Watch: Full broadcast of The West Block with Tom Clark aired Sunday, March 8, 2015.
Host: Tom Clark
Guest Interviews: Jason Kenney, Jack Harris, George Petrolekas, Scott Taylor, Mark Kennedy
Location: Ottawa
It is Sunday, March the 8th and from the nation’s capital, I’m Tom Clark. And you are in The West Block.
Canadian blood has now been spilled in Iraq, one of our soldiers killed by friendly fire from our allies, the Kurdish Forces. Sergeant Andrew Joseph Doiron with the Special Operations Regiment was killed in Northern Iraq on Friday night. He is the first Canadian casualty of our mission fighting ISIS.
Three other soldiers have been hospitalized and are reported to be in stable condition. Well joining me now is Canada’s Defence Minister Jason Kenney. Minister thanks very much for being here. Can you give me as much information as you have right now, what happened?
Jason Kenney:
Well we don’t have all the details yet, Tom and there are actually two Canadian Forces investigations. We’ll wait for those details. As I understand it, we had four Canadian Special Operations troops who at about 11 o’clock pm Iraq time, were approaching an observation post behind the frontlines near Erbil in the Kurdish region of Iraq and there was a case of mistaken identity. At least one of the Kurdish Peshmerga militiamen opened fire obviously thinking that the Canadians were ISIL terrorists and unfortunately, as you know, four of our men were hit, one fatally so. So we express our profound condolences to the family of Sergeant Doiron and of course we are hoping for the best for the three who are wounded.
Tom Clark:
You know, the Peshmerga commander, our ally over there, is coming out with all sorts of information today about what he says happened and he talked about our Special Operations guys being in a car, being driven by an Arabic driver was then stopped. Our guys got out. This is all what the Peshmerga commander is saying, but more importantly what he’s saying, he used the word that our troops acted “inappropriately” and that it was “our fault.”
Jason Kenney:
You know Tom, unfortunately in any kind of military employment, there’s always an inherent risk of something like friendly fire occurring, usually based on a mistaken identity. We are having two enquiries into this. We’re not going to prejudge the outcome of those but I believe our Special Operations Forces operate very professionally. They’re in fact the guys who are training the Peshmerga and have protocols for things of this nature, and our commanders in the field believe that our soldiers did approach this in the correct manner.
Tom Clark:
But aren’t you outraged that the head of the Peshmerga, our allies, are saying that we were to blame, that our forces acted inappropriately? Where is the outrage?
Jason Kenney:
We Tom, again, we don’t want to prejudge the investigation. We would ask that our allies and the Peshmerga militia to wait until there is an investigation and we can sit down and compare notes, and see exactly what happened. We don’t think it’s helpful to be talking about speculation in public on these matters. At the end of the day, this was an incident of so-called friendly fire. It’s tragic. It’s terribly sad, but regrettably, that’s one of the risks that are inherent in any kind of military deployment. And let me be clear, that this is very tragic incident will not dissuade us from our ongoing role to support those who are trying to combat this genocidal terror organization, ISIL.
Tom Clark:
But what does this do with our relationship with the Peshmerga right now? We have the Peshmerga saying that we were to blame for this. We’re still working beside them. I mean clearly this has to affect our relationship.
Jason Kenney:
Well in fact our task and the task that we’ve given our Special Operations Forces is to advise and assist to help train these individuals to be effective in defending hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians from ISIL and so we have to maintain a working relationship of trust. Obviously there can be some difficult questions to ask in these investigations which we hope to do in a serious professional and dispassionate way.
Tom Clark:
Clearly there was a profound lack of communication. Something fundamental broke down between our troops and the Kurdish troops. As of today, have we changed our protocols in dealing with the Kurds?
Jason Kenney:
No, my understanding is that we’re continuing with the same rules of engagement, the same training mission. Obviously this particular terribly tragic incident of friendly fire is something that we are investigating, as I say with two investigations. One being led on the ground by the local Special Operations Forces Command, another from Ottawa where we are sending individuals through the office of the Provost Marshal. We’re going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened, but our belief Tom is that our guys acted professionally. We have some of the best Special Operations Forces in the world. These guys were battle hardened in Afghanistan. They have enormous experience. They know what they are doing and we Canadians should trust them implicitly.
Tom Clark:
And, I’ve worked alongside our Special Ops guys in theatres of war and I would completely agree with you but what are we doing as of right now to make sure that there’s not another friendly fire accident in the next few hours?
Jason Kenney:
Well obviously our commander of the Special Operations Forces in the Kurdish region of Iraq is going to be reviewing those questions and working with the Kurds to make sure that nothing like this happens again.
Tom Clark:
How long are you willing to wait before we get the information that we need? And, how much is the public going to know about what happened here?
Jason Kenney:
I can’t predict exactly how much of this can be disclosed because as you know, the activities of Special Operations Forces have by nature a certain degree of discretion around them. We don’t want to reveal all sorts of operational details but this was not a secret operation. This was a friendly fire incident.
Tom Clark:
How long?
Jason Kenney:
We want to get to the bottom of it as quickly as possible.
Tom Clark:
Weeks?
Jason Kenney:
I can’t give you a precise timeline. Look we’re sending people from Ottawa right now… Probably take longer than that.
Tom Clark:
Months?
Jason Kennedy:
…specialty commander already has launched an investigation. Hopefully we’ll have some answers within a matter of days but it will probably take longer than that before we have final reports back.
Tom Clark:
Jason Kenney Minister of Defence thanks very much for being here. I appreciate it.
Jason Kennedy:
Thanks Tom.
Tom Clark:
Well let’s go now to the defence critic for the official opposition, NDP member Jack Harris from Saint John’s Newfoundland. Mr. Harris, good morning. First all, could you tell me how you reacted when you heard the news of this tragic incident?
Jack Harris:
Well I think, first all, it was clearly a big shock to know that we had lost another soldier and to lose someone in Iraq and four injured in an incident on the frontlines of an operation and particularly by troops that we were supposedly advising and assisting. It came as a real shock and our hearts obviously go right out to Sergeant Doiron and his family. And obviously concern about the three injured soldiers and how they’re doing, and hoping that they will recover as soon as possible.
Tom Clark:
Well let’s get to some of the questions that are on the table as a result of this. You know back in the early 2000’s when there was another friendly fire incident on Canadian troops, that was in Afghanistan, there was not only an investigation but there were charges brought against the two American pilots who were involved. Would you be calling for that same sort of justice in this case?
Jack Harris:
Well first of all, these are clearly combat deaths in Iraq. I think the minister of defence has denied that they were combat deaths. Clearly they are and the Kandahar deaths that you referred to were called the first combat deaths Canadian soldiers suffered since Korea, so let’s not mince words here. We had soldiers on the frontline which was contrary to what Canadians were told. We don’t know how this happened or what happened but if the people that you’re supposedly advising and assisting don’t even know you’re there and are firing on you, it really calls into question exactly what is it that these Canadians were doing? And I think we need some serious investigation and serious answers from this government, and not a BIO that is buried and doesn’t see the light of day. And I don’t mean to be cynical about that but we do have boards of enquiries that never show up and people never see the results of them. I think this does demand a proper investigation and a proper explanation from this government as to what exactly these soldiers are doing in Iraq. It certainly seems contrary to what we were promised by the prime minister back in September and the whole notion that Canada is not supposed to be in a combat ground mission in Iraq. And this is very disturbing and very tragic.
Tom Clark:
What sort of questions do you think an enquiry should be asking?
Jack Harris:
Well I think first of all we’re going to be demanding tomorrow in the House of Commons that the prime minister of this government answer for this as to what exactly the soldiers were doing? Why are they in this position? Why are we putting our troops at risk? We seem to be the only country doing this. If this was something that was absolutely necessary, this is something that you know we don’t see anybody else doing and why is that? We don’t know. Frankly, I think this government has gone too far. They’ve overstepped what Canadians expect for the mission that was promised to them and this is the tragic result.
Tom Clark:
In the minute I’ve got left Mr. Harris, do you think that this incident warrants a call to end the mission in Iraq?
Jack Harris:
Look, the government is not openly musing and you know we’ve got the new Foreign Minister Nicholson who was in Iraq last week talking about another Afghanistan and that we’ve got to look at it as a long term issue. I don’t Canadians want that. I think that’s very clear. There’s going to be a very serious debate in the coming weeks in Parliament. Those questions will be on the table. I think that there has got to be some closure to this. I don’t think we want an open ended mission without clear objectives. It’s getting fuzzier all the time. We’ve now got the Saudis complaining that Iran is starting to take … Iran; the revolutionary guards are starting to take over the command structure in Iraq. This is getting into the kind of quagmire that prime minister said Canadians don’t want to be in.
Tom Clark:
Jack Harris, defence critic for the NDP. Thanks very much for joining us this morning, I appreciate it.
Jack Harris:
Thank you, Tom.
Tom Clark:
Coming up, a retired colonel and former strategic advisor to chiefs of defence, we’ll try to breakdown how this happened and the confusion surrounding the details. That’s next.
Break
Tom Clark:
Welcome back. Well we don’t exactly how a Canadian soldier was killed by friendly fire in Iraq and we likely won’t have answers for a while. But joining me now is a man who has got a lot of experience in this field, including as a senior advisor to NATO and to senior Canadian military leaders. Retired Colonel George Petrolekas joins me now from Montreal. First of all George, what do you make of this confusion? We have the Peshmerga commander on one side giving a very detailed account of what happened and ultimately blaming the Canadian Forces and Canada on the other hand, saying that they want to wait for an investigation to conclude before they really say anything of substance. What’s going on here?
George Petrolekas:
You know, I think we must recall that whenever we’ve had incidents like this or even other incidents like Malaysian Airlines 370, the very first information is always wrong and as we say in the military, it’s always a bit about the fight to get the information. From a Canadian side, it’s really probably the wounded soldiers that have the best view from a Canadian point of view of what occurred and perhaps the Kurds are just stepping up with what they had heard as opposed to delving deeply into the information. So I think we need to slow down a little bit and take some time and really find out what happened.
Tom Clark:
We don’t have the details as you say George, but how does something like this happen? I mean we are there training these troops and yet obviously there was a profound breakdown in communication between the two sides. How does that happen?
George Petrolekas:
Well I think you answered your own questions by the way you phrased it where they’re training them which presupposes the fact that they’re not as trained as certainly our people or some western forces and we’re there to bring them up to a certain standard. When you’re approaching and depending whether you’re approaching it from an enemy side or from the friendly side, but when you’re approaching an OP there are some very control measures that we have in place and clearly somewhere in that chain of events the control measures failed.
Tom Clark:
What happens, George in the relationship between the two sides after something like this because obviously the trust factor has taken a real hit this morning?
George Petrolekas:
You know, I think it’s bruised but it’s not battered. Nothing will focus the mind stronger than the fact that there is a common enemy out there that we’re all there to fight and to dislodge which is ISIS. So while there might be bumps in the road, I don’t think they’ve battered the relationship, if you will.
Tom Clark:
From your perspective and from your history, what are the key questions that have to be answered in the days and weeks ahead on this?
George Petrolekas:
I think from a Canadian point of view, there’s likely to be a deep review of all the procedures. Were they followed? Were the Kurds aware of those procedures? Had they trained on those procedures? How were the Kurds equipped? This happened at night time. Where there night vision goggles with inside the observation post or not and we still don’t know from what quarter they approached. In other words, were they approaching from no man’s land or from the friendly side? So I think we’ll have a bunch of review of how we do things but not necessarily the why of the mission, if you will.
Tom Clark:
In terms of what we do right now because investigations are continuing of course but I’m sure a lot of people on the ground might be worried about this happening again before we come up with the answers. From your point of view, what should the Canadian mission do to mitigate any chance that this is going to happen again? Do we fundamentally change for the next little while what we’re doing there?
George Petrolekas:
There might be a doubling of the measures, if you will. Not necessarily changing what we do but ensuring and ensuring again that it’s clearly understood that we’re approaching an OP and at what time we’re going to approach it. This also happened at night time. There might be some temporary restrictions in order not to approach Ops at night because specifically of this event. But I would also sort of mention one other thing to you here Tom. You know you have to also look a little bit from the Kurdish point of view in the sense that they’ve seen the videos of their countrymen being paraded in cages so I suspect there’s an awful lot of edginess inside the Kurdish Peshmerga at this time.
Tom Clark:
Good point. George Petrolekas joining us from Montreal thanks very much. I appreciate your time.
George Petrolekas:
Yeah, you’re welcome, Tom.
Tom Clark:
Up next we will unpack the politics of all of this. How will this incident change the debate in the House of Commons tomorrow?
Break
Tom Clark:
Welcome back. Well Defence Minister Jason Kenney says that that friendly fire incident that killed one soldier and left three others wounded will not affect our mission in the fight against ISIS. Tomorrow, the House of Commons resumes and no doubt, this is going to be top of mind for everybody in Question Period. But to unpack some of this, I’m joined now by Scott Taylor of Esprit de Corps Magazine and by Mark Kennedy the Parliamentary Bureau Chief of the Ottawa Citizen. Just before we get to the politics, let’s stay on the ground with the soldiers a little bit longer, Scott. What does this do to moral on the ground, not only when you take friendly fire but then have the Peshmerga blame the Canadians for what happened?
Scott Taylor:
There’s going to be some bad blood for sure. Any time you lose a friend or a colleague, a situation like that, they understand that in combat or near combat the risks are there, you’re going to lose guys but when friendly fire incidents happens and when they blame you for your part it in it, it’s going to be difficult for them to resolve that in the short term.
Tom Clark:
But so much of the relationship in the training mission that we’re involved with has to do with trust between the two sides. And when the Peshmerga come out and say that the Canadians are a bunch of inept inappropriate soldiers, as a soldier, I’m not sure how much I trust these guys anymore.
Scott Taylor:
Well we’re there specifically to train them and this is something which again, from the beginning, the Kurds have always said give us weapons, give us body army, give us the night vision goggles, we know how to fight. But we said no, no, we need to come in here and give you guy’s discipline. We need to give you structure. We need to give you some training. There is a bit of resentment from them too and we’re coming in there like Robocop’s with all this modern technology and all this equipment coming in there and training these guys who have been in the fight for years. I mean whether they’re fighting each other or whether they’re fighting ISIS or whether they’re Saddam’s forces, these guys have been fighting. So there’s bound to be some professional jostling going on and we’re in there in the capacity where we’re supposed to come in and train them. Now, it’s very early on in the investigation as far as what we know but even if we’re saying we’re behind the lines, those Peshmerga that shot at our soldiers must have felt they were on the frontline and they know the region. They know where the frontline is. So if we’re within rifle range, we must have been closer than we thought. So that’s part of it.
Tom Clark:
So maybe it’s time to drop this business of saying it’s not combat. There is a combat zone and everybody is operating in that combat zone.
Mark, what does this do politically? Does this strengthen the cause for mission extension? Does it hurt it? Where does it stand?
Mark Kennedy:
I think it certainly puts it in the fore… it changes everything. One death in this mission changes everything and we always knew that would be the case. You know this was sold to Canadians last fall as being something much more safe than they were accustomed to in Afghanistan: six planes going over dropping bombs, 69 Special Operations units apparently assisting and advising as though they were in some backroom classroom telling them how to shoot guns. It’s not the case. We always knew, at least those of us think they knew that they would be in combat. What’s combat? What’s combat is when you’re in a theatre of war. These people are now in a theatre of war. We’ve now lost a Canadian life and it’s going to make it very difficult for the government to explain. They ought to I would imagine, go into the House of Commons tomorrow and call a spade a spade and say our Canadians are defending us, fighting against ISIL and indeed they are in a theatre of war and let’s move on because they’re going to have to make a decision pretty soon and that is, how do we extend the mission?
Scott Taylor:
But I think they’ve already made that point clear to Canadians and that was that we heard about the combat when they were being engaged by ISIS and people sort of woke up and said what’s going on here, is that true? They tested the waters and people came back and said no, no we’re fine with that. We weren’t taking casualties yet. We’ve taken casualty now. Now I think people are going to have to explain what we’re fighting for. Our guys up in Northern Iraq fighting alongside the Kurds, we’ve got our aircraft dropping bombs in support of the Kurds. We learned last week that in the big push into Crete to take out ISIS in Crete in the city stronghold, we’re not participating. Our planes are not in support of that because it’s being led by an Iranian general leading Shiite militia against ISIS there, very complicated. In Syria, it’s President Bashar Al-Assad’s forces fighting ISIS. We’re not bombing in support of him. We’re bombing against ISIS in support of the Kurds but to what ultimate goal, the creation of an independent Kurdistan? If that’s the case we need to be clear. We need to know what… not just the end game and exit strategy is, what is the objective? What did that soldier die for?
Mark Kennedy:
And you’re right Scott, and the political complication for the government will be they will now have to explain to Canadians in the House of Commons and two opposition parties what our people are doing on the ground? There is no doubt we have people on the ground. So what does advise and assist mean? To what extent are our people at risk? Why are they there? What are they doing? Why is it that the Kurdish Peshmerga suddenly didn’t realize that Canadians were there and they were there to assist? What’s happening on the ground? We need much more detail on that now and if not, this mission could go against the government. That’s the last thing they need a few months out before an election campaign.
Tom Clark:
And clearly with something like this when you have a fundamental breakdown of communications and maybe the training wasn’t kicking in the way it should have. I mean obviously there is that on the table but it could mean or could it mean that if we do extend the mission that we change the nature of the mission because we’re in a situation where things are happening that we haven’t admitted to in the past?
Scott Taylor:
Well before we can move on, we need to find out what exactly happened and I don’t think we’re going to have a snowballs chance of finding that out. I mean going in there, this isn’t like the previous blue on blue incident when American pilots took our soldiers out in 2002. Then you had all kinds of transcripts from the cockpit recordings and all that. You could actually to nail people down. Here you’re going to have he said she said against the word of the soldiers that we’ve had that have survived it. And of course those who are responsible for the shooting, so we have no real clout to force these Kurdish to put people on a witness stand or to bring them forward and none whatsoever.
Mark Kennedy:
You know just last week…
Tom Clark:
I’ve only got 15 seconds left.
Mark Kennedy:
Just last week the foreign affairs minister said we’re in Iraq a long time. We’re in there for the long term. We have to know what that means and how we’re going to accomplish things.
Tom Clark:
Mark Kennedy of the Ottawa Citizen, Scott Taylor of Esprit de Corps Magazine, thank you both very much for your insights this morning, I appreciate it.
Scott Taylor:
Thank you.
Mark Kennedy:
Thank you.
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