Darfur update: Somebody please tell Jack Layton about this

The Toronto Star says the government should answer this question from "Jack Layton and his team" during the Commons take-note debate on Afstan:

Does Canada have the military resources to take part in another mission, say to Darfur, where hundreds of thousands of lives are at risk?

Does Mr Layton think Canadian troops should somehow go it alone?

NATO is discussing its possible future involvement in Sudan's violent Darfur region but has no plans to send a military ground force, an alliance spokeswoman said on Monday.

The spokeswoman, Carmen Romero, declined to comment on a report by The Washington Post that said the United States backed a proposal to send several hundred NATO advisers to support an African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur.

"We are not talking of a NATO force in Darfur; this is out of the question," she said, adding any personnel would be involved only in logistical support or training...

The proposed deployment would be intended as an interim measure until a larger U.N. force, with a broader mandate than the African Union force, could be sent, the newspaper said...

But no UN force will be authorized by the Security Council unless Russia and China agree--and most probably the Sudanese government as well. And their agreements do not seem likely.

Just guess who has major oil interests in Sudan: China. Sometimes it really is about oil.

The Globe's John Ibbitson should be told too.

Update: Maj.-Gen. ((ret'd)) Lewis MacKenzie (much as I respect him) appears unaware that NATO has no intention of sending an intervention force.

The answer to Darfur's disaster and Khartoum's intransigence is for the Security Council to subcontract the rescue mission to NATO.

Not that the Russians or Chinese would agree to the subcontracting in the first place. But I do agree with Gen. MacKenzie's criticism of Gen. Dallaire in the article.

Upperdate: In any case why bother to talk about any serious Canadian contribution (to a serious intervention force, UN or NATO, that is most unlikely to materialize) when Minister of National Defence O'Connor ackwnowledges that we don't have the troops anyway?

Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor says the military won't be taking on any additional overseas commitments in the near future, in spite of recent discussions over whether Canada should be more involved in the Darfur region of Sudan.

... "We can maintain the commitment in Afghanistan into the future if the government chooses to do so, but we will be greatly challenged to take on any substantial commitment anywhere else offshore."

O'Connor told reporters at CFB Petawawa that the Conservative government will limit overseas military operations to Afghanistan, and that Canada's military needs to be rebuilt, which requires the work of top personnel.

O'Connor said the priority is to improve the military through recruitment and training...

When will our commentators and politicians stop blowing smoke over Darfur? We are simply irrelevant so let's shut up instead of endlessly wringing our hands over "doing something" that a) we cannot, and b) nobody else is really going to do either.

Uppestdate: This piece in the Ottawa Citizen, April 16, get things more correctly than most but still does not face reality in the urge that Canada "do something. Three key points are slid over: 1) the unlikelihood of China's or Russia's agreeing to a Chapter VII UN force; 2) the resistance of Khartoum to any UN force; and 3) the matter of why other countries would listen to Canada's urging them to intervene when we have no serious forces to bring to the table and place at risk.

Posted by markc at April 12, 2006 12:15 PM