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Almost 10 years ago to the day, I picked up the phone in my temporary office in Belgrade and called Lieutenant-Colonel Michel Jones. Michel, now a brigadier-general, was the commanding officer of the 1 R22eR ("Van Doos") Battle Group that had arrived in Daruvar, Croatia, a month earlier as a key component of the United Nations Protection Force. I told him, "Michel, you had better come to Belgrade with your reconnaissance party ASAP -- I've got a job for you and your soldiers in Sarajevo!" Since that brief telephone exchange more than 27,000 Canadian soldiers (many of them the same soldiers on repetitive tours) have served in Bosnia -- with the lightly armed United Nations during the war and with the more robust NATO mission since the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords were implemented. More than 20 of them were killed and over 100 seriously injured. We have paid our per capita dues in Bosnia and the Balkans with lives, blood and dollars, more than any other nation on the face of the Earth. Once a mission gets safe and comfortable it's time to leave. Our departure is overdue.
During our first year in Bosnia in 1992, Canada's army had approximately 7,000 soldiers deployed overseas: 500-plus in Cyprus; 400 in Cambodia; 1,400 in Somalia; 1,300 in Yugoslavia and more than 4,000 with our NATO brigade in Germany. During the following decade our army's ability to maintain that level of deployment evaporated as the Department of Defence contributed more than any other government department to the nation's battle with the deficit. Staffing levels were dramatically reduced, as they provide the only way an army can save money in a hurry. Paradoxically, while our army was paying its share of the peace dividend as ordered by the government, the demand for our soldiers and units overseas was increasing, not abating. Not wanting to say no to the international community when it came calling for more help in Yugoslavia, East Timor, Eritrea, Ethiopia, the Congo, Haiti, Kosovo, etc., etc., during the '90s, our tiny army -- there are more police officers in the Toronto Police Service than there are soldiers, from private to general, in the Canadian infantry -- responded by sending the same soldiers on multiple tours, sometimes back to back, with little if any break between deployments. We, the people of Canada, have allowed our army to be abused. Canadians should be grateful for our soldiers' dedication, endurance and tolerance but they should also be embarrassed by the shameful way we have treated them. Governments in a democracy respond to their electorate, so I can only assume the public has done a lousy job of telling the government this unacceptable situation must end. Human decency demands that we speak up for an institution that, by law, cannot speak out in its own defence.
In the meantime, we can resolve the current dilemma regarding our ability to continue our meaningful contribution to the war against terrorism by withdrawing our army from the NATO mission in Bosnia as soon possible, and certainly no later than six months from now. It's a no-brainer comparing the geopolitical importance of a peacekeeping mission in Bosnia to the coalition operations currently underway in Afghanistan. With the greatest respect for my navy and air force colleagues, if you want the maximum credit and coverage for participating in the war against terror, you have to accept the maximum risk, and that means maintaining a credible force on the ground in the war zone. Pulling our troops out of Bosnia would allow us to maintain our presence with the U.S.-led coalition force in Afghanistan with relative ease.
We still have some 1,700 of our soldiers on the ground helping to maintain the peace in Bosnia -- a peace that could be maintained by NATO leaving a contingent of unarmed military observers behind and telling the Bosnian and Bosnian Serb leadership, "Keep the peace or we'll be back and we will be in a very bad mood!" At present the NATO force is falling into the trap that UN peacekeeping missions normally experience. Stay too long -- Cyprus, 1963 --?; UN Interim (!) Force in Lebanon, 1978 --?, plus numerous other multiple-decade-long missions -- and you become part of the problem and a very essential part of the local economy. It often becomes the host country's obsession to keep the international force on its territory, frequently resorting to orchestrating incidents and crises in an attempt to prove that withdrawal of the peacekeepers would result in renewed fighting.
If the world is really convinced Bosnia still needs peacekeepers, there are lots of other countries that do nothing but peacekeeping who could fill the void, not to mention the even larger number of nations that sit on their hands and snipe from the sidelines while the rest of us do the dirty work. Canada is not a peacekeeping nation as it is so often erroneously advertised -- frequently by our own leadership. It's an important sideline for us and there is no doubt that we are good at it; however, when the cause is just, we stand up to be counted, take sides and fight if necessary. One of those times is now and we can't afford to be holding the hand of a nation in the Balkans that should be looking after itself while there is much more important work to be done in Afghanistan and other locations yet to be determined by a devious enemy.
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