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Retired Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire was blunt in his assessment.

“I wouldn’t touch Mali with a 10-foot pole,” he told me in fall 2016 after returning from a fact-finding trip to Africa with Defence Minister, Harjit Sajjan.

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Yet, fully armed with the facts, Sajjan announced Monday that Mali is indeed where Canadian Forces will be heading, nearly two years after Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jonathan Vance said a deployment to Africa would happen “very soon.” Maybe they were hoping peace would break out in the interim.

Even with all that planning time, they couldn’t get it right. Sajjan said Canada’s “smart pledge” will involve sending two Chinook helicopters and four armed Griffon helicopters to escort them, as part of its aviation task-force. Vance took the microphone minutes later to say the number of helicopters being assigned is subject to further reconnaissance.

Canada’s top soldier may not want to dissect the political motives behind the operation too closely — he might find the deployment is more about image management than national security.