December 20, 2019 | Local, Other Defence
By Charlie Pinkerton.
Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan says Canadian Forces deployed to Afghanistan contributed useful insights to American forces, whose past military operations in the country have drawn new scrutiny following The Washington Post's publication of the so-called Afghanistan Papers.
The documents obtained and published by the Post are the product of hundreds of interviews carried out by the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR). SIGAR was mandated to complete a series of reports exploring the effectiveness of its nearly two-decade, close to trillion-dollar mission that it began as a retaliation against al-Qaeda for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The documents fought for in court by the Post include notes, transcripts and audio recordings that the subjects had been promised would not be made public by the government. They provide a thorough look at the frustrations and concerns of top U.S. brass and a lack of understanding of the conflict by the American military and its government.
One of the revelations of the Afghanistan Papers is the that as the conflict continued, top American military officials considered it an unwinnable conflict.
Sajjan completed three Afghanistan tours, where he worked in intelligence before working directly with top American troops as an adviser.
In giving his take on how the Canadian perspective compared to that of the Americans during the mission, Sajjan said the Canadian Armed Forces had a better understanding of the realities of the conflict than its closest allies.
READ MORE: A year-end Q&A with Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan
“I would say the insights the Canadians provided were actually very useful. That's one point that I'm trying to get across here, and I appreciate the Americans coming out and talking about this now,” Sajjan said. “Canadians were providing a very good perspective, very early on, to have a much more, I would say, accurate account of what is happening,”
One passage the Post highlighted from the thousands of pages of documents to underscore the discontent with the conflict by U.S. officials was an interview with Douglas Lute, a former top army general who became an adviser on the Afghan war in the White House.
“We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan — we didn't know what we were doing,” Lute said. “What are we trying to do here? We didn't have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking.”
Sajjan said good decisions were made only with an “accurate” and “good understanding” of the Afghanistan conflict.
From 2001 to 2014, 40,000 Canadians served in Afghanistan. There were 158 Canadian soldiers killed. On top of its military effort, Canada has provided more than $3 billion in international assistance to Afghanistan since 2001.
In talking about Canada's operations in Afghanistan, Sajjan also defended well-known Canadian-led aspects of the mission, such as the Operational Mentoring and Liaison Team (OMLT, but known colloquially as omelette) and its stabilization-focused whole-of-government approach to the conflict.
“What I'm trying to say here is that the work that Canada did there was highly valued and I appreciate other allies coming out with different perspectives,” Sajjan said.
May 28, 2024 | Local, Land
The Honourable Bill Blair, Minister of National Defence, will travel to Singapore from May 31 to June 2, 2024, to further Canada’s defence relationships with allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific region.
June 13, 2019 | Local, Security, Other Defence
Howard Solomon Canada's electronic spy agency will soon get new authority to launch cyber attacks if the government approves legislation that is in the final stages of being debated. There's a good chance it will be proclaimed before the October federal election. But a discussion paper issued Wednesday by the Canadian Global Affairs Institute says Canadians need to debate the pros and cons of using this new power. “This direction not only opens up new possibilities for Canadian defence, it could also represent significant new risks,” says the report. “Without good answers to the difficult questions this new direction could raise, the country could be headed down a very precarious path.” Among the possible problems: Cyber retaliation. Another: While Canada might try to target a cyber attack, the impact might be bigger than expected — in fact, it might boomerang and smack us back. Third is the lack of international agreement on the use of cyber weapons (although this is a double-edged sword: Without an agreement there are no formal limits on what any country is forbidden from doing in cyberspace). “To move forward at this point to implement or even formally endorse a strategy of cyber attack would be risky and premature,” concludes the report's author, computer science professor Ken Barker, who also heads the University of Calgary's Institute for Security, Privacy and Information Assurance. “There are challenging technical controls that must be put in place as well as a critical international discussion on how cyber weaponry fits within the rules of war.” Barker's paper is in response to the 2017 strategy setting out Defence Department goals, where the possibility of Canada having a cyber attack capability first raised. It wasn't written with Bill C-59 in mind — now in its final stage before Parliament — which actually gives Canada's electronic spy agency, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), the power to use what's called “active” as well as defensive cyber operations. In an interview Tuesday, Barker said “in the desire to push this thing they need to have more carefully thought about the questions I raise in this paper.” “Maybe it's late, but at least it's available.” He dismisses the argument that by announcing it has an offensive cyber capability Canada will cause other countries to think twice about attacking us with cyber weapons. “They would attempt to find out what Canada is doing to create cyber attack capabilities,” he argued. “One of the risks once we do endorse this,” he added, “is we open ourselves up to other countries to using Canada as a launching pad for cyber attacks to cover up their involvement, and [then] say ‘That was done by Canada.'” Nation states are already active in cyberspace. Ottawa has blamed China for the 2014 hack of the National Research Council, Washington suspects China was behind the massive hack of employee files at the Office of Personnel Management, and there is strong evidence that Russia mounted a sophisticated social media attack against the U.S. during the 2016 federal election. According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, The U.S. the U.K. and Australia say they have used offensive cyber operations against the Islamic State. The U.S.-based Council on Foreign Relations notes that Germany increased its offensive cyber capability after a 2016 attack on the country's legislature blamed on Russia. Last year the New York Times reported the U.S. Cyber Command has been empowered to be more offensive. Meanwhile in April the CSE warned it's “very likely” there will be some form of foreign cyber interference during the run-up to October's federal election here, The most commonly-cited interference in a country were two cyber attacks that knocked out electrical power in Ukraine — in December 2015 and again in December 2016 — largely believed to have been launched from Russia. All this is why some experts say Canada has to have an offensive cyber capability to at least keep up. In January, Ray Boisvert, former assistant director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), told a parliamentary committee that “the best defence always begins with a good offense ... “When more than five dozen countries are rumoured to be developing active cyber capabilities, in my view that means we must develop capabilities to respond and in some cases that includes outside our borders.” Background In 2017 the Trudeau government announced a new defence strategy that included the promise of “conducting active cyber operations against potential adversaries in the context of government-authorized military missions.” The same year the government introduced Bill C-59, which in part would give the CSE, which is responsible for securing government networks, the ability to take action online to defend Canadian networks and proactively stop cyber threats before they reach systems here. This would be done as part of new legislation governing the CSE called the Communications Security Act. That act would give CSE the ability to conduct defensive and “active” cyber operations. Active operations are defined as anything that could “degrade, disrupt, influence, respond to or interfere with the capabilities, intentions or activities of a foreign individual, state, organization or terrorist group as they relate to international affairs, defence or security.” Both defensive and active cyber operations can't be used against any portion of the global information infrastructure within this country. And they have to be approved by the Minister of Defence. C-59 has been passed by the House of Commons and slightly amended by the Senate. It was scheduled back in the House last night to debate the Senate amendments. Despite all the cyber incidents blamed on nation states, Barker is reluctant to say we're in an era of low-level cyber war right now. Many incidents can be characterized as cyber espionage and not trying cause harm to another state, he argues. https://www.itworldcanada.com/article/canada-should-think-again-about-having-the-ability-to-use-offensive-cyber-weapons-expert/418912
May 5, 2024 | Local,
Today, the Honourable Bill Blair, Minister of National Defence, the Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the Honourable Dan Vandal, Minister of Northern Affairs, met with the Honourable P.J. Akeeagok, Premier of Nunavut; the Honourable Ranj Pillai, Premier of Yukon; and the Honourable R.J. Simpson, Premier of the Northwest Territories.