Some won't like what this says.... but there it is, and by the way, I'm an ex Patrica (2PPCLI)
Segregation not always a bad thing By SCOTT TAYLOR | 6:06 AM
RECENT MEDIA reports out of Afghanistan have hinted that there is a slight (might be an understatement) rift between the outgoing anglophone Canadian units and the newly arrived French speaking Royal 22nd Regiment (Vandoos). One anecdote detailed how members of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry were instructing their Afghan police recruits on some basic French phrases. Using phonetic repetition in the belief that they were learning how to say "Hello, how are you?" in French, the Afghans were overheard chanting "F- - - you, Vandoo" by an embedded journalist.
Such sophomoric practical jokes could easily be dismissed as harmless inter-regimental rivalry, but those familiar with our army’s recent past know that the animosity between our anglophone and francophone combat units runs deeper than that. One of the reasons for this is that the senior brass has consistently oversold the Vandoos, and the media have bought into the largely unwarranted hype without question.
In the weeks leading up to the troop rotation currently underway, any reference to the Vandoos was invariably embellished with a glowing adjective such as "famed," "fabled" or "storied." (Or "vaunted.") Until now, the combat operations in Afghanistan have been conducted (repeatedly) by either the Princess Patricia’s Light Infantry or the Royal Canadian Regiment, and yet neither of these units receives similarly fawning monikers in the national press.
When one factors in that the casualty count of 66 dead and 260 wounded to date has been borne solely by these anglophone regiments, one can understand their resentment when headlines herald the francophones arrival with such phrases as "Vandoos bring can-do spirit to Afghanistan." Without having taken a single patrol outside the wire in Kandahar, one francophone officer told reporters he felt his troops could do "a better job" at reconstruction than the homeward bound veterans.
Lost in the media love affair is the fact that the Vandoos were directly responsible for three of the biggest black eyes the Canadian military received during the scandal-plagued 1990s.
First there was the release of a notorious hazing video depicting Vandoo paratroopers engaged in public acts of drunkenness, nudity, defecation, feces-ingestion and simulated sodomy, all of which directly led to the 1995 disbandment of the entire Canadian Airborne Regiment.
And in 1996 it was revealed that a large number of Vandoos had discredited themselves while guarding a mental hospital in Bakovici, Bosnia. Among the allegations was that an officer had sex with a female patient while his drunken troops shouted encouragement. Despite internal police reports and evidence, the military brass had kept the lid on this scandal for three years. Subsequent investigations implicated nearly three dozen Vandoos in the misconduct, but due to the expired statute of limitations, no charges were laid and names of the accused were not released. The entire army was tarnished by the scandal.
Later that same year, Lt.-Gen. Armand Roy, the senior serving Vandoo, was dismissed from his post as the deputy chief of defence staff. Publicly fired from the army, Roy was ordered to repay more than $86,000 that he had allegedly misappropriated.
The rank and file were shell-shocked to learn that the Judge Advocate General would not press charges against the disgraced general, the most senior official in Canada ever dismissed for theft. The double standard of justice led to a collapse of faith in the military hierarchy and a top-to-bottom review of the military justice system.
That being stated, I have no doubt that the current rotation of Vandoos into Afghanistan is eager to erase the recent past and will set out to earn the copious praise that has been heaped upon them. What we should learn from our own linguistic diversity is that despite the fact we are an officially (but not in any practical sense) bilingual army, in order to maximize efficiency at the operational level we recognize the need to have segregated combat units.
As we shift the focus to training the Afghan National Army, perhaps the architects of this new force should look to the Canadian example. Rather than simply herding together Afghan recruits into one single battalion, why not separate them into sub-units that allow them to train and fight with members of their own language and ethnicity?
For the record, there are 10 major ethnic factions in Afghanistan — Pashtu, Persian, Uzbek, Tajik, Turkmen, Hazara, Baluch, Waziri, Kirgiz and Arab — and their past history of bitter inter-sectarian violence runs far deeper than our little Canadian inter-regimental rivalries.
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staylor@herald.ca)
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