skiing, and unarmed combat.
The Cdn AB Regt quickly forged a reputation for undertaking tough, demanding, and dynamic activities. It set new standards for physical fitness and training realism. In consonance with its status as a strategic force capable of global deployment, the regiment travelled throughout Canada and the United States, as well as to exotic locations such as Jamaica, to practise its lethal craft. It conducted training and exchanges with the British SAS, American Rangers and Special Forces, and the French Foreign Legion. By the early seventies, the airborne regiment was at its zenith of power. It had the status of a mini-formation , direct access to the commander of the army, and an increased peacetime establishment of 1,044 all ranks.
The Cdn AB Regt deployed to Montreal, Quebec, during the FLQ Crisis in October 1970, and four years later was dispatched to Cyprus during the Turkish invasion of that island. However, in all cases the regiment functioned solely as conventional infantry. On November 26, 1976, the Cdn AB Regt was moved from Edmonton to Petawawa and its formation status was stripped.[90] It became a simple unit within the newly re-roled special service force (SSF), which provided the army with a relatively light, airborne/air-portable quick reaction force in the demographic centre of the country, one that could be moved quickly to augment either of the flanking brigades (i.e., 1 Canadian Mechanized Brigade in the West and 5 Mechanized Brigade in Quebec) for internal security tasks, to the Arctic, or to U.N.-type operations.[91]
The restructuring inflicted additional wounds. The regiment was dramatically pared and it lost both its preferred standing within the army manning and exemptions from the mundane taskings that other units endured. Out of necessity, it began to accept more junior members across the board (i.e., officers, senior NCOs, and men); this resulted in a corollary degradation of capability. Moreover, it became increasingly under attack by senior CAF leaders, who were not favourable to “special soldiers,” particularly during a period of constantly shrinking defence budgets.
Adding to the frustrations of the members of the Cdn AB Regt was the fact that despite the regiment’s CFOO and international stand-by status, it was never deployed. Senior CAF leadership argued that to deploy the regiment would strip Canada of its strategic reserve. More realistically, the problem centred around the make-up of the airborne unit itself. It lacked the necessary mobility (i.e., armoured and wheeled vehicles) as well support capability to deploy for extended periods of time. As a result, the army command deemed that it was easier to send conventional units to do the operations, which were all conventional in nature anyway.
Downsizing of the regiment continued, further degrading both the status and capability of the Cdn AB Regt, with the result that it was reduced to battalion status in 1992. Nonetheless, in December of that year, the Cdn AB Regt deployed to Somalia on a U.N. Chapter VII operation, or, in simpler terms, a peace-making operation, under Security Council Resolution 794. Unfortunately, the Cdn AB Regt experienced disciplinary problems in theatre that detracted from their actual performance.[92] The regiment pacified its sector in less than three months, earning the praise of Hugh Tremblay, the director of Humanitarian Relief and Rehabilitation in Somalia, who stated to all who would listen, “If you want to know and to see what you should do while you are here in Somalia, go to Belet Huen, talk to the Canadians, and do what they have done, emulate the Canadians and you will have success in your humanitarian relief sector.”[93]
Nonetheless, the mission was ultimately redefined in the media and the public consciousness as a failure, due to the poor leadership and the criminal acts of a few. The inexplicable and lamentable torture killing of Shidane Arone, a Somali national caught stealing within the regiment lines, became the defining image of the Cdn AB Regt’s operation in Africa. The public outcry and criticism of the Department of National Defence (DND) as a result of the attempted cover-up at NDHQ, and later revelations of hazing videos within the Cdn AB Regt, created a crisis of epic proportions, and senior political and military decision-makers desperately sought a quick and easy solution to their troubles. They swiftly found one. During an official press release on the afternoon of January 23, 1995, David Collenette, the MND, announced, “although our senior military officers believe the regiment as constituted should continue, the government believes it cannot. Therefore, today under the authority of the National Defence Act, I have ordered the disbandment of the Canadian Airborne Regiment.”[94]
The Cdn AB Regt represented Canada’s only capability to conduct special operations from 1968 to 1993. A widespread feeling, by former members of the Cdn AB Regt was captured by Brigadier General Jim Cox. “In our hearts,” he revealed, “we equated ourselves with the SAS and the SF [Special Forces] in the United States.”[95] In the end, although the regiment did not possess all the characteristics of a pure SOF organization, especially toward the latter years of its existence, it did have both the official mandate and the implicit understanding of the senior CAF leadership that it would be the entity that conducted special operations if required. Moreover, the Cdn AB Regt did practise direct action (DA)– and strategic reconnaissance (SR)–type tasks. In addition, it regularly exercised and conducted small-unit exchanges with SOF organizations in the United States and Britain. In the end, it filled an important position in Canada’s SOF history.
* * *
Even before the Cdn AB Regt was disbanded, the genesis of Canada’s true contemporary SOF capability began to germinate. A fundamental shift in the perception of the nature of the threats to Western industrialized nations erupted in the late 1960s. Political violence, or, more accurately, terrorism, became recognized as a significant “new” menace. Bombings, kidnapping, murders, and the hijacking of commercial aircraft became frequent occurrences, exploding onto the world scene seeming out of nowhere. Not only in the Middle East, but also in Europe, countries descended into a state of violence, as both home-grown and international terrorists waged violent campaigns that recognized no borders or limits. The murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, West Germany, became one of the defining images of the crisis, as did the 1975 terrorist assault on the headquarters of OPEC in Vienna, Austria.[96]
But the problem went beyond a spillover of Mid-East conflict and politics. In Germany, groups such as the Baader-Meinhof Gang (or Red Army Faction), waged violent terrorist campaigns that resulted in death and destruction. Holland was besieged by Moluccan terrorists, and Britain struggled with the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the Northern Ireland question. Even in North America, terrorism raised its ugly head. The Americans saw the growth of radical groups such as the Weathermen, the New World Liberation Front, and the Black Panther Party, to name but a few.
In Canada, the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) began a reign of terror that culminated in the October Crisis of 1970. In addition, foreign terrorists imported their political struggles and launched attacks against targets in Canada. A few examples include the storming of the Turkish embassy in Ottawa by three Armenian men (Armenian Revolutionary Army) on March 12, 1985; the paralyzing of the Toronto public transit system on April 1, 1985, as a result of a communiqué sent by a group identifying itself as the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of our Homeland, in which they threatened death to passengers of the transit system; and the downing of an Air India flight off the coast of Ireland on June 23, 1985. This act, which killed 329 people, was the result of a bomb that was planted prior to its departure from Toronto’s Pearson International Airport.
Not surprisingly, like other countries around the world, Canada decided it needed a counterterrorist (CT) capability of its own.[97] Its first attempt was to create the Hostage and Rescue Patrol (HARP) under the auspices of the RCMP in 1982. The small, twenty-five-man team was well-trained by foreign SOF personnel, but, unfortunately, a bureaucratic failure to reach a suitable administrative arrangement for the force scuttled the project. The RCMP wanted the operators to do tours of three months in Ottawa and then one and a half months back in their home precincts. The members wanted a permanent posting to Ottawa so they could move their families. In the end, no agreement could be reached and the program was shut down.
Three years later, in 1985, following a number of high-profile terrorist acts committed on Canadian soil,
