from the other countries that are involved in this mission. We'd have 250 people, roughly 200 people on the ground to support the helicopters that are doing the medevacs. How are we, being inside the wire and protected, as described, actually going to have these shura-like meetings with the people on the ground if they're encamped and not deployed to the forefront? How is this going to occur?

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

If you can answer that, General, in 15 seconds or less, I would very much appreciate that.

[MGen (Ret'd) David Fraser]

We have great intelligence capabilities to mitigate the threat when the aircraft go up. Our aircraft are there for a specific task. Our task is not to negotiate. Our task is medevac transportation, etc. That's the mission we were given. You'll have to ask somebody else what the other mission did in negotiating.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Mr. Fisher.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, folks, for being here.

This has been excellent testimony. The main theme seems to be the drastically changing nature of peacekeeping as we see it today. David, you described the changes through the Cold War, the changes through the 1990s and today. I almost get the sense that peacekeeping today doesn't even really bear a resemblance to what peacekeeping looked like in the 1950s. However, in the Canadian mentality, and maybe even in the world mentality, it's almost the same. It's peacekeepers between two warring factions.

Ms. Novosseloff, in your opening statements you used the phrase “peacekeeping is constantly improving”. We've talked about the changes. We've talked about how, perhaps, it doesn't necessarily bear a resemblance today to what peacekeeping was in the 1950s, but you're the first, really, that I've heard say that peacekeeping is constantly improving. I'm interested in your thoughts on that. I also wouldn't mind the other panellists or witnesses giving me a quick, short thought on whether they feel that peacekeeping is or can be seen as improving.

[Dr. Alexandra Novosseloff]

First of all, peacekeeping cannot do everything. Counterterrorism is not a task for peacekeeping. This has to be taken by other stakeholders, regional organizations, bilaterals, coalitions of the willing. We have to put a limit to what peacekeeping is doing. MINUSMA, the UN peacekeeping in Mali, is testing that, and really, we have to put limits on that.

Peacekeeping has been improving in the way it conducts things, within those limits. There's a lot of discussion today, currently in New York, on how to improve performances of peacekeepers, how to improve command and control.

It's also member states that have to be willing to integrate. When I heard your colleague say that Canada will be in a separate camp from the rest of the mission, for me, that is not a good sign of integration. That's what is happening currently in Gao. Sweden and Germany are separated from the rest of the mission, from the rest of the contingents. That creates a two-tier mission, and it's not good for the integrated way we should conduct those missions, not only for the unity of command but also for the unity of messaging.

How can a SRSG use the military component to back up the political processes, the political dialogue, if you have separate components within the military component that will not follow what the SRSG says? We have to look at how we operate in those circumstances.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

General, do you feel it's improving, or is it even fair to compare the beast it once was with what we see today?

[MGen (Ret'd) David Fraser]

What was and what is today are totally different. I don't think you can make a qualitative or quantitative comparison. They are completely different.

When I first went into Cyprus with a blue beret, when I went to Bosnia with a blue beret.... When I saw what I saw in Afghanistan and I saw peacekeepers, that wasn't a blue beret operation I recognized. Operations have changed.

The year 1995 was a paradigm shift for the world, and I think we have to recognize it.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

That was the big change, 1995.

That's great. Thank you.

Do you folks want to chime in on that?

Ms. Dugal.

[Zoé Dugal]

I have just a very quick point. When we say that peacekeeping has completely changed.... I want to just say that with regard to the traditional means of peacekeeping, we still have those missions. There is still a mission in Cyprus that is a traditional, completely old-style, peacekeeping mission. There is still a UN mission in the Golan Heights. Those missions are still the traditional peacekeeping missions. We still have Canadians in those, and we've had Canadians in those. It's not that peacekeeping has changed and that we've forgotten the old ways. There are still those missions. The new missions are very different.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

That's the important thing.

Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you.

MP Bezan.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Thank you.

First of all, I want to thank our witnesses for being here.

General Fraser, I want to thank you in particular for your leadership and to congratulate you on your amazing career. I'm looking forward to your book launch next week. I will be there to get my copy and a personal autograph from you.

I just want to follow up on what Madam Dugal just said about how there is traditional peacekeeping out there. We talk about Bosnia being a success for the UN, but are Cyprus and the Golan Heights? Here we are 30, 40, 50 years on, and we still have peacekeepers there. How can those be successes?

[Zoé Dugal]

That's exactly.... I think we can see them as successful because of what their mandates were. Their mandates were to stop the fighting. This has been achieved. In Cyprus, there is no fighting. There hasn't been any fighting for decades. Now the success is not that the country is reintegrated. That is not what the mission was meant to do. This is why when we talk about the success of peace operations and the new form that they've taken, we have to be very careful because the level of success that we're trying to measure is much higher than what we had for Cyprus or the Golan Heights. If you decide to place a few military observers to monitor a ceasefire, the measure of success is very easy: did they stop fighting? If they stopped fighting, then you are successful.

Now with regard to what we've been discussing in terms of state building, rebuilding institutions, transforming societies, and so on, this is the goal of new peace operations. These successes have to be measured in various fields. In my view—I've worked in Afghanistan also—Afghanistan is a failure. I will say it. I don't think Afghanistan is a functioning state at the moment.

Now in terms of other situations, I think you can have very different levels of success. You have more success in some areas and less success in others. It's very difficult to answer the question also from the previous MP about whether it is improving. It's becoming much more difficult and complex. It is improving, but the challenges are higher. The way that you measure success has to be also more refined, in a way. It's not just to stop the fighting. It's about what else are you building.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

General Fraser, you made a comment that I want to get some clarification on. You said that Bosnia was a UN success, but I think all the reading I've ever done has said that the fighting stopped when NATO came in and ended the fight, that it wasn't the UN, that it was actually NATO. You started there in a blue beret, but weren't you part of the NATO operations as well?

[MGen (Ret'd) David Fraser]

I would say that we actually got the paradigm backwards. When I first went there, we should have had NATO in there because when I was there with the UN, we were dropping bombs from NATO airplanes. To talk about the ambassador's convoluted chain of command.... The UN didn't have intelligence, we didn't have bombs, and we were fighting a civil war at the same time. When NATO came in, it came in too late. The UN peace process kind of muddled its way through. General de la Presle, who was the UNPROFOR commander, said it best. He said that it was a flawed mission, but there was nothing else to replace it. Look where we are today. In fact, that flawed mission actually had some positive outcomes, but we needed both NATO and the UN. We couldn't do this without each other.