It’s not often you hear stories about the Canadian military, since we are often forgotten in the grandeur that is the United States Military. However, the Trudeau government has just promised to send up to 600 troops to Africa, as well as spend $450 million on peacekeeping operations within the continent. Many questions have arisen because of this, the biggest being: Africa is not a single country, but a diverse continent with many different countries; so where in Africa are our troops going to be sent? Not only that, but what will this mean for Canada’s involvement in Africa. Does this mean that Canada will play a bigger role in trying to create world peace?
The announcement was made by the chief of defence staff, General Jonathan Vance on the 14th of July of this year. The troops are assumed to be in Africa for a long term deployment, since the Canadian ambassador to the UN referred to Africa as “no quick fix”.
But where in Africa? Africa is a big place. There is conflict all over the continent, but the most possible place that the troops would be deployed is in Mali. Mali is a mainly desert country that is in the midst of a civil war. There were recently peace talks between the sides but the ceasefire was broken, resulting with up to 20 dead in the North on July 22nd. This fight is between a pro-government militia and the nomadic Taureg rebels. There is no clear good or bad guy in this conflict, especially to a Western moral viewpoint that Canada and the Liberal party holds.
However, there is a problem that lies at the base of all of this, for Canada and the Western world at least. When the Canadian military announced they would be sending troops, it was announced that they were sending troops “to Africa”. Now this is probably because there were not sure where in Africa they were going to send the troops, it must be noted that when sending troops into other continents, there is always a specific country named. By saying we’re sending troops to ‘Africa’, rather than being more specific, it creates a mentality that Africa is one big politically unstable country. This is incredibly untrue, even if there are many African countries are unstable to play off the entire continent as unstable is unfair to the democratic countries that are fairly stable, such as South Africa.
Not only this, but referring to, in this case Mali, as ‘Africa’ severely restricts the way many Canadians view African culture. Africa is already turned into a stereotype often enough by Western Media by how most ‘African’ characters are played by Djimon Hounsou or individuals like him, and always as the same stock ‘African’ character. The culture of Mali is deeply rich, as can be seen by the Lords of the Desert and the Taureg. Not to mention, it is so different from other North African cultures like Egypt and East African cultures like Kenya, that they cannot be put in the same category. And yet, by saying you are sending troops to ‘Africa’ you are lumping them all together.
Not much can be said yet about how the troops will affect peace in Mali, or in the rest of Africa, but the point stands that if Canada is not able to look at Africa as a diverse continent with different citizens and perspectives, then they will not be able to do much good at all.
References:
http://www.aljazeera.com/topics/country/mali.html
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2016/country-chapters/mali
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-peacekeeping-announcement-1.3736593
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/un-ambassador-peacekeeping-africa-1.3736907
Image Sources:
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