ON TARGET: Reminder: There Are Worse Elements in Afghanistan Than the Taliban

By Scott Taylor

The deadly terrorist attack at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul last Thursday was yet another serious blow to American martial pride as they struggle desperately to extricate themselves from a disastrous 20-year long occupation of Afghanistan.

A combination of suicide bombers and pre-placed gunmen with automatic weapons delivered an extremely lethal blow. A total of 13 U.S. servicemembers were killed and a further 15 were wounded, marking one of the highest single day casualty tallies during the entire conflict.

For the would-be Afghan asylum seekers crowded against the airport perimeter awaiting a possible flight to safety, the toll was even higher. Some estimates put the number of dead civilians as high as 90 with another 150 suffering injuries.

As devastating as this was to the increasingly frantic U.S. airlift effort, the attack was also a blow to the fledgling Taliban regime.

Within hours of the terror attack, DAESH-K was claiming responsibility for the killing spree.

For those who are perhaps not completely familiar with all the insurgent groups in Afghanistan, DAESH-K is also known as ISIS-K and ISKP. These evil doers are an off-shoot of the DAESH aka ISIS that we first encountered in Syria and Iraq. The letter “K” stands for Khorasan Province, which actually constitutes vast swaths of Central Asia, wherein they intend to establish an Islamic caliphate.

They first appeared on the scene in Afghanistan’s eastern provinces in 2014-15 and their initial recruits were from Pakistan-based Taliban who did not think the original Taliban were extreme enough.

Their attack on the Kabul airport not only sorely undermines the Taliban’s claim to be able to control the country, it also served as a reminder that as bad as they are, there are even worse elements to deal with in Afghanistan besides the Taliban.

Ironically the U.S. intelligence community now finds itself engaging in limited cooperation with the Taliban to not only prevent further DAESH-K attacks against their withdrawal efforts, but also to facilitate any hope of enforcing punishment upon the perpetrators of last Thursday’s attack.

In the immediate aftermath of the terror strike, a visibly enraged President Joe Biden vowed to the American people that justice would be served. “To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this. We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay. I will defend our interests and our people with every measure at my command,” stated Biden in a public address.

Those are tough words, but as the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan now consists of nothing more than a desperate rear-guard securing the soon to be renamed Hamid Karzai International Airport, Biden’s only hope of punishing the culprits will require the Taliban’s cooperation.

Most western analysts disbelieve the claims by the Taliban leadership that this new and improved regime will be a kinder and gentler version of its former self.

Many fear that despite promises of amnesty the Taliban will soon resort to revenge killings of those who had facilitated the foreign occupation.

This eventually may in fact play out in the days to come, but it is somewhat ripe for the U.S. State Department to be preaching against revenge killings.

In 2001, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan with a small number of special forces troops and heavy air support allied with anti-Taliban Warlords. The most notorious of these was Marshal Abdul Rashid Dostum.

Hollywood glorified Dostum and his American advisors in the 2018 film 12 Strong. What that movie did not reveal was that after his victory, Dostum executed approximately 2,000 of his Taliban prisoners. While that is horrific in itself, it was the fact that he killed them by simply locking them into crowded sea containers. They literally died through suffocation or starvation.

This was not an immediate death for the Taliban fighters, and the atrocity was well known among the rules-based international-order abiding U.S. military command.

Dostum was never charged with war crimes, and went on to serve pre-eminently within the Hamid Karzai regime. From September 2014 – February 2020, he was Afghanistan’s Vice President.

So yes, there are worse entities in Afghanistan than the Taliban and for the past twenty-years we helped keep them in power there.

ON TARGET: The U.S. Embarrassing Exit From Afghanistan Was Predicted By The Afghans

By Scott Taylor

It has been just over a week since the Taliban shocked the world with their blitzkrieg speed overthrow of the Afghan regime. The first major shock was the fact that the Taliban accomplished their victory without having to fight any battles.

The 350,000 strong Afghan security forces, simply disappeared. No western military analyst predicted such a complete and instant collapse of a fighting force, into which the U.S. and NATO had invested two decades of training and equipping. The U.S. supplied Afghan military arsenal was valued at nearly $100 billion and included armoured vehicles, artillery and even combat aircraft. That impressive collection of weaponry and munitions is now in the hands of the Taliban.

While U.S. President Joe Biden was quick to scapegoat the Afghan army for their lack of will to fight, in all honesty no one can blame them for this defeat.

No one can ever question the courage of the average Afghan fighter. Afghanistan has shed a lot of blood over the centuries to earn itself the moniker the graveyard of empires. Courage was not the problem.

As for professionalism and combat proficiency, the Afghan army has twenty years of top-level international instruction, including that of many Canadian soldiers. Compared to their Taliban counterparts the Afghan army were by far better trained, and certainly far better equipped with modern weapons. Firepower was not the problem.

In terms of opposing numbers, estimates of the Taliban’s current strength vary greatly but they are thought to have between 30,000 to 60,000 fighters. That means that at the start of the Taliban offensive on August 5th, the Afghan army outnumbered them – on paper – by at least a six to one margin.

Owing to the widespread corruption in the ranks of the Afghan army and police, the actual number of government security forces may have been as low as 100,000 at the start of the Taliban campaign.

The reason for the discrepancy is the phenom of what he became known as the employment of ‘Ghost soldiers.’

This was not a legion of spectral warriors, but rather a term applied to the artificial inflation of the strength of Afghan military units. When soldiers died or deserted, they were kept active on the duty roster so that commanders could continue drawing pay and rations for non-existent ‘Ghost soldiers’.

This brings us to the real reason why the Afghan army proved to be so absolutely useless in the face of the Taliban.

They had no will to fight and they certainly had no will to die for the corrupt puppet government which the U.S. had established in Kabul.

With the abrupt withdrawal of the last of the U.S. combat forces on July 2, the Afghan military knew the plug had been pulled on the regime of President Ashraf Ghani.

During the peace negotiations in Doha, Qatar, the U.S. military leaders had met with the Taliban to ostensibly broker a power-sharing agreement with the Ghani government.

The problem with that scenario was that there were no representatives from the Ghani regime at those talks.

For his part, Ghani understood that he’d been cut from the team and as such his 11th hour departure to safety is understandable. Loyalty is a two-way street. In the end, he owed the U.S. nothing, ditto for the Afghan army.

Sure, they could have put up a fight and delayed the Taliban advance. Their American trainers probably thought that they would resist based purely out of martial pride and esprit de corps.

Unfortunately it is not enough to simply fight against something – in this case the Taliban, if you cannot believe in the cause you are fighting for.

For the two decades the Americans spent occupying Afghanistan they did not realize that the Afghans never considered the presence of foreign troops on their soil as a liberation.

Had we focused on developing a progressive, functioning central government, instead of arming and training a military force to prop up the most corrupt regime on earth, the tragic ending may have been different.

The crazy part is that Afghans always knew this and they predicted exactly how the American withdrawal would play out. In 2008, I interviewed tribal leader Akbar Bey and he forecast “If the U.S and NATO troops leave Afghanistan at 4:00pm, by 6:00pm the [Afghan] government will collapse. They will not last two hours.”

His prediction was bang on.

ON TARGET: Warlords Will Not Save Afghanistan From Taliban

By Scott Taylor

At the time of writing, Afghan government security forces had completely collapsed without a fight and Taliban forces in Afghanistan were in control of Kabul. 

Amidst all the chaos it was announced that both the U.S. and U.K are redeploying thousands of combat troops into the Afghan capital.  

These soldiers are not the vanguard of yet another NATO surge to attempt to re-install President Ashraf Ghani to power.  On Sunday President Ghani realized the game was up and he fled to safety in Tajikistan 

No, these British and American troops are being sent in to provide a secure corridor by which to extricate the remaining international diplomatic community. 

The once nearly 400,000 strong Afghan National Security Forces have proven woefully incapable of holding back the Taliban fighters in the wake of the U.S. withdrawing the last of their major combat forces on July 2.

The U.S. was still providing air support, but such strikes were meaningless if the Afghan ground forces had no will to fight back against their fellow countrymen.

For keen eyed observers of the Afghanistan conflict one of the most surprising developments was the success which the Taliban have enjoyed in capturing towns in the north of the country.

The predominantly Pashtun Taliban have never fared well north of the Hindu Kush mountain range wherein the majority of the population are Uzbeks, Tajiks and Turkmen.

Abandoned without any serious resistance from the demoralized Afghan army, the Taliban have seized the cities of Sheberghan, Konduz and Mazar-i-Sharif. 

In response to that dire situation, Thompson Reuters reported that prior to his defection, President Ghani had made a last ditch appeal to call on the support of “regional strongmen” to help repulse the Taliban advances. In particular Ghani was appealing to “regional strongman” Atta Muhammad Noor to help prevent the fall of Mazar-i-Sharif.

Another “regional strongman” is Marshal Abdul Rashid Dostum who has in recent days flown back into Afghanistan after receiving medical treatment in Turkey. It was hoped that with his presence on the ground, the infamous Dostum could still rally his Uzbek fighters to retake their former stronghold of Sheberghan.

The crazy part of Ghani’s plan was this belated attempt to rebrand Noor and Dostum with the new, kinder, gentler moniker of regional strongmen. 

Since the Soviet invasion in 1979, Noor and Dostum have been called warlords. They fought against and for the Soviets respectively. 

After the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, Dostum had continued to prop up the communist regime of President Najibullah in Kabul. In 1992, Dostum did what he does best and changed his loyalty to the Mujahadeen.  Najibullah was finished, but Dostum lived to fight another day. 

The ongoing clashes between Dostum and his rivals such as Atta Noor, became known as the warlord era.

The perpetual violence and virtual anarchy of the warlord-era helped the Taliban movement to gain popularity with those Afghans who were prepared to sacrifice personal freedoms in exchange for the stability that the Taliban could provide them.

In 2001 Dostum and Noor both fought for the U.S. in what was dubbed the Northern Alliance, when they collectively collapsed the Taliban regime.

Hollywood aficionados will recall that Dostum’s fighters were lionized in the 2018 war movie ‘Twelve Strong’. 

After garnering more than one million votes in the 2004 presidential election, Dostum held a variety of high level posts in the Afghan regime, including that of Vice President. 

Atta Noor was named the governor of Mazar-i-Sharif until Ashraf Ghani fired him from that post in 2018 as a result of corruption allegations. 

Throughout the entire two decades of U.S. led occupation, both Noor and Dostum maintained their own private militias. It is those forces which ex-President Ghani and his western backers had hoped would turn back the Taliban tide.

Calling them regional strongmen does not change the fact that these two Afghan warlords already have had their era. They were so violent and corrupt that Afghans turned to the Taliban. 

For Ghani’s last roll of the dice to have stood any chance of success would have required the average Afghan forgetting about the bloody violence which the warlords had inflicted upon them. The surging success of the Taliban in recent days would appear to prove that Afghan memories are not that short.

ON TARGET: History will be the judge of NATO’s Occupation of Afghanistan

Photo by: FRAIDOON POOYAA, AP

By Scott Taylor

The mad scramble has begun in an effort to extricate those Afghans who will be at risk when the Taliban wrest control of Afghanistan from the rapidly collapsing government forces.

Sparked by demands from Canadian veterans of that war, the Liberal government has been hurriedly arranging flights and visas for Afghan civilians who were formerly employed as interpreters by our combat forces.

Canada is also arranging to bring out the extended families of those Afghans who had previously assisted the NATO led effort. It is estimated that the current initiative to save these Afghans from Taliban revenge will result in several thousand refugees arriving in Canada.

In previous efforts, Canada has brought over roughly 800 Afghan interpreters and their families.

Admirably, Canadian veterans under the organizational umbrella of the Conference of Defence Associations (CDA) are volunteering to assist this new wave of Afghan refugees to settle into their new homeland.

The U.S. has initiated a similar program to rescue those Afghans who assisted the American forces during their twenty year occupation of Afghanistan. Other NATO countries are also pitching in to save their former employees, while Turkish troops have been tasked with defending the Kabul airport long enough to get these refugees safely outside the borders of Afghanistan.

The defeat of NATO is as humiliating as it is complete. As we exit the country we are bringing out all those personnel who were ever associated with the foreign occupying forces.

The truly sad part of this enormous waste of lives and money is that none of it was necessary.

How is it possible that our senior leadership learned nothing from the Soviet Union’s disastrous ten-year attempt to militarily subdue Afghanistan between 1979 and 1989?

We condemned the Soviet actions as morally reprehensible. The narrative of the West was that the evil Soviets were trying to forcibly educate the Afghans and thereby destroy their ancient culture and customs.

The best example of this propaganda would have to be the 1988 Hollywood blockbuster action film Rambo III.

The plot line has American super soldier John Rambo entering Afghanistan to rescue his former commanding officer who has been captured by the Soviet evil doers.

The Afghan resistance fighters assist Rambo in his quest and because this is Hollywood, the good guys win. The original dedication of the movie was to “the brave mujahedeen of Afghanistan.”

That sentiment was stood on its head in the wake of the events of 9-11 in 2001.

Islamic extremists – mujahedeen – had been responsible for the terror attacks on the U.S. that day and the Taliban were accused of harbouring Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan.

In advance of justifying the U.S. invasion, western media began demonizing the Taliban for those same cultural practices for which we not only hailed them for defending against Soviet influences, but we actually provided them with the sophisticated weaponry which allowed them to do so.

We lied to ourselves when we proclaimed to have brought democracy to this impoverished war ravaged country. The U.S. hand-picked Hamid Karzai to be the president, and the Afghan electorate had little choice but to cast votes for the warlords and chieftains that already ruled them.

The last two attempts at a presidential election were so farcical that they could not produce a verifiable result. When Abdullah Abdullah refused to accept the fact that Ashraf Ghani had received more votes than him, the Americans simply created a new position called Chief Executive of Afghanistan, with equal powers to the president.

I’m not sure that would be possible in a developed nation with a strong economy and it sure as hell did not work in impoverished Afghanistan.

As we rush to rescue those Afghans who helped facilitate the NATO occupation, one has to also ponder the moral legacy of our military alliance having imprisoned tens of thousands of Afghan fighters whose only crime was resisting our armed presence on their soil.

ON TARGET: Time For Canada to Cut & Run From Iraq Mission

Canadian Armed Forces members deployed as part of Operation IMPACT conduct small arms training at Camp Taji, Iraq on September 26, 2019.

Photo: Corporal Ryan Moulton, OP IMPACT JTF-I Image Tech
KW11-2019-0061-27

By Scott Taylor

The recent withdrawal of the bulk of U.S. combat forces from Afghanistan has caused angst and consternation among the thousands of Canadian soldiers who served in that war.

No one has any doubt that the resurgent Taliban will easily defeat the Afghan government’s security forces, which are now devoid of American combat support.

To offset the emotional pain of realizing that Canada’s sacrifice of blood and gold was truly in vain, many of our veterans are embarking on a humanitarian crusade to extricate the Afghan civilians who worked alongside our soldiers and who are now, as a result, facing the revenge of the Taliban.

That, to me, is a noble cause. Our military presence in Afghanistan gave these individuals the false hope that the international community was fully committed to effecting lasting change in their country.

After 20 years and the expenditure of over a trillion dollars, the U.S. is now deciding to cut its losses.

It is a bitter pill to swallow that NATO, the most powerful and technically advanced military alliance in history, could not defeat an illiterate horde of fanatical Afghans armed with assault rifles and homemade explosive devices.

To give credit where it is due, Canada’s political leadership cut bait well in advance of the U.S. finally admitting the obvious.

Canada ended combat operations in Afghanistan in 2011, and we wrapped up our military training initiative in the spring of 2014.

Thus, while Canadian officials scramble to locate and arrange safe passage for former Afghan interpreters and locally engaged staff, our soldiers will be spared the embarrassment of having to bug out of our base in Afghanistan as our American allies just experienced when they vacated Bagram in the dead of night on July 2nd.

Canada should pull the plug on our mission in Iraq.

Almost lost with all the media attention focused on Afghanistan’s crisis, U.S. President Joe Biden quietly met with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi on Monday, July 26th.

The main announcement resulting from that meeting was that the U.S. plans to conclude its combat mission in Iraq before the end of 2021.

Few Canadians are likely aware that this past March parliament quietly extended Canada’s own military commitment to Iraq, known as Operation Impact, until March 2022.

This directive allows Canada to deploy up to 850 military personnel to the region which includes the NATO mission in Iraq, and secondary capacity-building missions in neighbouring Lebanon and Jordan.

The origin of Canada’s Operation Impact mission in Iraq dates back to September 2014 when we deployed fighter jets and special forces personnel to assist the U.S.-led international coalition to defeat Daesh (aka ISIS, IS or ISIL).

When the Trudeau Liberals were elected in 2015, the fighter jets were brought home, but in their stead, Canada increased the number of personnel deployed on the ground in Iraq.

The alliance deployed against Daesh included not only Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite militia, but also members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Having a common enemy meant that Canadians were also loosely allied with the Syrian forces of President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian military allies.

Canadian special forces personnel were advising and assisting Iraqi Kurdish militia whose ultimate objective was not only to defeat Daesh, but to establish an independent Kurdistan.

Canadian government policy ran counter to the Kurds’ goal, as we support a unified Iraq under a central Baghdad government.

All that to say that it was a very complex alliance with the only common bond being that of a collective desire to defeat the Daesh evildoers.

Once that was achieved, with Daesh being effectively eliminated as a military threat in December 2017, Canada should have withdrawn our troops.

With Daesh gone, Canada no longer has a dog in this fight, and it would be foolish to think that a paltry commitment of a handful of military trainers will effect the ultimate desired outcome in Iraq.

Biden’s announcement indicates the U.S. is about to jump ship. If they are giving up in yet another unwinnable war, let’s beat them to the exit once again. And let’s bring the translators with us this time.

ON TARGET: Better to Tell The ‘Whole’ Story of Afghanistan War As It Unfolded

By Scott Taylor

The situation on the ground in Afghanistan continues to worsen for Afghan government troops attempting to contain a resurgent Taliban. Since the U.S. pulled out the bulk of their remaining combat forces from Bagram airfield on July 2, the Taliban have captured vast swaths of territory.

There seems to be very little fight in the U.S. trained and equipped Afghan government forces. They may have volunteered to collect their relatively lucrative U.S. funded pay cheques, but they want to remain alive in order to cash those cheques. None of these Afghan soldiers seriously wants to sacrifice their lives to prop up the regime of President Ashraf Ghani, which is without doubt, one of the most corrupt administrations on the planet.

On the flip side, the Taliban volunteers have proven repeatedly that they are prepared to die for the cause they believe in.

Given these dynamics, without U.S. air power or Special Forces support, the Afghan government forces are doomed. The Afghan soldiers know this all too well and desertions are occurring at an alarming rate.

Optimistic western analysts had hoped that with continued U.S. funding of the Afghan army’s payroll and ongoing logistics support, the government forces could at least retain control of the major provincial capitals and Kabul itself.

Now the fear is that the Taliban will win a complete victory before December and that the Afghan forces will not even be able to secure the Kabul airport to allow for a safe exodus of would-be refugees.

These dire straits have generated a panicked grass roots campaign across Canada among veterans who fought in Afghanistan during our country’s thirteen-year commitment to the war effort.

The fear among our vets is that the Taliban will exact a violent revenge upon those Afghans who worked for the Canadian military as interpreters or cultural advisors. In addition to petitioning the government to expedite the visa process for an estimated 125 Afghans and their families who are considered to be at risk, the veterans are also seeking volunteers to help re-settle these refuges on Canadian soil.

Last week, the Conference of Defence Associations, also known as CDA, announced they would spearhead the initiative to connect Canadian veteran volunteers with these Afghan refugee families.

“We don’t know exactly what the needs are going to be at,” said Lieutenant-General (ret’d) Guy Thibault, the president of the CDA and chairman of its sister group, Conference of Defence Associations Institute or CDAI. “We’re just really trying to get ahead of it with a group of volunteers who have a connection to the whole story of Afghanistan.”

I will state that I honestly believe those Afghan interpreters who worked with Canadians will be at risk of retribution.

To the Taliban these individuals are the traitors who worked for the foreign occupation forces. In victory, the Taliban are not likely to be magnanimous with those Afghans who spent the past two decades aiding and abetting the hated foreign infidels.

I also applaud the fact that the CDA is now lending its weight to this effort to save those who served alongside Canadians in Afghanistan.

However, it must be remembered that the officials and members of the CDA and the CDAI were not known for telling the “whole story of Afghanistan” while the war was in progress.

Consisting of mainly retired senior officers, the CDA and CDAI were among the primary cheerleaders of Canada’s Afghan military mission. During its various conferences and meetings in Ottawa between 2002 and 2014, the tone of their collective message was that to question the mission was to question the troops themselves.

When Canada announced it would be terminating the combat mission in 2011 and our training mission in 2014, those associated with the CDA squealed like stuck pigs.

Their argument was that Canada should not cut and run from a tough fight. Just look at history they argued, pointing out that we didn’t stop fighting Hitler just because of the disastrous raid on Dieppe, France in August 1942.

Now the end in Afghanistan is nigh, and there will never be a victory parade in the streets of Kabul for NATO troops.

We lost the war, and even CDA and CDAI knows we must do what we can to save our surviving Afghan allies.

It must not be forgotten that for more than 13 years, many of those associated with the CDA and CDAI were instrumental in pushing a narrative of success in what was clearly an unwinnable war from the outset.

ON TARGET: When Did Canadian Leaders Realize Afghanistan Was Always Unwinnable?

Soldiers at Kandahar Air Field take part in a Ramp Ceremony to pay respects to their fallen comrades on 22 March 2009. Canadian Army/Pintrest: Canadian Armed Forces

By Scott Tayor

The news out of Afghanistan has gone from bad to worse since the American military virtually fled their main base at Bagram in the dead of night on July 2. With the withdrawal of these last major U.S. combat forces, the Taliban have been emboldened in their attacks against Afghan government security forces.

At time of writing, the Taliban were estimated to control roughly 85 per cent of Afghanistan’s territory. While not yet in control of provincial capitals, they are threatening to overrun the northern city of Kunduz.

The Taliban have also recently seized key Afghan border checkpoints including Spin Boldak, which is one of two major trade routes into Pakistan.

To stoke fear in the ranks of the Afghan National Army, the Taliban recently released video footage depicting the execution of 22 American trained elite Afghan Commandos. As they shot each of the captive Commandos in the head, the Taliban executioners shouted “Allahu Akhbar!” (God is Great). 

The intended message is that if these elite special forces troops cannot resist the Taliban, the average line unit of the Afghan National Army does not stand a chance.

The propaganda has obviously been effective as thousands of Afghan soldiers have since deserted and sought asylum in neighbouring Tajikistan.

The end is definitely nigh, and the outcome is no longer in doubt. After more than two decades of U.S. led International occupation of Afghanistan, the Taliban will emerge victorious.

This news, while not unexpected has caused many Canadian veterans of the Afghanistan war to question the sacrifice made by them and their comrades.

The emotional impact on our serving soldiers was so acute, that acting Chief of Defence Staff, Lt-Gen Wayne Eyre – himself a veteran of Afghanistan – felt compelled to issue a Forces-wide message on July 13. “Many of us have been watching the reports coming out of Afghanistan with dismay. The fall of Panjwai, reported last week, has hit many of us particularly hard, and as we question our legacy, it serves as a harbinger for all Canadians who served in the country regardless of when and where,” wrote Eyre.

He pointed out that following previous wars in Europe and Korea, our veterans could return to those lands with a sense of satisfaction for having made a difference.

However, wrote Eyre “At this moment in time it is difficult to envision having similar sentiments for our war.” The message ended with advice for any soldiers who are struggling with their experience to seek help.

With the Taliban poised to claim victory, many fear that will result in a wave of bloody revenge against those Afghans who cooperated with the foreign occupiers.

That angst has prompted a grass-roots campaign petitioning the Canadian government to bring home any of those Afghans who were once employed by the Canadian military as interpreters and their families.

Organizers of this quest estimated there are still approximately 125 such individuals remaining at risk in Afghanistan.

As Canada’s combat mission ended in 2011 and our military training mission concluded in 2014, these interpreters have not been employed by Canadians for some time.

However it was Canada, along with the U.S. and our NATO allies that fed these willing Afghans the false hope that we would actually make a difference in their country.

The most upsetting part about this current crisis is that the senior leadership in the U.S.A knew almost from the outset that this was an unwinnable war.

In December 2019, the Washington Post published a story entitled “At war with the Truth.” It was based on a treasure trove of documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

These assessments were generated by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) and they compelling illustrated that high ranking officials were of the opinion that the war was already lost, but that truth was to be hidden from the public.

Regrettably, when the Post published these documents now known as the Afghanistan Papers, there was no outcry of disbelief or outrage from either Canadian or NATO officials.

Maybe Canada needs to establish a Parliamentary probe into when it was first known by Canadian military leaders and politicians that our soldiers were being sent to fight a war they knew we could not win?

ON TARGET: Canadian Generals Quick to Change Their Tune on Afghanistan

Maj-Gen David Fraser (above left) & Maj-Gen Dean Milner (above right)

By Scott Taylor

Over the past few weeks the news out of Afghanistan has not been very re-assuring. In keeping with U.S. President Joe Biden’s election campaign promise to end the war in Afghanistan, American troop withdrawals have begun in earnest.

On July 2, in one of the most dramatic and farcical moves to date, the U.S. military literally bugged out of the sprawling base at Bagram in the dead of night.

Reportedly the last American flight lifted off around 4 am, and it was not until three hours later that those Afghan security forces remaining in Bagram were advised of the departure.

The Afghans did have a suspicion that something was afoot as the Americans had shut down the base generators before leaving. In other words they literally adhered to the old adage “last one out turns off the lights.”

By the time the Afghan security forces were aware that they were now in sole control of the base, locals had already breached the perimeter and spent over two hours looting the American provisions left behind.

The American military scale down has emboldened the Taliban, who have been resurgent on the battlefield all across Afghanistan.

The NATO trained Afghan security forces, tasked with propping up the corrupt regime of President Ashraf Ghani are showing little stomach for the fight with the Taliban. Without U.S. air support and American special forces backing, it has been reported that thousands of Afghan soldiers are illegally crossing the border to seek asylum in neighboring Tajikistan.

Earlier this month it was announced that the Taliban had taken control of the Panjiway district in the southern province of Kandahar. This news struck a resonant chord among Canadian veterans, many of whom fought to defend Panjiway from insurgents between 2005 and 2011.

Almost on cue, the tone deaf Liberal government issued a statement on Wednesday July 7, wherein Minister of Veteran Affairs, Lawrence MacAulay and Minister of National Defence, Harjit Sajjan jointly marked “the 10th anniversary of the end of Canada’s combat mission in Afghanistan.”

Almost exactly one decade after Canada withdrew, the Taliban officially rendered our soldiers’ sacrifice meaningless by retaking the ground which we had temporarily held.

Observers are no longer speculating as to whether the Taliban will defeat the Afghan security forces. They are now simply trying to pinpoint when that victory will occur.

This has led to a grass roots campaign among our veterans urging the Canadian government to fast track the immigration process for those Afghans who served as translators for the Canadian military.

I fully support this initiative, as there is no doubt that these individuals and their families will be at risk of Taliban retribution.

Canada has already brought nearly 800 interpreters and their relatives out of Afghanistan for asylum prior to 2011, but it is estimated that several hundred remain at risk.

What was interesting to note was that three Canadian retired generals – all Afghanistan Task Force Commanders – have written a joint letter urging the government to fast track the rescue of these former interpreters.

Ironically it was two of these three generals who were among the most vocal in reassuring Canadians that the war was all but won.

When I interviewed Maj.-Gen. Dean Milner in Kabul in 2013 he was in command of the NATO training mission for the Afghan National Army. At that juncture he stated “They [the ANA] have come a long way, I’ll tell you. Look at the force now, the Afghan National Army some 190,000 strong. I’m very confident in them. We have built that force to these numbers with the professional capability to beat the Taliban.”

Fellow letter-writer, Maj.-Gen. David Fraser went one better when he released his book in May 2018 titled Operation Medusa: The Furious Battle that saved Afghanistan from the Taliban.

Is it in any way the Canadian government’s fault for not prioritizing the evacuation of these Afghan interpreters sooner? One general was telling them confidently that the Taliban would soon be beat and the other general wrote a book just three years ago claiming Afghanistan was already saved.

Now they are begging the government to forget their past analysis and get these Afghan interpreters out of harm’s way.

Given this level of incompetence in judging the situation on the ground, is it any wonder that we lost the war?

ON TARGET: Unanswered Questions Remain about Cyclone Crash

Clockwise from top left: Capt. Kevin Hagen, Sub-Lt. Abbigail Cowbrough, Capt. Brenden Ian MacDonald, Master Cpl. Matthew Cousins, Sub-Lt. Matthew Pyke, Capt. Maxime Miron-Morin. (Department of National Defence)

By Scott Taylor

On June 25, the Royal Canadian Air Force released their final report on the April 29, 2020 CH-148 Cyclone helicopter crash which claimed the lives of six service members.

The investigators concluded that the auto-pilot system had engaged while the pilot was making a tight turn, causing the helicopter to plunge straight into the Ionian Sea. The report notes that neither the pilot’s training nor the cockpit indicators would have given any warning that the auto-pilot was about to over-ride the flight controls. It was also noted that during the certification testing of the Cyclone this potentially dangerous hazard was not uncovered, as no testing was conducted to ascertain what would happen if the pilot chose to over-ride the auto-pilot more than just ‘momentarily’. 

In this instance the auto-pilot unexpectedly engaged in the middle of a complex manoeuvre known as ‘return-to-target’ turn. As the Cyclone was at a relatively low altitude the pilot had no time to regain control prior to the aircraft’s impact with the waves. While this incident report provides clinical details of just what went wrong mechanically that fateful day, it does nothing to lessen the tragic loss of captains Brenden MacDonald, Kevin Hagen, Maxime Miron-Morin, sub-lieutenants Abbigail Cowbrough and Matthew Pyke, and Master Cpl. Matthew Cousins.

What also remains unexplained was the inexplicable manner in which DND conveyed the news of this tragedy to the Canadian public. Within hours of the crash, Greek news outlets were reporting the downing of the Sea King helicopter in the Ionian Sea. This, in turn, was almost immediately circulated on Canadian social media platforms. However mainstream defence reporters were skeptical of the story as being potential ‘disinformation’ as the Canadian Forces was no longer flying the Sea King. 

On April 30, 2020, more than 30 hours after the incident occurred the DND issued a formal statement advising the media that “One member of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) was killed…and five others remain missing following an accident involving a Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) CH-148 Cyclone helicopter.

We were also informed that “HMCS Fredericton and NATO allies continue to search for the other 5 members of the helicopter crew”. Details on the cause of the crash were unknown and the official story was that the crew of HMCS Fredericton “had lost contact with the helicopter” prior to the crash. The scenario DND painted was that of a mysterious crash sparking a major search-and-rescue operation by the entire NATO squadron.

Pundits took to the airwaves to discuss the challenges of mounting such a search for survivors in the vastness of the Ionian sea. As the hours dragged on experts commented on the effectiveness of survival suits. Some of the usual alarmists noted that a Russian submarine was known to be in the vicinity and that might somehow explain the downing of the Cyclone. Within the Canadian military community social media posts expressed grief and sorrow for Sub-Lt Cowbrough who had been pronounced dead, whilst they all offered prayers and hope for the family, friends and comrades of the five missing crew members. Initial statements by both Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan and Chief of Defence Staff General Jon Vance implied that the helicopter had crashed some distance from HMCS Fredericton.

Finally, on May 1, more than 48 hours after the incident occurred, the DND issued an update announcing this was now a search-and-recover mission with all crew members presumed dead. It was around this timeframe that the CBC was informed of the actual details of the Cyclone crash. It turns out that the helicopter was doing a low level pass right beside HMCS Fredericton when the aircraft suddenly nosedived into the waves. A number of the crew aboard the warship watched the crash in real time. The impact into the sea was so close to the ship that rescue craft from Fredericton were able to reach the crash site quick enough to recover the black box and the body of Cowbrough. When confronted with this alternate version of events, the DND admitted the fact that there would be eyewitness testimony included in the accident report. No one has ever explained where the false narrative was inserted or why DND allowed the media (myself included) to push out false details until a whistleblower contacted CBC with the truth.

There would be no reason for HMCS Fredericton’s crew to report anything other than the truth back to NDHQ. In this era where we are constantly warned to be wary of malignant foreign actors spreading disinformation, it is all the more imperative that we can trust and rely upon the information we receive from official sources such as DND. Especially when it pertains to the lives of our service members. Once again I offer my sincere condolences to the families, friends and comrades of those who perished in this tragic crash.

ON TARGET: CAF: Weaponization Of Public Affairs Backfires

By Scott Taylor

It is now official. Last week the Department of National Defence released the results of four separate internal investigations into the Canadian military’s recent forays on using propaganda and influence activities on fellow Canadians.

The conclusion of one investigation was that military commanders had violated various rules and acted outside of their authority when they employed intelligence teams to collect information on the public. Another report concluded the military public affairs branch was out of line in its decision to move forward with new policies that would allow the use of propaganda techniques against Canadian citizens.

The not so funny part of this story is that pretty much every concerned Canadian knew that it was wrong for the Canadian military to spy on, and attempt to deceive the public, when the Ottawa Citizen first broke the news of these initiatives last year.

It was also clear that some senior military and political leaders understood immediately when the Citizen stories broke, that it was just plain wrong that the Canadian Armed Forces had created teams to harvest data from the social media accounts of private citizens.

Then Chief of Defence Staff, General Jonathan Vance, the man who first coined the phrase “the weaponization of Public Affairs”, quickly realized that his new ‘weapon’ had resulted in a very serious self-inflicted wound in terms of public trust. As such, Vance ordered an immediate halt to these operations.

For his part, Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan promised his fellow parliamentarians that these questionable activities by the military had been terminated shortly after they began.

However, a new report obtained by the CBC revealed that after Vance publicly ordered one of the initiatives halted in April 2020, portions of a military campaign meant to influence the Canadian public during the COVID-19 pandemic continued to operate for another six months.

It was only after Vance issued a written command in November 2020 that these influence activities were finally terminated.

Around the same time, the Citizen reported on other military schemes to begin using influence tactics on Canadians. It revealed that the Canadian Forces had already spent more than $1 million to train public affairs officers on behavior modification techniques similar to those used by the parent firm of Cambridge Analytics, a company which was implicated in a 2016 data-mining scandal aimed at boosting Donald Trumps U.S. presidential campaign.

That initiative was the brain child of Brig-Gen Jay Janzen, who was at the time the senior officer in the Public Affairs Branch.

Vance also formally shut down another Janzen’s initiatives, this one a controversial plan that news reports pointed out would have allowed military public affairs officers to use propaganda to change attitudes and behaviours of Canadians as well as collect and analyze information from the public’s social media accounts.

In reacting to this embarrassing public cancellation of his pet project, Janzen posted a message to his public affairs subordinates advising them “these efforts were on the leading edge, and we were exploring unchartered territory, innovation is something prone, to being misunderstood.” Poor Janzen – “Just a soul whose intentions were good, oh lord please don’t let [him] be misunderstood” – to paraphrase the old Animals hit.

That, however, was not how the military brass viewed it. The most recent review released by acting CDS Lt-Gen Wayne Eyre and Deputy Minister Jody Thomas concluded that the initiative was “incompatible with the Government of Canada Communications Policy (and the) mission and principles of Public Affairs.”

For anyone to think this mandate would be enhanced by widening that mandate to include psychological and information operations against Canadian civilians is simply mondo bonkers.

Instead of building trust with the media and the public, this plan harmed  the reputation of not only the public affairs branch, but by extension the reputation of the Canadian Forces as an institution.

Canadians want their military to defend Canadian interests and uphold Canadian values at home and abroad. We do not want them spying on us, deceiving us or trying to modify our behavior.

For the record, no one involved in these plans, either in the public affairs branch or intelligence branch, have ever been sanctioned by the military leadership.

ON TARGET: Military Police Should Call In RCMP To Dispel Perception Of Lack Of Independence

By Scott Taylor

It was on Sunday Feb. 2 that the current military sexual misconduct scandal first emerged.

Global National reporter Mercedes Stephenson broke the story that recently stepped down Chief of Defence Staff, General Jonathan Vance was accused of two counts of sexual misconduct.

What made these allegations newsworthy was the fact that during his entire five-year tenure as CDS, Vance had been the driving force behind his own Operation Honour, an initiative intended to stamp out sexual misconduct within the Canadian Armed Forces.

Vance was no longer the CDS but he was still a serving general. His successor, Admiral Art McDonald announced that in addition to a military police investigation into the allegations against Vance, there would be a separate, independent investigation into the former CDS’s actions.

In an attempt to bolster morale and restore confidence in the senior leadership, McDonald put out a message to the rank and file on Feb. 24.

In his memo McDonald encouraged any other potential victims of sexual misconduct to come forward. That very same day word was leaked to the media that McDonald was himself under military police investigation for an alleged case of sexual misconduct dating back to 2010.

By nightfall it was announced that McDonald would step aside as CDS until the police investigation had run its course.

Losing two top generals in three weeks proved to be just the tip of the iceberg.

The next revelation was that Lt-Gen Chris Coates had an extramarital affair while serving at NORAD headquarters. This incident prevented his posting to NATO Headquarters in Naples, and Coates has since retired from the CAF.

Far more startling was the allegations of rape against Vice Admiral Haydn Edmundson. That incident allegedly occurred aboard a RCN warship in 1991. Edmundson has since stepped down from his post as Chief of Military Personnel. The rape investigation remains ongoing.

One of Canada’s most noted generals is Major-General Dany Fortin who was seconded to the Public Health Agency of Canada to oversee the roll out of COVID-19 vaccines. Fortin’s telegenic appearances on nightly newscasts had become a reassuring fixture for Canadians eagerly anticipating an end to the pandemic.

Then on May 14, DND issued a brief three line press release announcing that Fortin was relieved of his Public Health post because he too, was under investigation. News reports pointed to allegations of past sexual misconduct. In Fortin’s case the complaint dates back to 1989 when he was a cadet at the College Militaire Royale in St. Jean, Quebec.

Also turfed from his secondment at the Public Health Agency was Brig-Gen Simon Bernard for allegedly uttering a racial slur while on duty.

For writing a letter to a judge in support of a convicted perpetrator of sexual assault, Major-Gen Pete Dawe was relieved as Commander of Canada’s elite Special Operations Force Command (CANSOFCOM). Dawe’s character reference was for an officer convicted of sexually assaulting a fellow officer’s wife.

The most recent purge of the senior ranks involves the Vice Chief of the Defence Staff, Lt-Gen Mike Rouleau and Commander of the Royal Canadian Navy Vice Admiral Craig Baines.

News outlets reported on June 12 that Baines and Rouleau had played a game of golf on June 2 with former CDS General Vance.

The optics of  them associating with one of the accused was grounds for Rouleau to resign as VCDS. For his part, Baines has apologized and has taken personal leave.

Critics of Rouleau’s casual outing with Vance were quick to point out that as VCDS, the military police are technically under his control. Add this to the fact that Major Kellie Brennan, one of Vance’s accusers, testified before a parliamentary committee that  the former CDS bragged to her that he was ‘untouchable’ and that he had the CFNIS [Canadian National Investigation Service] “under control.”

Within this scenario, the CFNIS are now in a no-win situation. If they investigate and uncover no grounds for criminal charges against Vance, the public will presume the investigation was thwarted from within.

My advice to Provost Marshal Brigadier General Simon Trudeau is to pre-empt such a predicament by announcing that Rouleau’s actions and Brennan’s allegations have already tainted any possible CFNIS conclusion.

Admit the obvious and call in the RCMP to conduct an independent investigation.

The truth will set you free.

ON TARGET: Clueless in Iraq: The Sequel

By Scott Taylor

Last week the Canadian Press reported on a memo which they had obtained from the Department of National Defence under the Access-to-Information law.

The memo was dated January 16, 2020 and was written by Lt-Gen Mike Rouleau who was the commander of Canadian Joint Operations Command at that time. The recipient of the memo was then Chief of the Defence Staff, General Jonathan Vance.

The gist of Rouleau’s message to Vance was that the ‘identifying and vetting’ of Iraqi recruits to participate in the Canadian-led NATO training mission in Iraq “lacked the sufficient depth required.”

Taken in isolation this warning from Rouleau may seem at first glance to be rather innocuous. However, it is important to note the timeline here.

Earlier this month, David Pugliese at the Ottawa Citizen broke the story of Canadian military trainers in Iraq having witnessed video evidence of war crimes committed by the very Iraqi soldiers whom they were sent to train.

That incident occurred back in September 2018 and according to the internal report, the Canadian trainers immediately informed their superiors of these war crimes and requested guidance on how to proceed.

At least seven Canadian non-commissioned officers had viewed the videos. As professional soldiers they realized that the acts committed by their Iraqi recruits violated article 50 of the Geneva Convention which prohibits acts of “willful killing, torture, or inhuman treatment” of prisoners.

Included in the eagerly offered video evidence was footage of Iraqis “raping a woman to death; torture and execution of a line of bound prisoners whereby they were beaten to death with what appeared to be rebar steel bars; the execution of prisoners by shooting; and the execution of a man by hanging him from the barrel of a [Main Battle Tank],” according to a Canadian Forces briefing note.

Understandably the Canadian NCO’s had some serious qualms about teaching such sadistic killers in order to provide them with enhanced military skills.

Faced with this dilemma, the senior leadership in-theatre assured the NCO’s that this matter would be dealt with, but in the meantime, training of these war criminals was to continue unabated.

The Canadian trainers were also told that in the future, they should abstain from watching such videos, and for god’s sake, not to take possession of any such evidence.

When the mission concluded without the Canadian trainers having seen any action taken against the Iraqi perpetrators, the NCO’s continued to ask questions to their senior leadership after their return to CFB Petawawa, ON.

One of the Canadian witnesses wrote to his superior “we remain uncertain whether this appropriate action was effectively taken. I am an ethical man and I believe in our moral doctrine and the [Law of Armed Conflict]. I am bothered by the fact that my assigned duties allowed me to train and enable people who in my mind were criminals.”

More than three years later, and after the Ottawa Citizen broke the story citing 2018 DND briefing notes, we are told that the military police are conducting an investigation into the CAF’s leadership’s handling of this incident. Note that no one seems willing to pursue the original Iraqi war criminals.

Also important to the timeline of events are the statements made in August 2018 by Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin. He had just been appointed to command the overall Canadian led NATO training mission in Iraq.

When asked by journalists how Canadians could properly vet the Iraqi recruits, Fortin confidently replied, “I think we have a pretty good vetting process in place to screen out those potential [Iraqi] instructors to ensure we have quality people, that they the Iraqi government feel confident with.”

One month later our trainers on the ground in Iraq viewed the video evidence of war crimes and reported it up their chain-of-command. From this latest memo released to the Canadian Press news service we now know that more than one year after the top brass knew that our troops were training war criminals, they still lacked the ability to properly screen any incoming Iraqi recruits.

On September 4, 2018 I wrote a column about the then impending training mission entitled “Clueless in Iraq.” I included a side note to Maj.-Gen. Fortin, which read: “I cannot wish you success in your mission because you are embarked on a fool’s errand. Training more Iraqis to kill in the name of a corrupt regime is insane.”

Little did I know that our soldiers would be knowingly training war criminals how to better kill in the name of a corrupt regime.

Fool’s errand indeed.

ON TARGET: “I See Cracks”: General Eyre

By Scott Taylor

Last week in an interview with the Canadian Press Lieutenant-General Wayne Eyre, Canada’s acting Chief of the Defence Staff, admitted that the Canadian military is beginning to exhibit ‘cracks’.

Eyre explained that these ‘cracks’ are the result of the Canadian Armed Forces facing a multitude of concurrent challenges in terms of maintaining a brisk operational tempo while dealing with plummeting morale in the ranks.

The greatest contributor to that loss of faith in the senior leadership has been the almost continuous barrage of sexual misconduct revelations involving the top brass.

The first of these bombshells exploded on Feb. 2, 2021 when Global National’s Mercedes Stephenson revealed two allegations of sexual impropriety against General Jonathan Vance.

Vance had just stepped down as CDS after a five-year stint as Canada’s top soldier, but he had not yet officially retired from the Forces.

Admiral Art McDonald announced that in addition to a Canadian Forces National Investigation Service (CFNIS) investigation into the Vance allegations, a separate independent inquiry would be initiated into the actions of the former CDS.

The ink was still damp on McDonald’s message when it was announced that he was stepping aside as CDS to allow the CFNIS investigate a sexual misconduct complaint against him.

Then came the news that Lt.-Gen. Chris Coates would not be deploying to his new position at NATO headquarters because of an extra-marital affair he had while at his NORAD posting in Colorado Springs.

Next up to bat was Chief of Military Personnel, Vice Admiral Haydn Edmundson. News reports first cited that as a young officer Edmundson had faced allegations of impropriety while an instructor at CFB Esquimalt. The chain of command at the time had cleared Edmundson, which earned him the satirical nickname of the ‘mulligan’ man.

However once that story broke, memories were jarred and a separate accusation arose against Edmundson. This was an allegation of rape that occurred aboard a RCN ship in 1991.

On Friday, May 14 it was announced that Major General Dany Fortin was suspended from his high profile post overseeing the national roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccines with the Public Health Agency of Canada.

The reason for Fortin’s removal was that he too was under investigation by the CFNIS for past sexual misconduct. Media reports have revealed that the complaint against Fortin dated back to 1989 when he was a cadet at the College Militaire Royal in St Jean, Quebec.

In less than four months Canada lost two four star generals, two three star generals and a very high profile two star general. For the purists, I realize that Canadian generals wear maple leafs instead of stars, but either way you slice it, that is a lot of brass to lose in a very short span of time.

In the wake of this sudden exodus, senior female officers have been promoted or appointed to key positions.

Lt. Gen. Frances Allen is to become Canada’s first female Vice Chief of the Defence Staff. Jennie Carignan was recently promoted to Lieutenant-General and named to head the task force to eliminate sexual misconduct.

Commodore Josee Kurtz will soon assume the post of commandant at the Royal Military College in Kingston. The first female to hold that position.

Stepping up to fill the void left by Fortin’s departure is Brigadier-General Krista Brodie who was previously Fortin’s deputy commander at the Public Health Agency.

These promotions will definitely change the face of the ‘old boy’s club’, which was previously the composition of our senior military leadership. However, this in itself will not be enough to change an institutional culture that has been defined as highly sexualized by none other than former Supreme Court Justice Marie Deschamps in her 2015 independent review of military sexual misconduct.

I think Lt.-Gen. Eyre is optimistic to describe the current crisis in the military as mere ‘cracks.’

The CAF is currently changing the senior leadership on the fly, trying to alter a decades old culture of sexual misconduct, while still managing overseas operational deployments in Latvia and Iraq, coping with a personnel shortfall of 2,300 soldiers, and still assisting Canadians in dealing with a deadly pandemic.

This is definitely no time for anymore ‘cracks’.

ON TARGET: Belarus Regime’s Plan Backfired

By Scott Taylor

On Sunday May 23, a Ryanair flight from Athens, Greece enroute to Vilnius, Lithuania was diverted while in Belarus airspace and forced to land at the Minsk airport.

The Belarus authorities had claimed there was a bomb threat, which prompted them to alert the airliner’s flight crew. A Belarus Airforce Mig-29 fighter jet was also dispatched to escort the Ryanair aircraft to the Minsk airport.

Once on the ground Belarus security forces failed to find a bomb, but they did identify and arrest Roman Protasevich and his girlfriend Sofia Sapega.

Citing press freedom and global aviation laws, the U.S. led the international cries of outrage. On Thursday May 27, Canada joined in the chorus with Prime Minister Trudeau calling the incident an “attack on democracy.”

If this was in fact an elaborate and diabolical plot conceived by Lukashenko with the intention of squashing the voice of Protasevich, he has to be one of the dumbest dictators to ever rule a country.

Forcing a civilian airliner to land using a phony bomb threat and military jets was bound to grab the attention of every media outlet in the world.

Few Canadians could have located Belarus on the map before this incident, and fewer still could have named Lukashenko as the president despite the fact he has been in power for the past 27 years.

Now, we know that Lukashenko has been dubbed ‘Europe’s last dictator’ and that Belarus is one of Vladimir Putin’s few remaining allies.

However, with this single outrageous act Lukashenko has also unwittingly vastly empowered his heretofore virtually unknown opponent.

Overnight Roman Protasevich went from being an obscure blogger to having dozens of world leaders demanding his release in the name of free press.

Of course once he was thrust into the media spotlight people began to ask just who is this Roman Protasevich? Well, it turns out that he is a 26-year-old self proclaimed activist – journalist.

He began his involvement in the anti-Lukashenko opposition movement in 2011, at the age of sixteen.

Three years later he was drawn into the growing unrest in neighboring Ukraine. After participating in the Maiden protests in Kiev that eventually toppled the regime of Viktor Yanukovich, Protasevich joined the Azov Battalion.

The Azov battalion was notorious for its neo-Nazi links and was largely comprised of foreign volunteers like Protasevich.

While it is unclear exactly what role Protasevich had with Azov, the battalion’s founder Andriy Biletsky confirmed that he served with the unit. “[He] actually fought with the Azov battalion and other units against the occupation of Ukraine, but as a journalist his weapon was not the machine gun but the word,” Biletsky wrote.

Following his combat tour in Ukraine, Protasevich returned to Minsk to start a blog. After being arrested for hooliganism, Protasevich fled to Prague where he entered the employ of the U.S. funded Radio Free Europe, Belarus edition.

He subsequently co-founded a Telegram channel show called Nexta which was instrumental in helping to organize the massive anti-Lukashenko political demonstrations that followed Belarus’ August 2020 presidential elections. At the time of his arrest, Protasevich was listed as the chief editor of a blog called “Belarus of the Brain.”

So prior to this act of air privacy to seize and detain Protasevich, he was a young agitator who fought in a foreign war in a neo-Nazi unit, working for himself as a blogger.

Now, thanks to Lukashenko’s mad plan to publicly kidnap him, Protasevich is hailed by world leaders – including Trudeau – for bravely advancing the cause of free speech around the globe.

So not only did Lukashenko bring international wrath in the form of sanctions against Belarus, he simultaneously lionized a man who was previously an irritating nemesis at best, into a martyr for press freedom.

That would fall into the category of ‘lose-lose’ for Lukashenko.

ON TARGET: The DND Sexual Misconduct Saga Continues Unabated

By Scott Taylor

Late in the afternoon of Friday, May 14 the Department of National Defence issued a curt, three line press release announcing that Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin was being removed from his post pending the results of a military police investigation.

Fortin is of course no ordinary senior officer. Since his assignment to the Public Health Agency last November, the telegenic Fortin has become the face of Canada’s national vaccine roll-out.

Given his high profile, the media immediately began to dig for answers. Well placed government sources advised Bob Fife, the Globe and Mail Ottawa Bureau Chief, that the misconduct for which Fortin was being investigated was of a sexual nature and that the incident in question had occurred prior to the launching of the 2015 Operation Honour initiative to combat sexual misconduct in the ranks.

This timeline also meant that it did not happen on the current Trudeau Liberal government’s watch.

Fife’s insight was widely cited by the other media outlets as no one had anything else to go on.

Then, on Sunday May 16, CTV’s Annie Bergeron Oliver revealed that the complaint against Fortin actually had been filed two months earlier with the Canadian Forces National Investigative Service (CFNIS). The complainant alleges Fortin exposed his genitalia while he was a cadet at the College Militaire Royal in the spring of 1989.

While Fortin did not respond directly, his lawyer, Commander Mark Letourneau told the media that his client “vigorously and categorically denies the allegation.” Letourneau also revealed that prior to being contacted by CTV, Fortin was unaware of the nature of the complaint against him.

Then on Wednesday May 19, Brig.-Gen. Simon Trudeau, the Canadian Armed Forces Provost Marshal, informed the media the CFNIS had concluded their investigation into the Fortin allegation.

The findings of their investigation were forwarded to the Quebec public prosecution service to determine whether criminal charges are warranted in this case.

According to the Provost Marshal the referral of this case to the Quebec prosecutors had taken place “late [the previous] week.” Which means the investigation was complete and out of the military’s control before Fortin was publicly removed from this assignment with the Public Health Agency’s Vaccine roll-out.

Then there is the claim from counsel Letourneau that the CTV reporter’s revelation of the nature of the allegation against Fortin took his client “completely by surprise.” If that is true, then this would mean the CFNIS wrapped up their investigation into a 32-year-old incident without having questioned the accused.

As for the rationale behind putting this in the hands of the Quebec prosecutors, that is explained by the fact that the alleged crime took place before 1998. Prior to that juncture the military did not have the judicial authority to try cases involving crimes of a sexual nature.

The Fortin saga has of course sparked the opposition parties to demand answers of who-knew-what-when among the top Trudeau Liberals.

Questions are being asked of acting Chief of Defence Staff Lt.-Gen. Wayne Eyre as to why he left Fortin at his post for two months after being informed of the complaint. Others want to know why Minister of Defence Harjit Sajjan once again did not take any immediate action.

The revolving door of departures for Canada’s top generals began on February 2, 2021 with the first allegations against recently stepped down Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jonathan Vance.

Then it was his successor Admiral Art McDonald who stepped aside while military police continue to investigate allegations of a sexual misconduct incident dating back to 2010.

Lt.-Gen Chris Coates announced his retirement from the military after revelations of an extra-marital-affair at NORAD headquarters in Colorado Springs, precluded him from deploying to NATO headquarters in Naples.

Vice Admiral Haydn Edmundson has been replaced as Chief of Military Personnel after a female sailor alleged she had been raped in 1991.

In each of these cases – with the exception of Coates who is not accused of any crime – the allegations are historical in nature. Perhaps more importantly in a justice system that is to presume innocence until guilt is proven, all four of these senior officers under investigation have denied any wrongdoing.

Yet they have already been stripped of command and condemned in the court of public opinion.

Iraq Mission: A Failure of Leadership?

By Scott Taylor

Last week a very disturbing story surfaced in the media which once again clearly illustrates how the Canadian military leadership is totally out of its depth in Iraq.

My colleague David Pugliese at the Ottawa Citizen obtained internal military documents which reveal how Canadian soldiers faced a moral dilemma when they were shown evidence of war crimes committed by the very Iraqi soldiers which they were sent to train.

It wasn’t as if our Canadian trainers stumbled across these videos. It was the Iraqi soldiers who boastfully played them for the Canadians as though it was proof of their martial success.

The graphic images included those of “raping a woman to death; torture and execution of a line of bound prisoners whereby they were beaten to death with what appeared to be rebar steel bars; the execution of bound prisoners by shooting; and the execution of a man by hanging him from the barrel of a [Main Battle Tank]” states a Canadian Armed Forces briefing note.

At least seven Canadian non-commissioned officers viewed the footage and to their credit, they immediately reported the situation to their superiors.

All trained soldiers should know that Article 50 of the Geneva Convention prohibits acts of “willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment” of prisoners.

What the Canadian instructors had seen clearly constituted war crimes perpetrated by the very Iraqi soldiers to whom they were to teach additional weapons and tactical skills.

One sergeant reportedly recommended suspending the training in order for his superiors to deal with this issue first.

However, the senior leadership in theatre assured the NCO’s that the matter would be dealt with, but in the meantime they were to press on with the training of these Iraqis. Just to be on the safe side, the officers also advised the NCO’s that in the future they should not view such videos, and more importantly not take possession of any images. See no evil.

The initial incident took place on 18 September, 2018 at a U.S. military facility near the Iraqi city of Mosul. The troops involved were from the Royal Canadian Regiment based at CFB Petawawa.

They had been sent to train an Iraqi unit known as the Wide Area Security Force (WASF).

Many of these Iraqis had fought against ISIS in the recently concluded liberation of Mosul.

One can easily understand how our soldiers would have qualms about associating with and training individuals who were capable of such cold-blooded murderous crimes.

Yes, the violent crimes perpetrated by ISIS were widely publicized, but that does not grant one the right to kill disarmed ISIS captives in the same fashion.

Police do not get to beat serial killers to death or sodomize rapists. That is what separates criminals from law enforcers.

Despite the reassurances that some sort of action was being taken, it seems the soldiers on the ground did not believe it.

Once the unit was back in Petawawa, they continued to press for answers. “We remain uncertain whether this appropriate action was effectively taken,” wrote one of the NCOs “I am an ethical man and I believe in our moral doctrine and the [Law of Armed Conflict]. I am bothered by the fact that my assigned duties allowed me to train and enable people who in my mind were criminals.” 

When the 2018 training mission was first announced, the commander -  Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin assured skeptical journalists that he was confident in Canada’s ability to screen Iraqi recruits. “I think we have a pretty good vetting process in place to screen out those potential [Iraqi] instructors to ensure we have quality people, that they the Iraqi government feel confident with,” Fortin told reporters.

One month later the RCR NCO’s reported the videos of war crimes committed by these same Iraqi instructors, and they were told keep quiet and to continue the training.

Some vetting process.

On 30 March, Canada extended Operation Impact, the mission to Iraq and the Middle East, for one more year. Since first deploying troops to Iraq in 2014, Canada has spent over $1 billion on the mission.

After all that time and money, we still can’t tell the good guys from the war criminals. Even with the video evidence.

ON TARGET: Canada Must Denounce Glorification of Nazis

By Scott Taylor

On 28 April approximately 250 people marched through the streets of Kiev, Ukraine to commemorate the 78th anniversary of the WW2 Waffen SS Division Galicia.

That’s right folks, hundreds of people gathered despite the threat of spreading the COVID-19 virus, to commemorate Ukrainian soldiers who took an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler and fought for Nazi Germany.

This parade drew an immediate backlash from Germany’s ambassador to Ukraine, Anka Feldhusen. She tweeted “Waffen SS units participated in the worst war crimes and the Holocaust during WW2. No volunteer organizations fighting and working for Ukraine today should be associated with them.”

This blatant display of Nazi glorification was also condemned by the Israeli ambassador in Kiev and the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Sadly, there was no such reaction from the Canadian embassy nor from the Canadian Armed Forces. Canada presently has over 200 military trainers assisting the Ukrainian armed forces in the face of Russian aggression.

For the regime in Kiev to not only allow a tribute to Hitler’s SS to take place, but to also provide the marchers with a police escort, flies in the face of all those Canadian soldiers who fought and died in WW2 to defeat the Nazi regime.

For the record, and before the apologists claim this event was an exercise in ‘free speech’, Ukraine has cancelled this year’s May 9 traditional celebration of Victory Day WW2 due to COVID19 concerns.

Ukrainians were prevented from gathering to celebrate the defeat of Hitler, but allowed to parade in commemoration of Ukrainians who volunteered to fight for the Nazis?

The U.S. State Department did not directly condemn the parade but in a statement to The Nation they noted “We welcome [Ukraine] President Zelensky’s strong statement condemning the march.” However, they added the comment that the U.S. State Department “continues to monitor and systematically refute a longstanding Russian disinformation campaign that conflates support for Ukrainian sovereignty with support for neo-Nazi and fascist ideals.”

Here is a little bit of free advice for those concerned about Russian disinformation: just put an end to parades and events that glorify Hitler’s Waffen SS.

While I can understand that Ukrainians are proud of their heritage, I cannot fathom why young nationalists seek to glorify those who took up arms to enforce the Nazi’s ideology? Yes, I understand that Stalin imposed ruthless measures against the people of Ukraine and that they suffered horribly under the Soviet regime.

However, the fact that Ukrainian men took up arms to fight the Red Army as members of the Waffen SS does not change the reality that Hitler’s Nazis perpetrated the Holocaust.

Of all the incredible accomplishments that Ukrainians have achieved throughout history – music, literature, cuisine, art etc, I cannot fathom why it is a flawed military unit that fought for Hitler, which these young Ukrainians have chosen to revere.

Formed in 1943, the SS Galicia Division only really fought one major engagement against the Soviets in the Battle of Brody in July 1944.

The SS Galicia was soundly defeated and it was subsequently relegated to fighting against partisans, first in Slovakia and then in Yugoslavia.

For those who would paint the SS Galicia volunteers as fighters for Ukraine’s independence, this theory cannot be justified in view of the fact they actually fought against civilian patriots in Slovakia and Slovenia to enforce Hitler’s Nazi occupation.

In the final days of the war, the SS Galicia changed their name to the 1st Ukrainian Division prior to surrendering to the allies in Austria.

After a lengthy internment in Italy, many of these Ukrainian SS veterans emigrated to Canada. There is actually a memorial erected to the memory of the SS Galicia division in Oakville, Ontario.

That said, it is estimated that over 40,000 Ukrainian Canadians served in the Canadian military during WW2, fighting to defeat Hitler.

It is those brave, patriotic Ukrainian- Canadians that Canada needs to remember. It will make it far easier for our government to publicly denounce any future Nazi-glorification in Ukraine.

ON TARGET: MISGUIDED LOYALTY: MILITARY BRASS SUPPORTED SEX OFFENDER, NOT VICTIMS

By Scott Taylor

Last week yet another disturbing story surfaced regarding the military and sexual misconduct. A retired Special forces major told the CBC that he felt betrayed when senior military leaders provided glowing character references to the fellow soldier who was convicted of sexually assaulting his wife.

The incident occurred in 2017 following the conviction of Major Jonathan Hamilton in a civilian court on six charges.

Prior to his sentencing hearing Hamilton’s defence lawyers received positive character reference letters from Major-General Pete Dawe, at the time deputy commander of special operation command, and Lieutenant- Colonel Scott McGregor on behalf of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry regiment.

Those letters from senior military leaders admittedly had an impact on Justice Larry O’Brien, the sentencing judge in Hamilton’s case. According to the transcript of the hearing, O’Brien said that Hamilton’s military superiors characterized him as “a man of great character and leadership before being engulfed in PTSD.”

In light of Hamilton’s distinguished service to his country, O’Brien sentenced him to three years probation rather than jail time.

On the surface this would not appear to be an unusual circumstance for a commanding officer and for the officer’s regiment to plead for leniency on behalf of a soldier who has proven himself on the battlefield.

However, contrary to the regimental assertion to Justice O’Brien that this case was an “isolated legal incident” it must be noted that Hamilton has since been sentenced to three years in custody for an unrelated sexual assault case.

What is truly perplexing is the fact that, in the first case, Hamilton’s victims were fellow members of the Canadian Armed Forces.

The crimes for which Hamilton was convicted involve breaking into a Kingston Ontario home in 2013 and sexually assaulting Annalise Schamuhn on two separate occasions.

He was also convicted of twice physically assaulting Kevin Schamuhn. The Schamuhns are now both retired from the military, but at the time of the incident Kevin was a major serving in the special forces, and like Hamilton, was a member of the PPCLI. Annalise served for 13 years as a logistics officer.

One can therefore easily understand the sense of betrayal Kevin Schamuhn must have felt when he and his wife were victimized, and both his commanding officer and his regimental officer showed support to his attacker.

Upon learning that the character reference letters were being submitted, Schamuhn confronted MGen Dawe and the PPCLI regimental colonel Jason Adair.

Despite Schamuhn’s plea for them to either rescind their letters or edit them to remove anything other than Hamilton’s professional qualifications, both letters were submitted unchanged.

“It made the feeling of betrayal much worse.” Schamuhn told the CBC. “This was the first time I asked for something that meant so much and we were left out to dry.”

Which brings us to the whole point of senior officers requesting lenience from a civilian judge in a sexual assault case because of PTSD developed through military service.

If a service member requires mental health care, then provide them with mental health care.

Suffering from PTSD should not be a literal “get out of jail free” card. Volunteering to serve in uniform should not automatically reduce punishment for a civilian crime.

In fact, like those in law enforcement, military members are trusted to be upholding of those values which they are sworn to protect.

In the Hamilton case he didn’t just violate a random victim, he assaulted a fellow soldier and his wife.

That the military brass chose to stand behind the perpetrator and not support the victim in this case is troubling.

However, it also needs to be remembered that those letters of character reference were submitted back in 2017.

In light of recent explosion of me-too sexual misconduct revelations ripping through the senior ranks of the Canadian military, there will not be many similar letters of character reference being submitted to support soldiers convicted of sex assault. And if there are, they won’t be worth the paper they are written on in the eyes of any judge.

ON TARGET: The General Vance Saga: So Many Not-So-Secret-Secrets

By Scott Taylor

The more bombshell revelations that drop in the military sexual misconduct scandal, the more one understands the scale of the complicity of those who have remained silent.

Last Thursday evening, the parliamentary Standing Committee on the Status of Women heard some shocking testimony from Major Kellie Brennan.

Arguably it was Brennan’s allegations against recently retired former Chief of the Defence Staff, General Jonathan Vance – revealed by journalist Mercedes Stephenson on Global News – that set the current military ‘me too’ phenom in motion.

Originally Brennan had wished to remain anonymous when she publicly alleged that she had participated in a lengthy extra-marital affair with General Vance, including during his five-year tenure as Canada’s top soldier.

However since the story first broke Brennan has brought forward many more damning details first through an exclusive Global News interview and most recently before the commons committee.

According to Brennan, during the course of her nearly twenty-year affair with Vance, many of her superior officers were well aware of the liaisons because she made a point of telling them.

She revealed that while they were both working in Toronto, her and Vance would have sex in his office and in his car. According to Brennan, the two slept together on 16 July 2015, the night before Vance assumed the post of CDS.

After sex that evening, Brennan claims that Vance read through the speech he was to give the following day in which he would stress the importance of stamping out sexual misconduct in the Canadian military.

She told Global News that after the first story broke and before her identity was public, Vance had called her and instructed her to lie to the Canadian Forces National Investigative Service (CFNIS) Investigators when they questioned her.

At the committee hearing she testified that she had provided the CFNIS detectives with the audio recordings of Vance allegedly instructing her to give a false statement.

Brennan also stated that Vance claimed to her that as former CDS he is ‘untouchable’ and that he ‘owns’ the CFNIS.

Last week’s big reveal at the hearings was Brennan’s claim that Vance is the father of two of her eight children and that he pays her no support.

For Journalists covering this story the part about Brennan raising eight children as a single parent was not news. The minute her identity was known a quick Google search unearthed an 8 May 2016 news story in the Ottawa Citizen entitled ‘Army of mom: Captain with 8 kids urges more child-care compensation for big families.’ Supporting her in this quest for additional child care funds was Conservative, MP Pierre Poilievre.

As the opposition critic of Treasury Board, President Scott Brison and her own local MP, Brennan realized that Poilievre was best positioned to help achieve her goal. That and the media coverage by the Citizen complete with a photo of Brennan and her eight children grouped around Poilievre in a local park.

The gist of Brennan’s plea was that in order for her to get promoted from Captain to Major she required professional training courses located outside of Ottawa.

At the time, Treasury Board guidelines only provided a $75 a day allowance per family and that was simply not enough to purchase care for eight kids then aged 16 months to 16 years.

Now Brennan reveals that two of those eight were fathered by Vance, who was the CDS at the time she took her tale to the Citizen. The Army of Mom story also noted that Brennan subsidized her military Captain’s reservist salary with a part-time real estate job.

It was earlier reported that in 2015, the CFNIS had investigated Vance for an alleged extra marital affair while he was stationed at NATO headquarters in Naples, Italy. Vance was cleared of any wrongdoing and subsequently married the alleged mistress, a U.S. JAG officer.

The Harper government subsequently named Vance as their CDS and his first task was to implement Operation Honour, the initiative to wipe out sexual misconduct in the CAF.

If Brennan’s allegations prove to be true – and to be fair, Vance has maintained he has done nothing wrong, including fathering any of Brennan’s children – there will be a lot of people that will have some explaining to do.

Vance would have had a top-level security clearance yet we are to believe that many people were aware of his affair with Brennan and our counter-intelligence folks saw and heard nothing for the past twenty years?

Impossible.

ON TARGET: Afghanistan: Three Decades of Futility?

By Scott Taylor

Last week, U.S. President Joe Biden finally admitted that the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable. Starting in May the remaining American troops - roughly 3,500 - will begin pulling out of their bases in Afghanistan.

By this September 11th, the 20th anniversary of the 9-11 terror attack that spawned the U.S. 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, the last U.S. soldiers will be repatriated home.

The Taliban are celebrating this troop pull-out as their military victory.

For the past two decades, the U.S. have trained, equipped and bankrolled the Afghan forces. Technically this force of nearly 400,000 have been responsible for battling the Taliban since 2014. However without the martial ‘stiffening’ supplied by U.S. special forces and the availability of American air support, the Afghan security forces are no match for the Taliban.

Despite their numbers, these Afghan military units are ill-disciplined and demoralized. They don their uniforms seeking to survive in order to collect their U.S. funded pay cheques, whereas Taliban insurgents are willing to kill themselves in suicide attacks.

Analysts predict that the corrupt U.S.-installed regime of President Ashraf Ghani could hold out in some major urban centers for at most a handful of years. Others predict Ghani’s power will be overthrown as soon as the wheels are up on the last U.S. military evacuation flight from Kabul.

Canada participated in combat operations in Afghanistan from 2002 until December 2011. Our troops continued to deploy to Afghanistan as trainers for the Afghan security forces until the spring of 2014.

When the mission concluded, media outlets began to ask whether or not Canada’s sacrifice had been “worth it?”

The butcher’s bill was steep with 158 soldiers slain, 2047 wounded and injured and thousands more veterans suffering from the unseen mental wounds of PTSD.

The dollar figure spent has yet to be fully tallied but it is estimated that when the long term treatment of our injured veterans is factored into the equation, the war in Afghanistan will have cost taxpayers $22 billion.

On the plus side of the ledger there was not a lot to show in the way of meaningful progress.

At its zenith, the NATO led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) of which Canada was one of more than 50 members – boasted a force in excess of 130,000 troops.

These foreign troops were supported by the most modern air force that money can buy.

Despite that overwhelming force, the Taliban continued to resist.

Their continued existence meant that any progress such as the building of schools was temporary at best.

These facts did not deter the war-mongering cabal of media cheerleaders who vehemently opposed Canada terminating our mission to Afghanistan back in 2014.

Their argument was that we needed to see the job through to its eventual victorious conclusion. They harrumphed with indignity at this ‘insult’ to our martial legacy.

Ludicrous comparisons were made to the Second World War and how we didn’t simply pull out of the alliance before Germany and Japan were defeated.

Well, now that Biden has pulled the plug on the U.S. military commitment, we can be certain that Canada will not be missing out on any victory parade.

The Americans and NATO have lost the war.

What is perhaps the worst element of this sad saga is that the senior leadership in the U.S. knew they were in an unwinnable war from the outset – and they chose instead to lie to the American public.

This was categorically revealed in a series of media reports in December 2019. The Washington Post obtained a set of internal documents compiled by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), through the Freedom of Information Act.

These documents clearly illustrated that the “new Pentagon papers describe explicit and sustained efforts by the U.S. government to deliberately mislead the public.”

Even after the news broke regarding the ‘Afghanistan papers’ as they came to be known, the U.S. did not immediately cut their losses.

Now that they have, perhaps even the most hawkish of our military pundits can ask themselves, was Canada’s contribution worth it?

The answer is ‘no’.