Dallaire says Canada can send 1,500 troops to Darfur

By Brian Adeba

Senator Roméo Dallaire muses on the new peace deal in Sudan’s Darfur region, what Canada and the UN should do, and on the future of peacekeeping–if there is one.

Lt. Gen Roméo Dallaire served for 35 years with the Canadian Armed Forces. He was the Force Commander of the United Nations Mission to Rwanda. .

May 10, 2006 (OTTAWA) — In light of a peace deal signed between the main rebel faction in Darfur and
the Sudanese government, Canadian Liberal Senator Roméo Dallaire offers his
thoughts on the prospects of peace in the troubled region, Canada’s
diminishing role in peacekeeping and the prospects of reviving an advisory
body for Darfur, which the new Tory government dissolved. Now retired, Lt.
Gen. Dallaire was the commander of the ill-fated UN force during the Rwandan
genocide. Embassy spoke with Sen. Dallaire yesterday. The following is an
edited transcript of that conversation.

– In last week’s Globe and Mail you called for Canada to commit more troops and resources to Darfur. This is a reversal of your position a year ago. What made you change your opinion?

Is it a reversal or a continual? Let’s go through the phases of this Darfur
situation. Twenty months ago when I was at Harvard, when it looked like we
had a Sudanese-led genocide in Darfur, I called for the immediate deployment
of 44,000 troops. If we can put 67,000 in Yugoslavia with a peace agreement,
with 44,000 we were certainly in a responsible position when we look at what
is going on. With the pressure on the north-south treaty that was going on,
negotiations if you remember that 21-year-old battle between the Christians
and the Muslims in the south of Sudan, there was enough visibility that
seemed to back off the process, so we didn’t see a genocide. We’ve seen a
lot of cleansing, killing, people moved.

The African Union stepped in [Darfur] and so I was one of the first to
agree. But it doesn’t have the capability to sustain the mission. Give it
the tools to do the job, which I was able to stress for on the team, which
[then] Prime Minister Paul Martin put me on with Senator Mobina Jaffer and
Ambassador Robert Fowler to go in and recommend. We moved in a whole bunch
of armoured vehicles, we lent them helicopters.

Last July I called for the African Union and the UN to start planning for
the transition of the mission to a UN mission. The AU troops would be
absorbed into the UN force and form the vanguard. I also said that you need
a lot more troops, 20,000 to have a much broader mandate. The African Union
can barely provide this new rotation of the 7,000 force they have, because
every six months you have to change [troops].

In the article you mourned the disbanding of the Special Advisory Team on
Sudan (SAT), headed by Sen. Mobina Jaffer, but a lot of Darfur activists I
have spoken with see it as good riddance, arguing the only thing that came
out of it is Sen. Jaffer’s comments of having been issued a 10-year
multi-entry visa to Sudan.

When people are desperate, objectivity is not necessarily the strongest
suit. When people are dying in camps and living under the conditions that
these nearly 3 million people are living, I expect them to be very critical
and very demanding because no one wants to live in those conditions. So to
be very critical of people, I guess you have to take that as the norm.
Mobina Jaffer is one of the only ones who aggressively moved the gender
agenda in Darfur and Abuja. Because the women were left to the sidelines,
and if you think you are going to bring peace in many of these male
dominated societies by abandoning the women, you are totally out to lunch.
Empowerment of women is critical. Sen. Jaffer did extensive work in getting
that side of work done, and also she knows all the players. Their criticism
is a valued criticism of impatience, of not seeing enough being done and on that count they are right. We are all guilty of that.

– With the signing of a peace deal between the Sudan Liberation Movement and
the Sudanese government, what do you think are the prospects of a lasting
solution in Darfur?

We still have a small faction that is causing problems, but that is more
posturing than real hard content. We need another year before we can have an
effective UN force on the ground, to demonstrate a Chapter 7 protection
mission with a sizable force that is not only in numbers but also reinforced
by developed countries. If that doesn’t happen, the situation on the ground
has all the potential to degenerate –degenerate both on the humanitarian
side and also on the security side. If that gets worse, then we would be
doing as we have done so often, and that is come into a mission with a
mandate that is already outdated and we are in a desperate situation that
makes it hard to solve.

– Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor has said that Canada doesn’t have enough troops for another overseas mission. In your estimation, how many troops does Canada have now and are we capable of taking on another mission abroad in a Darfur-like situation?

We have got the numbers he mentioned himself. We have only got 62,000
regulars, we have got about 18,000 reservists and wind down the
number-crunching on that, the question is how many troops do we have that
can do the job? It is absolutely correct that the Canadian Forces don’t have
much room to maneuver. My estimation, however, is that I would think that
they have the capability of at least sending a battle group of about 1,500
for the initial six months, then later on one year in order to help
establish the mission, because the critical time for these missions is the
first six months to a year and we always arrive late. When you bring in
top-notch capability up front, you have got the basis for starting it. So I
think you can do it.

– What would you say were some of the shortcomings of the Special Advisory Team on Sudan?

The government ran out of time, that is to say we ended up in the election.
So when an election happens, we can get nothing approved or moved. That was
a grave limitation on the SAT. The last thing that we needed [to do] was
more pushing on the Responsibility to Protect.

– What would you suggest to the Harper government in light of the dissolution
of the SAT?

I am at a loss to get a feel for what the prime minister is doing, except
some rhetorical sort of statements. I was told that he’s leaving this
problem at the hands of his ministers and so I met with the Minister of
Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Defence and talked about this operation.
I was well received and they were very attentive. So now I have got to wait
out and see what they are going to do about it. But I am not going to wait
very long that’s for sure.

I am going to continue to press for this leading middle power [Canada] to do
the tangible both on the diplomatic side, the security side and to continue
to send funds on the humanitarian side.

– Its been said that Canadian peacekeepers can all fit into one bus. What is the future of Canada’s contribution to peacekeeping around the world?

By the end of the Cold War, the old concept of peacekeeping disappeared.
Peacekeeping, the neutral army standing between two warring armies, doesn’t
exist anymore. We are into conflict resolution, and in conflict resolution
you have got the more benign situations like Haiti and you have got the more
complex ones which are security risks, like Afghanistan. Blue beret work
under the UN –we have nearly given it up. We have nearly said we are not
playing there anymore. We have refused command positions for our senior
officers. We have refused putting people into the UN headquarters to gain
experience and influence the situation, and we have withdrawn longstanding
missions back home, saying that we are going to lick our wounds and rebuild
and get out there. Well that’s fine. What’s the milestone on that? When do
we get back in shape to reasonably take up missions? Because a nation like
ours that sends only to Afghanistan is nothing less than an outright
disgrace as a leading middle power in the world that believes in human
rights and assistance. I mean even the Dutch have got troops in Afghanistan,
Iraq and they are deployed here and there.

(Embassy)