Scarce Heard amid the Guns: An Inside Look at Canadian Peacekeeping, by John Conrad

Abstract

John Conrad Scarce Heard amid Guns: An Inside Look at Canadian Peacekeeping Toronto: Dundurn, 2011. 327 pp. $26.99 (paper) ISBN 978-1-55488-981-5Reviewed by: Alistair D. Edgar, Wilfrid Laurier UniversityLieutenant-Colonel John Conrad's second book with Dundurn Press follows up his earlier memoir, What Thunder Said, an account of his operational experiences in 2006 as Canadian logistics battalion commander supporting Task Force Orion in Kandahar, Afghanistan. As day-to-day war diary, What Thunder Said was stirring and insightful personal account of at times desperate Canadian logistics effort. It should be read alongside Task Force Orion Regional Command South commander Lieutenant-Colonel Ian Flope's excellent Dancing with Dushman (Canadian Defence Academy Press, 2006). Conrad's latest effort, informed by his own service as peacekeeper in Cambodia and in Bosnia, takes different turn, and an especially interesting one when read and understood against this background knowledge of his recent service in Afghanistan. Scarce Heard amid Guns offers significant Canadian history, written and presented in popular and personal rather than academic language.The motivating force behind Conrad's current venture is his frustration that the Canadian legacy has recently been maligned by soldiers seeking to ensure that sustained combat nature of Kandahar is noticed, and by political leaders who want to show that they 'get' proper use of Canadian (21). As Conrad observes with passion that his work well expresses, For heaven's sake, this country once had much broader philosophy (21).In place of this wider vision, a proposal to return to UN would be scoffed at, shouted down in dialogue, seen as real step backwards by those smart people whom Conrad believes are intoxicated perhaps by institutional groupthink, and whose prejudice is based on a deep and fundamental misunderstanding of history of Canadian participation with UN and true nature of peacekeeping (22).As Conrad argues in part I of Scarce Heard, there is popular mythology about that does not serve it well: first, that Canadian Armed Forces are, or should be, primarily force; second, that is about conducting unarmed, humanitarian missions for altruistic purposes; and third, that has been and remains heavily invested in peacekeeping. None of these assumptions and beliefs is true. Canada is not nation of peacekeepers, rather, it is nation capable of generating peacekeepers from finest military cloth (55), asserts Conrad; only combat-capable forces can be truly good peacekeepers. This is what makes Canadians good at it-world-class, competent soldiers, not just DNA (64).To support his case, author offers chronological tour of Canadian engagement in UN missions. He notes Canadian military participation in earliest operations, including UN Truce Supervision Organization in Middle East (UNTSO) and UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP), with first Canadian fatality in UN mission being Brigadier-General Harry Angle, who died in 1950 when his plane crashed in Himalayas. Conrad takes us through three historical phases of operations. He labels first phase classic operations of 1956-1973, which included atypical UN Congo operation (ONUC), in latter stages of which Canadian BrigadierGeneral Jacques Mad Jimmy Dextraze served as chief of staff. The second is golden age of 1973-1988, latter year also marking beginning of Canadian involvement in Afghanistan with five officers who participated in UN Good Offices Mission in Afghanistan and Pakistan (UNGOMAP). …