MILITARIZED MASCULINITIES AND THE POLITICS OF PEACEKEEPING:

THE CANADIAN CASE1

The image of a Canadian soldier wearing his blue beret, standing watch at some

lonely outpost in a strife-torn foreign land, is part of the modern Canadian mosaic,

and a proud tradition.

General Paul Manson2

Arone lapsed in and out of consciousness during the beating. When he was

conscious, he was heard to scream “Canada, Canada,” on several occasions....

Murder of Shidane Arone by Canadian soldiers, 16 March 19933

The image of Canada as peacekeeper, so aptly described above by former Chief of the

Defence Staff General Paul Manson, has long-served as one of the “core myths”4 of Canada’s

“imagined community.”5 That myth locates Canada as an altruistic and benign middle-power, acting

with a kind of moral purity not normally exhibited by contemporary states. Thus when two Canadian

soldiers beat to death a Somali teenager, Shidane Abukar Arone, in March 1993 - using their fists,

their boots, a baton, a metal rod and cigarettes - the myth was reasserted at the very moment it began

to disintegrate. Arone’s only words in English that night were to repeat the name “Canada, Canada”

throughout his ordeal. The myth had been sold so well, even a sixteen year old Somali shepherd,

murdered by those who were supposed to be its exemplars, apparently believed in it.

Arone’s tragic death, and the shooting two weeks earlier of two Somali men by Canadian
 2

soldiers, sparked a series of Courts Martials and eventually prompted the Canadian Government to

launch a Commission of Inquiry to investigate the activities of its Forces in Somalia. Intended as

much to resuscitate the image of Canada’s military and Canada’s reputation internationally, many

of those investigations focused on problems of a “few bad apples” or otherwise lamented a decline

of traditional military values. More rarely were the events of Somalia associated with the problems

of militarized masculinity and the use of soldiers - people trained to destroy other human beings by

force - in peace operations.6 However, the dramatic expansion of peacekeeping missions in the post-

Cold War period demands such an analysis. The events in Somalia revealed not only some of the

contradictions of one of Canada’s “core myths,” but underscored as well the pervasiveness, and

effects of, militarized masculinity within issues of international security.

MASCULINITIES AND PEACEKEEPING

Since the end of the Cold War, it has become commonplace to note that there has been a

proliferation of peacekeeping missions: the United Nations (UN) launched fifteen between 1956 and

1989, and a further twenty-two peacekeeping missions between 1989 and 1995 alone.7 The

proliferation of missions has led also to a proliferation of peacekeeping personnel deployed around

the world: in 1991 the UN deployed some 11,000 blue helmets, and by 1994 the number of

peacekeepers in the field numbered well over 75,000.8 Those missions also have become much more

complex, departing from the traditional interposition of neutral forces between belligerent groups

to include, for example, military and police functions, the monitoring of human rights, the conduct

of elections, the delivery of humanitarian aid, the repatriation of refugees, the creation and conduct

of state administrative structures, and so on.9

Peacekeeping, and peace operations generally, became the way in which the UN asserted its
 3

visibility internationally, and many cited peacekeeping as “perhaps the major instrument of

diplomacy available to the United Nations for insuring peace and international security.”10 That

instrument, however, continues to depend primarily on the use of soldiers to serve as the personnel

for peace operations. Nobody knows better than militaries themselves what is involved in the

creation of a soldier. As Major R.W.J. Wenek wrote in 1984:“The defining role of any military force

is the management of violence by violence, so that individual aggressiveness is, or should be, a

fundamental characteristic of occupational fitness in combat units.”11 These are the kinds of qualities

feminist scholars point to when they note the way in which most militaries promote a particular kind

of masculinity, one premised on violence and aggression, institutional unity and hierarchy,

“aggressive heterosexism and homophobia,” as well as misogyny and racism.12

The argument of this chapter is that peacekeeping may have resolved what was a crisis of

legitimation for some post-Cold War militaries, but it did so in a way that is not fully or properly,

militaristic. Restrictions on firing weapons only in self-defence and a sometimes multilateral chain

of command disrupt prevailing notions of military purpose and structure. Within traditional military

culture, peacekeeping and peace operations are often ridiculed and demeaned: much as they have

become increasingly important within the post-Cold War era, there is not the same prestige

associated with a ‘blue beret fight’ for the (mostly) young men trained to do battle who we deploy

on these missions. The resolution of the military’s legitimation crisis becomes to some extent a crisis

of masculinity. The tensions which emerge, and their sometimes horrifying consequences, are made

clear by examining the Canadian case.

CANADA AND PEACEKEEPING

As has been suggested, peacekeeping is an extremely popular activity within Canada. This
 4

is in contrast to the far more ambivalent position on peacekeeping found in the United States, where

peacekeeping does not appear to receive the same widespread public support as in Canada and where

peace operations generally are treated with considerable caution, and sometimes outright hostility.

It is difficult to imagine the Canadian state falling into arrears to the UN for peacekeeping

contributions, a consistent problem with the US state; and equally unthinkable that a Canadian

soldier would be lauded by some political elites for refusing to serve under UN command as

occurred in the United States with the 1995 case of Specialist Michael New.13 Peacekeeping in

Canada, by contrast, was reviewed favourably in the most recent reviews of both foreign and defence

policy as central, primary to our foreign and security policies. As the 1994 Defence Department

statement noted:

In virtually every one of these [successful peacekeeping] cases,

Canada has played a constructive and often leading role. Canadians

are rightly proud of what their country - their military - has done in

this regard. Indeed, the demand for our services, and arguably the

need, is growing. Since 1988, the United Nations has undertaken

more peacekeeping missions than in the previous thirty-five years,

and Canada has been a key participant in almost every one of them.14

Likewise, as Janice Stein reported to the Special Joint Committee reviewing Canada's foreign policy

in 1994, "the overwhelming sense [is] that this is an area of comparative advantage for Canadians."15

Canadian government documents reveal an assumption not only that Canadians are

experienced and committed peacekeepers, but that peacekeeping is a clear extension of Canadian

values on the international stage. As the 1995 Government Statement, Canada in the World noted:
 5

Canadians are confident in their values and in the contribution these

values make to the international community ... Our principles and

values - our culture - are rooted in a commitment to tolerance; to

democracy, equity and human rights; to the peaceful resolution of

differences; to the opportunities and challenges of the marketplace;

to social justice; to sustainable development; and to easing poverty.16

Or as Stéphane Dion, President of the Privy Council and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs,

enthusiastically commented: “Canada is a good global citizen, projecting beyond our borders our

values of generosity, tolerance and an unswerving commitment to peace and democracy.”17

Such widespread government support does not mean that there are not disagreements within

the Canadian government about peacekeeping. The Department of National Defence's enthusiasm

for peacekeeping is tempered somewhat by the disadvantages associated with the popularity of an

activity which does not require nearly as much capital expenditure as the geo-strategic defence of

Canada and its allies. As the Defence White paper stated repeatedly, there is more to defence than

peacekeeping, or as Major General (retired) Glen Younghusband pointed out to the Special Joint

Committee Reviewing Canada's defence policy in 1994, "To believe that Canada will never require

a greater military capability than peacekeeping is wishful thinking, and a defence policy based on

wishful thinking would be dangerous indeed."18

But in general, the advantages of peacekeeping are widely accepted, and government support

for peacekeeping is reflected also within the general population. In the 1995 foreign policy review

conducted by the Canadian government, women's groups which appeared before the Joint Committee

provided a number of important criticisms of peacekeeping, but most of the groups were quite
 6

supportive and viewed it as an element of defence which should be expanded.19 Peace groups often

note the importance of shifting the emphasis of the Canadian military from "combat to

peacekeeping."20 In 1992, even the Citizens' Inquiry into Peace and Security (an ‘alternative' foreign

and defence review organized by the Canadian Peace Alliance and funded by a number of largely

peace, native and labour NGOs) found that support for peacekeeping activities was "virtually

unanimous".21

The image of Canada as peacekeeper has also served a variety of important political goals

of the Canadian government. As Joseph T. Jockel notes, "Canada's reputation as a good international

`citizen', a reputation acquired partially through extensive peacekeeping, may have strengthened its

position in the UN across a wide range of issues on the world agenda."22 It certainly played a role

in Canada’s successful bid for a Security Council seat in 1998 and Jockel notes that in the post-Cold

War period:

Canada was the peacekeeping country par excellence, having

contributed to virtually all UN peacekeeping operations ... [its]

peacekeeping experience, coupled with its well-recognized

commitment to the UN, appeared to have left it especially suited to

play if not a leading role, then at least a significant one in the building

of the new world order.23

Indeed, as numerous commentators have noted, it has been Canada’s involvement in peacekeeping

and its “history of altruism, compassion, fairness, and of doing things irrespective of our own

national interest” which gives it influence internationally far out of proportion to its military or

economic power.”24 As Carol Off writes: “Canada is one of only a handful of nations that include
 7

peacekeeping as a permanent part of their national defence, and no other country gives peacekeeping

such a defining role in its international politics. It’s in our genetic code as a nation.”25

The Canadian soldier as peacekeeper is not a warrior but a protector. These are assumptions

that fit very well with the more generalized notions of moral purity which pervade Canadian foreign

policy26 and the much-touted view of Canada as a ‘middle-power’ which has informed most

government statements and mainstream analyses of Canadian foreign policy since the Second World

War. As the“seasoned veterans”27 of peacekeeping, Canadian soldiers are expected to know how to

act when deployed abroad. It is that reputation that makes the experience of Canadian soldiers in

Somalia so revealing of the practices associated with militarized masculinity.

THE REPUTATION TARNISHED: CANADIAN PEACEKEEPERS IN SOMALIA

The very favourable image associated with Canadian peacekeeping was shaken to its core

when reports emerged from Belet Huen, Somalia of the shooting of two Somali men and then the

subsequent torture and murder of Arone by members of Canada’s elite Airborne Regiment.28 The

two men, one of whom died, were shot in the back, and while an initial investigation concluded that

the Airborne soldiers had acted properly, a Canadian military doctor later reported that the dead man

had been shot once in the back and then “someone had finished him off with a ... lethal shot to the

head.” 29 The doctor reported, moreover, that he had been pressured to destroy his medical records

concerning the alleged murder.30 Canada’s peacekeeping image was rocked even further when, at

Courts Martials proceedings, it was revealed that Shidane Arone’s torturers had photographed his

ordeal. The photographs, described as “trophy photos,”depicted two soldiers, Master Corporal

Clayton Matchee and Private Elvin Kyle Brown striking various poses with the bloodied Arone, one

of which showed Matchee holding a loaded pistol to Arone’s head and another in which Matchee
 8

forced Arone’s mouth open with the riot baton.

The first reaction by mainstream observers of peacekeeping in Canada to the Arone murder

was to dismiss it as the act of a few `bad apples',31 most likely the result of years of underfunding,

which had led to the deployment of a unit not ready for duty.32 The bad apple theory was

undermined when, some months after the Inquiry was called into the events in Somalia, a number

of videos were released to the Canadian media. The first was a video from the Somalia mission,

taken by Canadian soldiers on duty there as a personal record, portions of which portrayed Airborne

soldiers describing it as "Operation Snatch Niggers" with others lamenting that “they had not shot

enough niggers yet.” The second video depicted the Airborne's hazing (or initiation) rituals which

included, among other things, images of Airborne soldiers vomiting or eating vomit, being smeared

with feces, and with the single black soldier in the regiment being forced to walk around on all fours

with the phrase `I love the KKK' written on his back.33 The problem, it would appear from the

videos, was far more pervasive than could be accounted by blaming only ‘a few bad apples’.

The Courts Martials eventually found one of the men involved in Arone’s murder, Elvin Kyle

Brown, guilty of torture and manslaughter; it convicted him to five years in prison and dismissed him

in disgrace. Clayton Matchee tried to commit suicide after his arrest in Somalia, suffered brain

damage, and was found unfit to stand trial at his subsequent Courts Martial. Other soldiers who had

heard but not stopped the beating and murder were found guilty of lesser charges, and after the

release of the hazing videos, the Airborne Regiment itself was disbanded.

The government Inquiry that had been called to investigate the events in Somalia was halted

before it could actually examine Arone’s murder. The Inquiry had exceeded the set time limit for its

investigation and the Canadian Government refused any further extensions. This was the first time
 9

in Canadian history that a Commission of Inquiry of this magnitude was brought to a halt before its

completion. But the Commissioners did hear extensive evidence on pre-deployment issues as well

as the shooting on 4 March 1993. Its five volume report, entitled Dishonoured Legacy, while critical

of the military in a number of important respects, picked up on the theme which had already been

emphasized by military apologists. The problem was not one of the military itself, but rather one of

a military gone wrong. As military historian David Bercuson noted, the Canadian military had

become stifled by budget cuts, was over-bureaucratized and staffed by career-minded “cover your

ass” officers who have replaced the disciplined and honourable leaders of the past.34 The problem,

in short, was a failure of traditional military values.

FEMINIST AND CRITICAL QUESTIONS

Feminists and critical theorists might ask instead whether the “problem” was actually one of

military values themselves. Theorists of both militarism and of masculinity have long argued the

intimate connection between military organisations and hegemonic representations of masculinity.35

As David Morgan writes:

Of all the sites where masculinities are constructed, reproduced, and

deployed, those associated with war and the military are some of the

most direct. Despite far-reaching political, social, and technological

changes, the warrior still seems to be a key symbol of masculinity. In

statues, heroic paintings, comic books, and popular films the

gendered connotations are inescapable. The stance, the facial

expressions, and the weapons clearly connote aggression, courage, a

capacity for violence, and, sometimes, a willingness for sacrifice. The

uniform absorbs individualities into a generalized and timeless

masculinity while also connoting a control of emotion and a

subordination to a larger rationality.36

And this is as true of Canada’s ostensibly benign and altruistic peacekeepers as it is of soldiers

elsewhere. Indeed, what has been particularly revealing in the Canadian case has been the dangerous

behaviour which erupts when soldiers trained “to engage in wanton destruction and to slip the

bonds of civilized behaviour”37 are limited and constrained to “mere” peacekeeping duty. From this

perspective, what Somalia demonstrated was not a departure from traditional military values but

rather their brutal conclusion.

Most feminist analyses of militaries and militarism focus on the ways in which the qualities

demanded by militaries - the requisite lust for violence (when needed) and a corresponding

willingness to subordinate oneself to hierarchy and authority (when needed)38 - are not natural but

must be self-consciously cultivated. Few new male recruits arrive as ready-made soldiers and as

Barbara Enrenreich notes, “The difference between an ordinary man or boy and a reliable killer, as

any drill sergeant could attest, is profound. A transformation is required.”39

Historically, that transformation has been accomplished in different ways, but by the

seventeenth-century in Europe, as Ehrenreich describes it, the process had become highly organized:

New recruits and even seasoned veterans were endlessly drilled, hour

after hour, until each man began to feel himself part of a single, giant

fighting machine. The drill was only partially inspired by the

technology of firearms. It’s easy enough to teach a man to shoot a

gun: the problem is to make him willing to get into situations where
 11

guns are being shot and to remain there long enough to do some

shooting of his own. ... In the fanatical routines of boot camp, a man

leaves behind his former identity and is reborn as a creature of the

military - an automaton and also, ideally, a willing killer of other

men.40

The contemporary practices of boot camp are remarkably similar across most modern state

militaries. They entail a tightly choreographed process aimed at breaking down the individuality of

the recruits, and replacing it with a commitment to, and dependence upon, the “total” institution of

which they are now a part.41 By its end, recruits should conform to the official attitudes of military

conduct, be able to follow orders instantly and without question, and commit themselves to the larger

group (whether that is co-recruits, barrack, regiment, battalion, military or state) over any personal

or individual commitments they previously held.42

The new soldier faces the humiliation strategies that are common to most national militaries.

The tactics used to humiliate and degrade the recruit will vary depending on the military. In some,

physically brutalizing new recruits remains an acceptable strategy, whether by officers or more senior

recruits. In other militaries where physical punishment in principle is prohibited, drill sergeants

often have at their official disposal only the threat of violence and verbal assaults. Here the new

recruit is not only reminded constantly of his or her incompetence, but faces a variety of gendered

and raced insults crafted to play upon her or his specific feminine or masculine anxieties, including

‘whore’, ‘faggot’, ‘sissies’, ‘cunt’ ‘ladies’, ‘abortion’, ‘pussies’, ‘nigger’, ‘Indian’ and sometimes

simply ‘you woman’.43 Even in militaries that ostensibly outlaw physical violence toward new

recruits, unofficial initiation rituals, or ‘hazing’ is still common and regularly conducted in the
 12

presence of superior officers.44

Ominously, and in an observation which might have served as a prediction of the murders

in Somalia some ten years later, Major R.W.J. Wenek wrote in 1984 that:

Aggressiveness must be selected for in military organizations and

must be reinforced during military training, but it may be extremely

difficult to make fine distinctions between those individuals who can

be counted on to act in an appropriately aggressive way and those

likely at some time to display inappropriate aggression. To some

extent, the risk of erring on the side of excess may be a necessary one

in an organization whose existence is premised on the instrumental

value of aggression and violence.45

The recipe for creating soldiers thus involves not only selecting for and reinforcing aggressive

behaviour, it usually entails also an explosive mix of misogyny, racism and homophobia. A deeper

analysis of the murders in Somalia and Canada’s Somalia Inquiry reveals all of these ingredients to

have been present in Canada’s beloved, benign and altruistic armed forces.

RE-READING THE SOMALIA CRISIS

Soldiers in Canada’s Airborne regiment were excited to be going to Somalia, especially as

it became clear that it might become a Chapter 7 mission. As the only soldier charged in Arone’s

murder said after his release from prison (and apparently with no intended irony): “The fact is,

peacekeeping is boring and we were much happier to be going to Somalia in a chapter 7 role.

Personally, I was delighted.”46 The Airborne had been chosen to go while Somalia was still

designated a ‘blue beret mission’, but the mission was changed to a Chapter 7 mission in early
 13

December of 1992, just before the Airborne deployed. As one soldier commented, “I think the men

were glad when the mission changed from peacekeeping to peace making ... this was more real.

We’re training for war all our lives, and the guys all want to know what it is like. That’s why they

join the army, to soldier ...”47

Apparently so excited by the prospect of real soldiering, a number of Airborne soldiers

allegedly torched an officer’s car and others went into a provincial park and fired off their weapons

in a small shooting spree. Asked at the Inquiry whether this might have signaled discipline problems

within the Airborne, Major-General (retired) Lewis Mackenzie’s response was revealing: while it

didn’t excuse what the soldiers did, he said, these incidents could be explained by the fact that there

had been few Chapter 7 missions in UN history to that point and the soldiers were all “psyched up.”

Somalia had become “a non-blue beret fight,” and while “some of this is macho stuff,” there was

“more prestige” for Airborne soldiers being deployed on a Chapter 7 mission than a Chapter 6.

But, in fact, after their training, their preparation, and perhaps most important, their

anticipation of real soldiering, the Airborne discovered that the war had moved on from Belet Huen.

The country was hot, dusty, dry and full of scorpions - which provided a certain amount of danger

during otherwise boring daily routines, but little in the way of exciting military action. Life in

Somalia was unpleasant, but Belet Huen was not a warzone. One soldier remarked that, “When we

got there, there was no war. The war had gone by. Probably for some guys that was a

disappointment.”48 As Winslow notes, “Once the Canadians concluded that they were ‘wasting their

time’ in Somalia, came the brutal conclusion that one could die ‘for nothing.’”49 And when Canadian

soldiers came to that conclusion, their own violence began.

The Canadians, indeed, had already decided that Somalis - in particular Somali men - could
 14

not be trusted. They were black, they were the enemy, they had no respect for their women, they were

liars and thieves, they were not grateful for Canadian efforts and they were even, in the opinion of

many Airborne soldiers, homosexuals. Marked in this way, the violence perpetrated upon them

seems almost inevitable. As Sherene Razack argues, it “is a short step from cultural difference to

naturalized violence,”50 and this was certainly in evidence in Somalia.

While the release of the two videotapes (the first from Somalia and the second from 1

Commando’s hazing rituals) was perhaps the most obvious indications of racism within the

Airborne - and apparently shocked many Canadians - officials at the Department of Defence might

not have been surprised at all. It was learned within the first week of the Somalia Inquiry's hearings

that the Department had been investigating the presence of racist skinhead organizations and neo-

nazi activities within the Canadian Forces, and had identified the entire CFB Petawawa (home of the

Airborne Regiment) as “one of the several areas where right-wing activities are centred.”51 Senior

military officials, in other words, had allowed members of the Airborne Regiment who were either

known members of racist skinhead organizations or who were under investigation for suspected

skinhead and neo-nazi activity to be deployed to Somalia.52

Whether or not the racism exhibited by Airborne soldiers was ‘organized’, much of the

evidence from testimonies, photographs, diaries and letters home from Canadian soldiers reveals the

ways in which racism pervaded the Airborne. From posing in front of the Confederate rebel flag (a

flag often used by white supremacist groups in the United States), through tattooing themselves with

swastikas, to calling Somalis any number of racist pejoratives ( “smufty,” “smoofties,” “moolie,”

“flip-flop,” “nig nog,” “nigger” and “gimmes”)53, Canadian soldiers demonstrated repeatedly that

they viewed the Somali people as both ‘other’ and inferior.

Many of the Canadians assumed that the desperate poverty they witnessed in Somalia was

the result of a backward culture that fostered laziness. As paratrooper Robert Prouse reported in his

diary from the mission, fellow soldiers said that Somalia should be used “as a nuclear dump, it’s

worthless” and others asked: “F_____g tar monkeys, why should we help them? If they haven’t

improved in the last thousand years, they won’t improve now. They’re so backwards, why bother?”54

As Prouse commented, “The majority of our people hate the Somalis and the country.”55 Many also

considered Somalis a people with little respect for human life, who had different standards, and

different expectations about death and violence.56 Kyle Brown reported that in Somalia, “[Violence

is a] part of their culture, and a language they understand.”57 If nothing else, one soldier complained,

it was hard to distinguish between the “good guys” and the “bad guys”: “They’re all Black, who’s

who? They all look alike.”58

Somalis were different not only in terms of their skin colour, their poverty and their values,

but for Airborne soldiers they were also different from the Canadians in terms of their attitudes

toward women. In interviews with sociologist Donna Winslow, soldiers reported how angered they

were by the way Somali men treated both women and children. As one soldier reported, “It’s

frustrating to see. Women do everything over there. They get the water, cook, do everything ... But

the men, they sit around, don’t do anything all day long. They visit their friends and that’s about it.”59

Somali men not only seemed different in terms of how they treated women, but also in terms

of how they interacted with one another. Many of the Canadian soldiers quickly concluded that

“Everybody’s gay here!”60 Somali men wore sarongs, they held hands with one another as

expressions of friendship and urinated by squatting. As one soldier described it: “Real men wear

pants and stand to urinate and they certainly don’t hold hands.”61 Soldiers reported to Winslow that
 16

the hand-holding was evidence that “there was quite a lot of homosexuality” in Somalia.

The reviled and hated ethnic ‘other’ all looked the same, treated “their” women badly and

were a bunch of homosexuals. But the last straw was that they also did not act nearly grateful

enough to the soldiers who had arrived in ‘Operation Deliverance’. Razack writes that, “the

Canadian military understood its role as ‘putting that region of Somalia back on the path to a normal

lifestyle.’ Or, in the more direct language of the troops, their task was to ‘look after’ Somalis who,

as it turns out, were neither properly grateful nor deserving, a source of considerable aggravation for

the troops.”62 The reality on the ground for Canadian soldiers included having rocks thrown at them,

being called insulting names, and confronting a people, many of whom did not seem to appreciate

the work that the Canadians were doing for them.63

As the soldiers became increasingly frustrated with the apparent lack of gratitude, the rock

throwing, the begging and the petty thefts, their own responses became correspondingly more

violent. Soldiers started throwing rocks back at the Somalis, sometimes in order to disperse children

begging for food and water.64 One photograph depicted a Canadian chaplain standing guard over a

number of bound and blindfolded Somali children with a sign that read ‘I am a thief’ hanging around

their necks. As one soldier reported to Winslow, “Basically everybody beat up on the Somalis.

Everybody did.”65

WARRIOR PRINCES?

The racism and violence witnessed in Somalia were largely attributed to the “frustration,”

“stress” and the profound “culture shock” Airborne members experienced upon arrival in Somalia.66

Arone’s murder was linked also to the particular anti-malaria drug used by Canadian soldiers in

Somalia.67 Each of these types of explanation de-politicizes the events in Somalia, excuses and
 17

explains away the racism and violence in a way intended not to disrupt prevailing myths about both

Canadian soldiers and Canada itself. Canada’s so-called “Somalia crisis” was a crisis only insofar

as it laid bare the fundamental contradiction of relying on soldiers in so-called ‘peace’ operations.

And it was Somalis, in particular Somali men who were marked as ‘different’, who bore the brunt

of those contradictions.

If we examine the ways in which race, gender and sexuality are privileged sites in the creation

of a soldier, we might be less surprised that these were the lines around which Canadian soldiers

reacted, and understood both their ‘difference’ and expressed their violence. Race and racism often

figure in military hazing and initiation rituals, as was noted above. Race was apparently a factor in

Kyle Brown and Clayton Matchee’s hazing, especially upon entering the Airborne. Matchee is full

Cree and Brown part Cree, and reports indicate that in Matchee’s case in particular, his “Cree

heritage became a focus” of his hazing upon arriving at Canadian Forces Base Petawawa to join the

Airborne. Matchee, in turn, became one of Brown's “most feared hazers” when he arrived at

Petawawa.68 Alfred McCoy has argued that soldiers subjected to brutal hazing as cadets repeat that

behaviour later in their careers.69 Thus as Matchee beat Arone he told fellow soldiers that “The

white man fears the Indian and so will the black man,” and when asked the next day about the

murder he boasted, “Indians: two, White man; nothing.”70

Brown himself claims to have experienced his Airborne hazing as “a lot of fun.” It was a

ritual that did not involve the faeces and vomit-filled celebration of 1 Commando, but was rather

a“Zulu Warrior” ritual in which new recruits tried to drink a bottle of beer before a strip of burning

toilet paper stuck in the cheeks of the soldier’s buttocks burned to the end. Brown commented that

“No one was seriously hurt - a lot of soldier’s bravado - but we all felt closer-knit and united after
 18

it.”71

It is precisely that sense of unity that initiation or hazing rituals are intended to promote. As

Alfred McCoy describes it, the hazing is often brutal and normally aims at “breaking down a cadet’s

civilian identity ... creating what one study called a ‘remarkable unity’.”72 If Kyle Brown felt a

greater comradeship with his compatriots after having his buttocks singed, so too - more surprisingly

- did Corporal Christopher Robin. Robin was the only black soldier in the Airborne’s 1 Commando

Unit who was depicted in the hazing video being forced to walk around on all fours and to bark like

a dog with ‘I love the KKK’ written on his back. He was also shown on all fours while another

soldier pretended to sodomize him and he was tied to a tree as fellow soldiers poured white powder

on him. When Robin was asked at the Inquiry whether the acts depicted in the video were “racist,”

he said that they were. When asked if he had ever experienced “racism” in the Airborne, he said that

he had not; rather, these incidents showed,“what you can take under adverse conditions.” He said

also that no matter what people now thought, he was very proud of the Regiment of which he was

a part and said further that “I would do everything I could to protect ” its good name.73

Along with race, gender too is a locus of organizing a soldier’s sense of self, and some

indication of the Canadian military’s attitudes toward women was conveyed quite clearly in one of

the first documents tabled at the Inquiry. The Hewson Report was a 1985 inquiry investigating

whether there was a higher rate of criminal behaviour within the Canadian Forces than within

Canadian society more generally.74 It was introduced at the Inquiry because Major General Hewson

reported that while there was no higher general incidence of crime within the Forces, there were two

“exceptions” to this observation: first, there did appear to be a higher frequency of sexual offences

within the Canadian Forces than within the larger Canadian population; and second, there was a
 19

higher incidence of violent crime within the Canadian Airborne Regiment.75 It was the latter

observation that mattered most at the Inquiry, but it was Hewson’s explanations for both of these

“exceptions” that unintentionally revealed some of the Canadian military’s assumptions about

women.

Hewson explained the higher incidence of violent crime within the Airborne Regiment in

straightforwardly gendered terms: local “girls,” he said, tended to be attracted to the “young single

soldier with his new ‘sporty’ car, regular and higher pay and job security.” The local male population

was described as “robust and tough,” and there simply were not enough girls to go around:

“Disputes over girls,” in other words, were almost unavoidable.76 But not particularly worth

investigating further. As it would be summarized later by David Bercuson, the earlier troubles in the

Airborne resulted from the “social climate” in Petawawa: “there were too few ways for single

soldiers to blow off steam; there was too much drinking; there were too few available women.”77 In

this way, the strutting between males over ‘girls’ was depicted as natural.

While the Hewson report addressed directly, and in an openly gendered way, the question

of crime within the Airborne, it was more circumspect - but equally revealing - in its analysis of the

higher incidence of sexual offences within the Canadian Forces. Hewson never stated how much

higher the level of sexual offences were, but indicated that an appendix outlining ‘crime case

synopses’ “does not, statistically, reveal any significant or alarming trends.”78 This was far from the

case. Hewson’s crime case synopsis, in fact, indicates that the incidence of sexual crimes was

dramatic. If one includes within the category of sexual assaults all assaults in which the victim was

a woman, more than half of the 141 crimes listed were either sexual assaults or physical assaults

against women: 76 out of 141 cases, or 54 percent.79 Hardly a figure that could be described as
 20

insignificant. What the Hewson report indicated to the Canadian military - but what was never

followed up either after the Hewson report was issued or at the Somalia Inquiry over ten years later80

- was something that feminists have long-argued: namely that the level of violence against women

is disproportionately high within militaries, and this is true also of the Canadian military.81

That level of violence towards women is quite at odds with the self-representations of

Canadian soldiers as warrior princes, providers of humanitarian services and helpers to the women

and children of Somalia. It was but one of the ways that Somali men were designated as inferior,

as was described above, and yet from Hewson’s studies, the Canadian military’s attitudes toward

women may have been little different than that of the denigrated Somali ‘other’. Certainly the

evidence of violence towards women within the Canadian Forces suggests that this is true, as does

the Hewson Report’s cavalier attitude toward “disputes over girls.” But even more dramatically,

early questioning at the Inquiry by the Canadian Jewish Congress alleged also that members of the

Airborne held a celebratory dinner to honour Marc Lepine,82 the man who massacred fourteen

women at the Université de Montréal in 1989, shouting at them as he did so, ‘you’re all a bunch of

feminists’. Airborne soldiers claimed they did not like the way Somali men treated “their” women,

and insisted that this was a cultural difference between the Somalis and Canadian soldiers; yet at

the same time participated in celebrations of a man who had massacred fourteen women in Canada.

CONCLUSIONS

Canadians had never before seen their soldiers accused of atrocities against civilians. They

did not have any public experiences that corresponded to the United State’s Vietnam, to attacks like

the My Lai disaster, or to the kind of cultural reflection as was witnessed in post-Vietnam United

States, through novels, documentaries and even Hollywood-produced movies. Why would they?
 21

Canada’s “imagined community” had long distinguished itself through different (re)presentations

of military: Americans fought wars, but Canadians made peace.83 The extent to which the notion of

a soldier as benign, altruistic and morally superior is, quite simply, a contradiction, had never before

been confronted in Canada. That this contradiction might also exist at the level of Canada as “nation”

was unthinkable. As Razack writes: “Canadian naïveté and passivity as a nation constitute a narrative

of innocence that blocks accountability for the violence in Somalia, just as it blocks accountability

for racist violence within Canada. A nation so gentle could not possibly have participated in the acts

of violence reported by the press.”84

An analysis of Canada’s reputation as a country committed to the ideals of peacekeeping, and

the way in which many features of that reputation were seriously challenged by the murders of

Somali citizens by Canadian soldiers, leads us to questions about the constitution and effects of

militarized masculinity. Militaries depend on attracting young people, but especially young men,

to the idea of becoming ‘real men’ through the initiation rituals associated with soldiering. As Judith

Stiehm has written: “all militaries have ... regularly been rooted in the psychological coercion of

young men through appeals to their (uncertain) manliness”85 What militaries do is replace that

uncertainty with a certainty that is, at least in part, constituted through norms of masculinity which

privilege violence, racism, aggression and hatred towards women. And its effects were dramatically

depicted in Somalia. What this means for students of Critical Security Studies is that a change of

“mission” does not by itself transform the years of training and socialization that have gone into the

creation of a soldier. What this suggests, quite dramatically, is that the skills of war are often quite

at odds with those required for peace operations. Indeed, it is often the non-military contributions

which Canadian peacekeepers make for which they are best remembered. In Somalia, these included
 22

re-opening a local school and hospital. In other settings it has included building parks for children,

and serving as mediators in difficult situations. This means that we need to acknowledge that soldiers

don’t always make the best peacekeepers - sometimes it is carpenters, mediators and doctors who

best perform that function, and who best contribute to a people’s sense of a meaningful security. It

means also that when we do send soldiers on peace operations, they need to be soldiers who have

been trained and encouraged to understand that properly masculine behaviour need not be dependent

on misogyny, racism or violence.86 Keeping the peace positively demands it.

REFERENCES

1. The author is grateful for financial support received from the Social Science and Humanities

Research Council of Canada.

2. General Paul D. Manson, "Peacekeeping in a Changing World," Address to the Empire Club of

Canada, Toronto, 17 November 1988, in Canadian Speeches, Vol. 2, No. 8, December 1988, pp. 35-

41.

3. From the General Court Martial Transcripts of Private Brocklebank, 1994, Vol. 3, entry 19, in

Information Legacy: A Compendium of Source Material from the Commission of Inquiry into the

Deployment of Canadian Forces to Somalia (Ottawa: Government of Canada, 1997).

4. Daniel Francis, National Dreams: Myth, Memory and Canadian History (Vancouver: Arsenal

Pulp Press, 1997), p. 10.

5. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, Revised Edition, 1991), p. 6.

6. An important exception here was one study produced for the Commission of Inquiry into the

Deployment of Canadian Forces to Somalia by Donna Winslow. Though she does not discuss