While millions of Pakistanis in internal refugee camps struggle with shattered lives in the aftermath of last month’s floods that destroyed farms, crops and livelihoods, Canada’s Disaster Assistance Response Team appears to be stuck on the launch pad.
The reasons could have to do with the realities of Canada’s war in Afghanistan and the fact that, to put it mildly, our military may not be a popular item in many parts of Pakistan.
Certainly, there’s widespread sentiment here that DART’s 200 soldiers should already be on the ground in the flooded areas doing useful things like ramping up water purification systems and rebuilding damaged infrastructure like bridges, roads and electrical systems.
In disaster relief, says Walter Dorn, a professor at Canadian Forces College, “the big advantage of the military is rapid deployment. We haven’t seen much of that [by Canada], and it is disappointing.”
It’s not clear what the holdup is, since Foreign Affairs is keeping its cards close to its chest on the matter, but some observers believe the sticky issue is Pakistan’s demand that Canuck troops go unarmed.
Despite a late August press report that Pakistan is about to issue a formal request for DART, Canadian Foreign Affairs spokesperson Dana Cryderman denies that is the case, saying that only “informal discussions” with Islamabad on the subject are happening at the moment.
“In general, should a decision be made to deploy Canadian civilian or military personnel, a thorough analysis of the security situation would be conducted to determine requirements for the safety and security of government of Canada personnel,” she tells NOW.
Given the level of fighting in Afghanistan and the near civil war in Pakistan, you can see the problem. Dorn points out that Canadians are dying in Afghanistan fighting a Pashtun-? based insurgency that has roots in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. At the same time, terrorist attacks have occurred in all regions of Pakistan, not just in the Pashtun northwest border areas.
Locals will see Canadian DART soldiers “as enemies in their homeland,” he says. “There may be people living in Pakistan who are making plans to kill Canadians in Afghanistan. I think Canadians in Pakistan offer themselves as a target. There is a segment of the population that is virulently anti-?American,” and by extension, he says, anti-?NATO.
Still, some experts feel the hostility to Canadian forces in Pakistan is overstated. Carleton University Asian specialist Elliot Tepper believes desperate flood victims will be happy to receive aid even if it comes via outsiders in uniform.
The issue of whether DART members can be armed will come up in Ottawa-Islamabad discussions, he says, because Pakistan is leery of armed soldiers appearing from just anywhere. But he says he’s been told that Canuck troops bearing arms “is not a deal-breaker.”
It might even be too late to send the team (which has only been used five times since its inception in 1996), he suggests, given how many civilian NGOs are on the ground already.
But not everyone wants to see the Canadian military show its face on Pakistani soil. “If you bring in weapons, you militarize aid, and militarizing aid risks local relationships that NGOs have,” says Nicolas Moyer, coordinator of the Humanitarian Coalition, which represents Canadian NGOs including Save the Children, Oxfam and CARE. “As agencies, we cannot stand next to the people holding weapons.”
Relief workers must be neutral, he says, to avoid creating enemies, upsetting local elites and getting shot, he tells NOW. There’s already a power relationship between foreign aid workers distributing food and crowds of hungry people scrambling for sustenance.
“Would Canada allow a foreign country to send armed troops here if we had a big flood? We’d certainly appreciate their help, but would we want them coming in with guns?”
The Pakistani government has generally been restricting foreign militaries engaged in flood relief from bringing or carrying their weapons, says Pakistan expert Shibil Siddiqi, a fellow at the Centre for the Study of Global Power and Politics at Trent U.
“Over 500 unarmed Japanese troops have been conducting relief operations for about the last two weeks,” he says. “These restrictions [on foreign troops] are likely tied up with domestic political issues. Pakistan’s government is often seen as not doing enough to preserve the country’s sovereignty in the face of drone attacks, border incursions and the secret operation of armed mercenaries.”
Still, by all accounts an exception has been made for U.S. soldiers who were providing training to the Pakistani army prior to the flood. Siddiqi says Pakistan probably knows the U.S. would allow no negotiation on this point.
But allowing Canadian troops to bring their weapons, he says, “would be a whole different ball game and would open up new channels of criticism against the government.”
On reflection, he concludes, “It is probably in Canada’s best interests not to send armed troops. The worst thing that could happen to Canada’s image would be if our troops got engaged in a fatal firefight on Pakistani soil.”
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