Dean F. Oliver

J.L. Granatstein

English

Scholars Commons

Canadian Military History
Volume 22 | Issue 4 Article 6
4-17-2015
The Somalia Affair The Oxford Companion to
Canadian Military History
J.L. Granatstein
Dean F. Oliver
This Canadian War Museum is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Canadian
Military History by an authorized administrator of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca.
Recommended Citation
J.L. Granatstein and Dean F. Oliver (2015) "The Somalia Affair The Oxford Companion to Canadian Military History," Canadian
Military History: Vol. 22: Iss. 4, Article 6.
Available at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh/vol22/iss4/6
59
The Somalia Affair
The Oxford Companion to Canadian Military History
J.L. Granatstein and Dean F. Oliver
Abstract: The Somalia Affair was 
the military event of the decade. 
Horror, mystery, drama, scandal: it 
was the perfect headline. The shrill 
vindictiveness of critics still fences with 
the dull apologias of the establishment 
in any reading of the period. We wrote 
this entry with both irritants in mind, 
our thoughts fixed firmly on human 
tragedy and human triumph and how, 
in bowdlerizing one, Canadians had 
somehow diminished both. Historians 
will struggle to wrest Somalia from 
the polemicists’ grasp, to temper 
pyrotechnics and folk wisdom with 
analysis, perspective, or knowledge. 
We succumbed here to our own 
disappointments, so rhetoric intrudes 
– and seems warranted, just the same.
Résumé : L’affaire somalienne a été 
l’événement militaire de la décennie. 
Horreur, mystère, drame, scandale; 
les médias en firent des gros titres. 
Le caractère totalement vindicatif des 
critiques côtoie toujours les plates 
excuses des autorités dans tous les 
écrits de l’époque. Nous avons écrit cette 
entrée en pensant à ces deux éléments, 
notre réflexion fermement ancrée tant 
sur la tragédie humaine et que sur le 
triomphe de l’être humain, ainsi que sur 
le fait que, même en expurgeant l’un, les 
Canadiens ont malheureusement réussi 
à diminuer les deux. Les historiens 
devront se débattre pour retirer l’affaire 
somalienne des mains des polémistes, 
pour tempérer les feux d’artifice et la 
sagesse populaire par l’analyse, du 
recul ou des connaissances. Nous avons 
succombé ici à nos propres déceptions, 
et la rhétorique s’infiltre (et semble 
même nécessaire).
In  l a t e  1 9 9 2 ,  t h e  M u l r o n e y government  dispatched the 
Canadian Airborne Regiment 
(CAR) and, a few months later, 
a reconnaissance squadron from 
the Royal Canadian Dragoons, to 
Somalia to serve in a United States-
run humanitarian peace enforcement 
mission. The east African nation was 
a failed state, with warlords fighting 
and people starving, and a previous 
United Nations (UN) operation had 
failed to establish control of the 
situation. The new Unified Task 
Force was authorized by the United 
Nations as a Chapter VII intervention 
under the UN Charter that could use 
force to restore peace.
In the early 1990s, the Canadian 
Forces (CF) had been stretched to the 
breaking point by budget cuts and 
force reductions and a continuing 
string of high-profile and dangerous 
international security deployments. 
In 1992, the CAR, the Canadian 
Forces’ quick reaction force, was 
the only suitable combat unit not 
already deployed, recovering from 
a deployment, or preparing for one. 
The regiment consisted of three 
commandos (equivalent in size and 
capability to infantry companies), 
one each from the three regular force 
infantry regiments.
Stationed in the desert at a dot on 
the map called Belet Huen, the CAR 
lived in tents in the heat and dust, ate 
packaged rations, and tried to restore 
order in the midst of chaos. Locals 
tried to steal what they could from the 
soldiers, and camp security had to be 
progressively tightened. There were 
many incidents, some shooting, and 
several deaths of Somalis until, on 
16 March 1993, 2 Commando caught 
a Somali teenager red-handed and 
took him captive. Two soldiers then 
tortured and killed the boy, Shidane 
Arone, taking trophy photographs of 
the grisly beating. No one intervened, 
despite Arone’s repeated screams 
and pleas for help and the proximity 
of his torture site to surrounding tents 
and other positions. Ottawa learned 
of the death shortly afterwards, 
and there were some punishments 
handed out by a CF board of inquiry. 
Little further happened until, in 
1994 and 1995, videos made by CAR 
soldiers showed racist attitudes and 
vile acts during hazing rituals at 
Canadian Forces Base Petawawa, the 
CAR’s base. The resulting firestorm 
of public criticism all but forced 
the minister of national defence in 
the Chrétien government, David 
Collenette, to order the disbandment 
of the Canadian Airborne Regiment 
on 5 March 1995.
It  was only the beginning. 
On 20 March, the government 
appointed a Commission of Inquiry 
into the Deployment of Canadian 
Forces to Somalia under Judge 
© Canadian Military History, Volume 22, Number 4, Autumn 2013, pp.59-63. 1
and : The Somalia Affair The Oxford Companion to Canadian Military History
Published by Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2015
60
Gilles Letourneau, Judge Robert 
Rutherford, and journalist/academic 
Peter Desbarats. The commission 
was to examine why the CAR was 
chosen for the mission, the events in 
Somalia, and the post-deployment 
phase that involved an alleged cover-
up at National Defence Headquarters 
after the torture and murder of 
Arone had become known. The 
chair, Letourneau, was splenetic, 
aggressive, and openly dismissive 
of many of those called to present 
evidence, regularly badgering 
witnesses. This made sufficiently 
good television fodder that the 
commission’s hearings became a 
public trial of the Canadian Forces 
itself, even though much of the 
coverage was devoted to the almost 
immaterial alteration of press releases 
at National Defence Headquarters. 
There was little public doubt that the 
Access to Information Act had been 
violated as senior officers apparently 
tried to protect their reputations 
and those of their minister. Did this 
represent evidence of systemic failure 
of command? One chief of the defence 
staff, General Jean Boyle, was forced 
to resign as a result of his disastrous 
testimony; other senior officers were 
tainted. The commission rolled 
along, demanding more money, an 
expanded mandate, and additional 
time.
The  government  had had 
enough. After two years, a tough 
and capable Liberal defence minister, 
Doug Young, ordered the slow-
moving commission to produce its 
report promptly and closed it down 
in early 1997. The commissioners, 
t h e  g o v e r n m e n t ’ s  p o l i t i c a l 
opponents, and some members of 
the media cried censorship and 
cover-up. Most sensible observers 
recognized an inquiry that had 
become a headline-hunting fiasco, 
its yelps of mistreatment cloaking 
the steadily diminishing returns 
of an ever-growing mandate. The 
resulting five-volume report was 
unfortunately, if revealingly, titled 
Dishonoured Legacy: The Lessons of the 
Somalia Affair. It offered generally 
sensible  recommendations on 
leadership, accountability, discipline, 
personnel selection, training, and 
rules of engagement. In effect, the 
commissioners declared that no 
future force should deploy without 
proper equipment,  training, a 
clear chain of command, and a full 
understanding of its role. Had any 
Canadian expeditionary force ever 
marched or sailed with such clarity 
of purpose? Complex events and 
uncertain outcomes rarely permitted 
Ph
ot
o 
by
 Je
ff 
Sp
ee
d,
 C
an
ad
ia
n 
W
ar
 M
us
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m
 1
99
40
03
5-
01
8
A Canadian soldier stands watch in rear hatch of a Grizzly armoured personnel carrier as it patrols through a battle-damaged Somali town. 
2
Canadian Military History, Vol. 22 [2015], Iss. 4, Art. 6
http://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh/vol22/iss4/6
61
such assurances. It was not the 
report’s only broad-brush assertion. 
The commission also offered critical 
comments on the Somalia mission, on 
the cover-up of the torture and murder 
and other incidents, and it focused on 
12 officers, including seven generals, 
pronouncing them “failures.” It made 
160 recommendations in all, of which 
the government eventually accepted 
132. It was a reasonable response to 
a long and gruelling investigation 
and painful public flogging, rendered 
quickly and with government thanks 
to still-grumbling ex-commissioners 
and a suspicious Canadian public.
S u b s i d i a r y  r e s e a r c h  o r 
investigative reports produced at the 
commission’s behest, ranging from a 
sociological review of military “tribes” 
to an assessment of the mission’s 
international security lessons, ran 
the gamut from forgettable navel-
gazing to indispensable analysis. 
Every expert, it seemed, understood 
implicitly the deeper causes of the 
Somalia imbroglio, though none – for 
reasons that remained nameless – had 
proffered wisdom before or during 
the ill-fated mission. Pompous reports 
on “lessons learned” were more often 
than not lists of authors’ favourites, 
uncompromised by perspective; 
h e l p f u l  “ r e c o m m e n d a t i o n s ” 
flowed, unbothered by hypocrisy, 
from the military’s fiercest critics. 
Everyone purported to have the 
answer, and most overlooked the 
obvious, Arone’s murder and the 
Airborne’s disciplinary misdeeds 
notwithstanding: in truth, the 
Canadian Forces had performed 
superbly. On a difficult mission 
marred by international apathy and 
local chaos, they had disarmed the 
violent, fed the hungry, provided 
water to ease thirst, and generated 
security to assist daily living in areas 
under Canadian military control. 
Several individuals were decorated 
for acts of uncommon bravery, while 
the force as a whole – the airborne, 
mechanized units ,  engineers , 
doctors, and helicopter pilots – was 
lauded by the campaign’s American 
commander (and many Somalis) as 
one of outstanding professionalism 
and competence, perhaps the best in 
the entire international command.
In the short term, such kudos 
mattered little. The Somalia mission 
became synonymous in public 
parlance with the Somalia inquiry that 
meant, of course, the Somalia scandal 
or, less judgmentally, the Somalia 
affair (the title used here). Its result, 
aside from the eventual disbandment 
of the Canadian Airborne Regiment, 
was much greater caution and 
Ph
ot
o 
by
 Je
ff 
Sp
ee
d,
 C
an
ad
ia
n 
W
ar
 M
us
eu
m
 1
99
40
03
5-
01
8
Ph
ot
o 
by
 Je
ff 
Sp
ee
d,
 C
an
ad
ia
n 
W
ar
 M
us
eu
m
 1
99
40
03
5-
01
7
Master Corporal Patrick Couture, a member of the Canadian Airborne Regiment, inventories confiscated weapons. 
3
and : The Somalia Affair The Oxford Companion to Canadian Military History
Published by Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2015
62
much greater risk aversion among 
Canadian Forces personnel and a 
fear that Ottawa might not support 
independent initiatives on future 
missions. The military soon seemed 
to believe that advice from the judge 
advocate general was a precondition 
for any action. There were rules 
and regulations for everything, 
thick studies to bury all operational 
likelihoods in layers of bureaucratic 
twaddle, special training on ethics, 
accountability, racism, gender 
discrimination, and, more helpfully 
for impending deployments overseas, 
greater attention to local customs, 
languages, social attitudes, and living 
conditions. Attempts to regulate all 
conduct in the field bred hesitancy 
and mistrust, failings that showed in 
deployments in former Yugoslavia 
and elsewhere. Somalia generated 
disgust aplenty at the behaviour of 
some soldiers and their commanders, 
but surprising sophistication in 
public attitudes toward the long-
suffering military. Opinion surveys 
found astonishing support for the 
men and women in uniform, and 
understandable distaste at how the 
Airborne’s now well-publicized 
antics before and after the mission 
could have been permitted to flourish 
and to undermine proud traditions. 
Had emphasis on a supposedly 
American-style  warr ior  e thic 
hijacked sound doctrine and effective 
discipline? Had an accumulation 
of defence cuts and a careerist high 
command ignored basic principles of 
management, leadership, and esprit 
de corps?
There was more truth in bold 
charges than media-shy military 
chiefs cared to admit. The Somalia 
episode over much of a decade 
consumed careers, directorates, 
forests of paper, and eons of media 
time. Parliamentary inquiries into the 
state of the military, and charismatic 
leadership of the kind provided by 
defence minister Doug Young and 
General Rick Hillier (chief of the 
defence staff from 2005) gradually 
Ph
ot
o 
by
 Je
ff 
Sp
ee
d,
 C
an
ad
ia
n 
W
ar
 M
us
eu
m
 1
99
40
03
5-
01
3
Ph
ot
o 
by
 Je
ff 
Sp
ee
d,
 C
an
ad
ia
n 
W
ar
 M
us
eu
m
 1
99
40
03
5-
01
5
Ph
ot
o 
by
 Je
ff 
Sp
ee
d,
 C
an
ad
ia
n 
W
ar
 M
us
eu
m
 1
99
40
03
5-
02
0
Top: Two Somali boys photographed through the razor wire which surrounds the 
Canadian camp at Belet Huen.
Bottom: A crewman of Grizzly armoured personnel carrier observes a Somali 
encampment by the road. Three Somali children wave in the middle of the photo.
4
Canadian Military History, Vol. 22 [2015], Iss. 4, Art. 6
http://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh/vol22/iss4/6
63
restored public confidence, military 
prospects, and operational efficiency. 
The CF culture, unhealthily subsumed 
in management, public affairs, 
defensiveness, and accountancy, 
morphed back toward its warrior 
roots, operational competence, and 
national service. Its connections to 
Canadian values had been far less 
generically threatened than the 
sordid actions of the few in Somalia 
had appeared to indicate, but they 
had nevertheless been threatened. 
The turn of the century found 
such essential bonds emotionally 
reinforced and broadly respected. At 
the same time, studies of the Canadian 
Forces produced for defence minister 
Young in 1997 had focused sharply 
on the ill education of CF officers, 
half of whom (47 percent) had no 
university degree and almost none 
of whom (only 6.8 percent) had 
graduate degrees. This too soon 
began to be remedied, with better 
education and leadership, public and 
political support, and the evident 
competence of Canadian units in the 
field, at home, and abroad.
The Somal ia  af fa ir  led  to 
increased scrutiny of the Canadian 
Forces. Muckraking books and 
articles, denounced regularly by 
senior officials, revealed fiddled 
expense accounts, the evasion of 
responsibility, the cover-up of 
misdeeds, and, at times, a moral 
climate unsuitable for the CF (or 
any public  organizat ion)  and 
unworthy of the country it served. 
The Arone murder and the inquiry-
affair that followed represented, in 
many ways, the nadir of Canada’s 
modern military. Recovery, born 
of media scrutiny, public interest, 
and political attention, was slow 
in coming but gradually decisive. 
Enlightened leadership and the 
overall quality of the rank and file 
were instrumental in seeing the 
Canadian Forces through and beyond 
the pyrotechnics of scandal to the 
force that would perform with near-
unflagging competence on missions 
from Kosovo to Afghanistan.
Ph
ot
o 
by
 Je
ff 
Sp
ee
d,
 C
an
ad
ia
n 
W
ar
 M
us
eu
m
 1
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40
03
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0
The crew of a Canadian Grizzly photographed while on patrol in the Somalian desert near Belet Huen.
J.L. Granatstein has received the Order 
of Canada and the Pierre Berton Award, 
among other distinctions. He is the former 
director and CEO of the Canadian War 
Museum.
Dean F. Oliver is the director of research 
at the Canadian Museum of Civilization. 
In 2010 he was made a Knight in the 
Order of Orange-Nassau by Queen 
Beatrix of the Netherlands.
5
and : The Somalia Affair The Oxford Companion to Canadian Military History
Published by Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2015


The Somalia Affair The Oxford Companion to Canadian Military History

Wilfrid Laurier University

Canadian Military HistoryVolume 22 | Issue 4 Article 64-17-2015The Somalia Affair The Oxford Companion toCanadian Military HistoryJ.L. GranatsteinDean F. OliverThis Canadian War Museum is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in CanadianMilitary History by an authorized administrator of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca.Recommended CitationJ.L. Granatstein and Dean F. Oliver (2015) "The Somalia Affair The Oxford Companion to Canadian Military History," CanadianMilitary History: Vol. 22: Iss. 4, Article 6.Available at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh/vol22/iss4/659The Somalia AffairThe Oxford Companion to Canadian Military HistoryJ.L. Granatstein and Dean F. OliverAbstract: The Somalia Affair was the military event of the decade. Horror, mystery, drama, scandal: it was the perfect headline. The shrill vindictiveness of critics still fences with the dull apologias of the establishment in any reading of the period. We wrote this entry with both irritants in mind, our thoughts fixed firmly on human tragedy and human triumph and how, in bowdlerizing one, Canadians had somehow diminished both. Historians will struggle to wrest Somalia from the polemicists’ grasp, to temper pyrotechnics and folk wisdom with analysis, perspective, or knowledge. We succumbed here to our own disappointments, so rhetoric intrudes – and seems warranted, just the same.Résumé : L’affaire somalienne a été l’événement militaire de la décennie. Horreur, mystère, drame, scandale; les médias en firent des gros titres. Le caractère totalement vindicatif des critiques côtoie toujours les plates excuses des autorités dans tous les écrits de l’époque. Nous avons écrit cette entrée en pensant à ces deux éléments, notre réflexion fermement ancrée tant sur la tragédie humaine et que sur le triomphe de l’être humain, ainsi que sur le fait que, même en expurgeant l’un, les Canadiens ont malheureusement réussi à diminuer les deux. Les historiens devront se débattre pour retirer l’affaire somalienne des mains des polémistes, pour tempérer les feux d’artifice et la sagesse populaire par l’analyse, du recul ou des connaissances. Nous avons succombé ici à nos propres déceptions, et la rhétorique s’infiltre (et semble même nécessaire).In  l a t e  1 9 9 2 ,  t h e  M u l r o n e y government  dispatched the Canadian Airborne Regiment (CAR) and, a few months later, a reconnaissance squadron from the Royal Canadian Dragoons, to Somalia to serve in a United States-run humanitarian peace enforcement mission. The east African nation was a failed state, with warlords fighting and people starving, and a previous United Nations (UN) operation had failed to establish control of the situation. The new Unified Task Force was authorized by the United Nations as a Chapter VII intervention under the UN Charter that could use force to restore peace.In the early 1990s, the Canadian Forces (CF) had been stretched to the breaking point by budget cuts and force reductions and a continuing string of high-profile and dangerous international security deployments. In 1992, the CAR, the Canadian Forces’ quick reaction force, was the only suitable combat unit not already deployed, recovering from a deployment, or preparing for one. The regiment consisted of three commandos (equivalent in size and capability to infantry companies), one each from the three regular force infantry regiments.Stationed in the desert at a dot on the map called Belet Huen, the CAR lived in tents in the heat and dust, ate packaged rations, and tried to restore order in the midst of chaos. Locals tried to steal what they could from the soldiers, and camp security had to be progressively tightened. There were many incidents, some shooting, and several deaths of Somalis until, on 16 March 1993, 2 Commando caught a Somali teenager red-handed and took him captive. Two soldiers then tortured and killed the boy, Shidane Arone, taking trophy photographs of the grisly beating. No one intervened, despite Arone’s repeated screams and pleas for help and the proximity of his torture site to surrounding tents and other positions. Ottawa learned of the death shortly afterwards, and there were some punishments handed out by a CF board of inquiry. Little further happened until, in 1994 and 1995, videos made by CAR soldiers showed racist attitudes and vile acts during hazing rituals at Canadian Forces Base Petawawa, the CAR’s base. The resulting firestorm of public criticism all but forced the minister of national defence in the Chrétien government, David Collenette, to order the disbandment of the Canadian Airborne Regiment on 5 March 1995.It  was only the beginning. On 20 March, the government appointed a Commission of Inquiry into the Deployment of Canadian Forces to Somalia under Judge © Canadian Military History, Volume 22, Number 4, Autumn 2013, pp.59-63. 1and : The Somalia Affair The Oxford Companion to Canadian Military HistoryPublished by Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 201560Gilles Letourneau, Judge Robert Rutherford, and journalist/academic Peter Desbarats. The commission was to examine why the CAR was chosen for the mission, the events in Somalia, and the post-deployment phase that involved an alleged cover-up at National Defence Headquarters after the torture and murder of Arone had become known. The chair, Letourneau, was splenetic, aggressive, and openly dismissive of many of those called to present evidence, regularly badgering witnesses. This made sufficiently good television fodder that the commission’s hearings became a public trial of the Canadian Forces itself, even though much of the coverage was devoted to the almost immaterial alteration of press releases at National Defence Headquarters. There was little public doubt that the Access to Information Act had been violated as senior officers apparently tried to protect their reputations and those of their minister. Did this represent evidence of systemic failure of command? One chief of the defence staff, General Jean Boyle, was forced to resign as a result of his disastrous testimony; other senior officers were tainted. The commission rolled along, demanding more money, an expanded mandate, and additional time.The  government  had had enough. After two years, a tough and capable Liberal defence minister, Doug Young, ordered the slow-moving commission to produce its report promptly and closed it down in early 1997. The commissioners, t h e  g o v e r n m e n t ’ s  p o l i t i c a l opponents, and some members of the media cried censorship and cover-up. Most sensible observers recognized an inquiry that had become a headline-hunting fiasco, its yelps of mistreatment cloaking the steadily diminishing returns of an ever-growing mandate. The resulting five-volume report was unfortunately, if revealingly, titled Dishonoured Legacy: The Lessons of the Somalia Affair. It offered generally sensible  recommendations on leadership, accountability, discipline, personnel selection, training, and rules of engagement. In effect, the commissioners declared that no future force should deploy without proper equipment,  training, a clear chain of command, and a full understanding of its role. Had any Canadian expeditionary force ever marched or sailed with such clarity of purpose? Complex events and uncertain outcomes rarely permitted Photo by Jeff Speed, Canadian War Museum 19940035-018A Canadian soldier stands watch in rear hatch of a Grizzly armoured personnel carrier as it patrols through a battle-damaged Somali town. 2Canadian Military History, Vol. 22 [2015], Iss. 4, Art. 6http://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh/vol22/iss4/661such assurances. It was not the report’s only broad-brush assertion. The commission also offered critical comments on the Somalia mission, on the cover-up of the torture and murder and other incidents, and it focused on 12 officers, including seven generals, pronouncing them “failures.” It made 160 recommendations in all, of which the government eventually accepted 132. It was a reasonable response to a long and gruelling investigation and painful public flogging, rendered quickly and with government thanks to still-grumbling ex-commissioners and a suspicious Canadian public.S u b s i d i a r y  r e s e a r c h  o r investigative reports produced at the commission’s behest, ranging from a sociological review of military “tribes” to an assessment of the mission’s international security lessons, ran the gamut from forgettable navel-gazing to indispensable analysis. Every expert, it seemed, understood implicitly the deeper causes of the Somalia imbroglio, though none – for reasons that remained nameless – had proffered wisdom before or during the ill-fated mission. Pompous reports on “lessons learned” were more often than not lists of authors’ favourites, uncompromised by perspective; h e l p f u l  “ r e c o m m e n d a t i o n s ” flowed, unbothered by hypocrisy, from the military’s fiercest critics. Everyone purported to have the answer, and most overlooked the obvious, Arone’s murder and the Airborne’s disciplinary misdeeds notwithstanding: in truth, the Canadian Forces had performed superbly. On a difficult mission marred by international apathy and local chaos, they had disarmed the violent, fed the hungry, provided water to ease thirst, and generated security to assist daily living in areas under Canadian military control. Several individuals were decorated for acts of uncommon bravery, while the force as a whole – the airborne, mechanized units ,  engineers , doctors, and helicopter pilots – was lauded by the campaign’s American commander (and many Somalis) as one of outstanding professionalism and competence, perhaps the best in the entire international command.In the short term, such kudos mattered little. The Somalia mission became synonymous in public parlance with the Somalia inquiry that meant, of course, the Somalia scandal or, less judgmentally, the Somalia affair (the title used here). Its result, aside from the eventual disbandment of the Canadian Airborne Regiment, was much greater caution and Photo by Jeff Speed, Canadian War Museum 19940035-018Photo by Jeff Speed, Canadian War Museum 19940035-017Master Corporal Patrick Couture, a member of the Canadian Airborne Regiment, inventories confiscated weapons. 3and : The Somalia Affair The Oxford Companion to Canadian Military HistoryPublished by Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 201562much greater risk aversion among Canadian Forces personnel and a fear that Ottawa might not support independent initiatives on future missions. The military soon seemed to believe that advice from the judge advocate general was a precondition for any action. There were rules and regulations for everything, thick studies to bury all operational likelihoods in layers of bureaucratic twaddle, special training on ethics, accountability, racism, gender discrimination, and, more helpfully for impending deployments overseas, greater attention to local customs, languages, social attitudes, and living conditions. Attempts to regulate all conduct in the field bred hesitancy and mistrust, failings that showed in deployments in former Yugoslavia and elsewhere. Somalia generated disgust aplenty at the behaviour of some soldiers and their commanders, but surprising sophistication in public attitudes toward the long-suffering military. Opinion surveys found astonishing support for the men and women in uniform, and understandable distaste at how the Airborne’s now well-publicized antics before and after the mission could have been permitted to flourish and to undermine proud traditions. Had emphasis on a supposedly American-style  warr ior  e thic hijacked sound doctrine and effective discipline? Had an accumulation of defence cuts and a careerist high command ignored basic principles of management, leadership, and esprit de corps?There was more truth in bold charges than media-shy military chiefs cared to admit. The Somalia episode over much of a decade consumed careers, directorates, forests of paper, and eons of media time. Parliamentary inquiries into the state of the military, and charismatic leadership of the kind provided by defence minister Doug Young and General Rick Hillier (chief of the defence staff from 2005) gradually Photo by Jeff Speed, Canadian War Museum 19940035-013Photo by Jeff Speed, Canadian War Museum 19940035-015Photo by Jeff Speed, Canadian War Museum 19940035-020Top: Two Somali boys photographed through the razor wire which surrounds the Canadian camp at Belet Huen.Bottom: A crewman of Grizzly armoured personnel carrier observes a Somali encampment by the road. Three Somali children wave in the middle of the photo.4Canadian Military History, Vol. 22 [2015], Iss. 4, Art. 6http://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh/vol22/iss4/663restored public confidence, military prospects, and operational efficiency. The CF culture, unhealthily subsumed in management, public affairs, defensiveness, and accountancy, morphed back toward its warrior roots, operational competence, and national service. Its connections to Canadian values had been far less generically threatened than the sordid actions of the few in Somalia had appeared to indicate, but they had nevertheless been threatened. The turn of the century found such essential bonds emotionally reinforced and broadly respected. At the same time, studies of the Canadian Forces produced for defence minister Young in 1997 had focused sharply on the ill education of CF officers, half of whom (47 percent) had no university degree and almost none of whom (only 6.8 percent) had graduate degrees. This too soon began to be remedied, with better education and leadership, public and political support, and the evident competence of Canadian units in the field, at home, and abroad.The Somal ia  af fa ir  led  to increased scrutiny of the Canadian Forces. Muckraking books and articles, denounced regularly by senior officials, revealed fiddled expense accounts, the evasion of responsibility, the cover-up of misdeeds, and, at times, a moral climate unsuitable for the CF (or any public  organizat ion)  and unworthy of the country it served. The Arone murder and the inquiry-affair that followed represented, in many ways, the nadir of Canada’s modern military. Recovery, born of media scrutiny, public interest, and political attention, was slow in coming but gradually decisive. Enlightened leadership and the overall quality of the rank and file were instrumental in seeing the Canadian Forces through and beyond the pyrotechnics of scandal to the force that would perform with near-unflagging competence on missions from Kosovo to Afghanistan.Photo by Jeff Speed, Canadian War Museum 19940035-020The crew of a Canadian Grizzly photographed while on patrol in the Somalian desert near Belet Huen.J.L. Granatstein has received the Order of Canada and the Pierre Berton Award, among other distinctions. He is the former director and CEO of the Canadian War Museum.Dean F. Oliver is the director of research at the Canadian Museum of Civilization. In 2010 he was made a Knight in the Order of Orange-Nassau by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.5and : The Somalia Affair The Oxford Companion to Canadian Military HistoryPublished by Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2015

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The Somalia Affair The Oxford Companion to Canadian Military History

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