Victoria Times Colonist
Saturday, March 16, 2013
The death of Shidane Arone at the hands of Canadian soldiers 20 years
ago is often remembered as one of the darkest moments in Canadian
military history.But as the tragic, shocking story of Arone, a
Somali teen who was tortured and killed after he was caught sneaking
into a Canadian compound, fades further into the past, military
historians fear Canada runs the risk of forgetting the lessons of a
catalytic event in the history of the Canadian Forces.
Arone was
just 16 years old when he was captured by Canadian troops outside the
town of Belet Huen. What followed — his torture and death, the widely
circulated images of soldiers smiling and posing alongside his bloodied
body, and the attempted cover-up — proved a transformative event in the
course of Canadian military history.
Stuart Hendin, an expert in
the law of war who represented now-retired Brig.-Gen. Serge Labbe, one
of the senior officers who became caught up in what came to be known as
the Somalia Affair, currently teaches a course on morality, ethics and
leadership at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont.
Saturday
marks the 20th anniversary of Arone's death, "a senseless, brutal act"
that Hendin said "reflected a failure of discipline ... and a failure of
command responsibility" within the Canadian Forces.
Although much
has been done to overhaul the Forces in the two decades since the
disgraced 1993 Somalia peacekeeping mission, Hendin said remembering the
tragedy is key to ensuring it never happens again.
"When we forget the lessons of history," he said, "we're bound to repeat them."
The
now-defunct Canadian Airborne Regiment was sent to Somalia in December
1992 as part of a UN peacekeeping force to help address famine and
political instability in the country.
Months later, news broke of
Arone's death. That, along with news of an earlier, execution-style
killing of another Somali intruder, touched off a national debate on
whether it was just a few "bad apples" or a bigger, systemic problem
within the Canadian military.
The fallout served a purpose by
forcing the military to look inward and change, Hendin said. Today's
military is markedly different from the Canadian military in the
post-Cold War era, largely due to the decade of scrutiny and
introspection that followed the Somalia affair.
Two men were
charged in the death. Pte. Kyle Brown served one-third of his five-year
sentence for manslaughter and torture. Master Cpl. Clayton Matchee, who
suffered brain damage after attempting suicide in 1993, was found unfit
to stand trial. Charges against him were stayed in 2008.
The
federal government commissioned a public inquiry in 1995 as more details
emerged. The inquiry was shut down in 1996 before finishing its work,
releasing its final report a year later.
Walter Dorn, a professor
at the Canadian Forces College in Toronto, said he agrees some of the
progress made after Somalia is being allowed to languish, particularly
since Canada no longer seems to embrace its traditional role as a
peacekeeper.
"It means that Canadian soldiers are less experienced
and less knowledgeable and less well-prepared for peacekeeping and our
peace operations in general," said Dorn, noting that he doesn't think
Canada suffers from the same institutional failings that enabled Arone's
torture and death.
The federal government's forthcoming Bill
C-15, which proposes changes to the military justice system, could pose
just such a risk, warned Peter Tinsley, the chief prosecutor for the
Somalia cases in the 1990s.
The bill — which seeks to balance
military police independence against the ability of commanders to hold
them to account — files in the face of two decades of effort spent
making military police more independent, Tinsley said.
"None of (the prosecutors) were proud of the events that took place," he said. "But we did our jobs."
Last
month, Glenn Stannard, chairman of the Military Police Complaints
Commission,told a Commons committee the bill would curtail guidelines
that have been in place "since the period following the troubled Somalia
deployment,which specifically sought to safeguard MP investigations
from interference by the chain of command."
The bill "doesn't bode well and doesn't recognize the lessons that should have been learned in Somalia," Tinsley said.
The
Canadian government remodelled the Canadian Forces by completely
revamping education and professional standards. Officers must now have a
university degree, military education offerings were expanded to
emphasize arts and culture, an ombudsman was appointed, an independent
military journal was created and the way in which CF trained and
prepared for missions was updated.
At Canadian military colleges,
the lessons of Somalia have not been forgotten. "It was a national shame
that should be acknowledged and the lessons continually remembered,"
said Dorn, who uses the Somalia affair as a case study in his classes.
Members
of the modern-day Canadian military who remember the Somalia affair
also hope it's never repeated, said David Bercuson, the director of the
Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary.
"Anyone
in the military with a long memory will know that has happened at least
once, and will also know that that can happen again, and they don't
like it one bit," he said. "People will think twice before trying to
pull the sorts of stuff that was pulled."
While there have been
instances of torture and abuse since 1993, both Dorn and Hendin agreed
Arone's death and the Somalia affair are unique.
"Arone is
different," Hendin said. "What is frightening about the Arone matter is
that there were, within earshot, individuals who could and should have
stopped what was happening, and they didn't — and that represents an
absolute failure of command responsibility at several levels."
Canadian
soldiers have a responsibility to humanity, their country and their
chain of command, he said, and if "they lose that perspective, then
things can happen."