Soldiers Made Me Look Good

by Lewis MacKenzie

  Initially, our focus was on AIDS victims in Kenya. This is where Michael operated from, so we assumed it would make sense to piggyback on his efforts. But Kenya turned out to be a frustrating experience. As we received more and more donated materials, beds, bicycles (absolutely critical for allowing caretakers to move between villages), wheelchairs, stretchers, medications and so on, we had to purchase large sea containers to ship the goods from Victoria, B.C., to Kenya’s port of Mombasa. (A sea container is a good investment, because once emptied of its contents, it can be used as a permanent home for an austere medical clinic.)

  Chronic Kenyan corruption reared its ugly head the moment the first container touched down on the dock in Mombasa. In spite of all the documentation being in order, the container was seized and customs duty was demanded for the contents— despite the fact that humanitarian shipments were supposed to be exempt. The container sat in quarantine for almost two weeks at a “storage” charge of hundreds of dollars per day. Ultimately, after less-than-energetic intervention on our behalf by the Kenyan ambassador to Canada and bureaucrats in Nairobi, ICROSS Canada was forced to pay all fees, including the storage charges at the port, in order to take possession of the contents. Once it had emptied, we were forced to sell the sea container to pay off the loan required to pay those fees.

  Following the experience with the first container, we were assured by the Kenyan authorities that it would not happen again. So, over the next year we naively filled another container with $200,000 of critical supplies and sent it off to Mombasa. This time, Tom Clark and the CTV crew of W5 would be there along with me to film its arrival at Michael’s location outside of Nairobi. But the container never made it. It too was seized and subjected to the same treatment as the one the year before.

  It didn’t take long to find a less bureaucratic, less corrupt and equally deserving recipient of our humanitarian aid. Billy met Dr. Chris Brooks, from Calgary, who had established a medical clinic near Ngodzi in the Salima district of Malawi. Chris had founded Lifeline Malawi (an independent medical relief and development organization), sold his worldly goods, including his golf clubs and a dear-to-his-heart white 1964 Mustang and, like Michael Meegan, had left for Africa.

  Malawi is the fourth-poorest nation in the world. Its ninety-four doctors care for twelve million people. One million of its citizens are orphans of parents struck down by AIDS. Dr. Brooks treats around four hundred of them a year at a nearby orphanage (where Madonna adopted a boy), in addition to providing medical service to more than 35,000 people in the surrounding area. Before his arrival they had never heard of Aspirin, let alone seen or visited a medical clinic, which gets larger by the year as our containers are emptied of their goods and added to the complex. Currently, this “Schweitzer from Calgary” and his tiny team of Malawians see up to 250 patients a day. Following a 2006 complimentary article on ICROSS Canada and Dr. Brooks in the Toronto Star, we received a burst of donations that allowed us to purchase a CD4 (blood analysis) machine that greatly helps with the early identification and treatment of HIV.

  To ship medical supplies, some of which are fragile, we need good packing material, which has been provided for several years by an unusual, or at least unexpected, source.

  Brian and Carol Isfeld were a retired couple living in Courtenay, B.C. Brian, a flight sergeant, had retired from the Canadian Forces in 1989. Their son Mark, nicknamed Izzy, joined the Canadian Forces after typically troubled teenaged years and was trained as a combat engineer. His first operational deployment was to the first Gulf War, where he assisted with the thankless, dangerous and physically and mentally demanding job of clearing mines from the shifting sands of the Kuwaiti and Iraqi deserts. A mere one year later, Izzy was doing the same thing in Croatia as part of the UN mission there.

  While on his daily patrols in the scarred Croatian countryside, he frequently saw small children running alongside his armoured vehicle. More often than not, they were filthy and their clothes were in tatters—no wonder, considering that they were surviving in a war zone where some areas changed hands daily. So Izzy wrote his mother about the destitute children, and Carol started to knit small woollen dolls, fifteen to twenty centimetres tall, and mail them to her son. Whenever Izzy saw a child—and it didn’t matter to him that he couldn’t distinguish between a Serb, a Croatian or a Muslim kid—he would stop, lean over the side and drop a small doll from his mom into the waiting hands of a grateful child.

  On June 21, 1994, Izzy and his mine-clearing team returned to a road leading to a Croatian farmer’s complex close to Kakma, Croatia. They had cleared half the route on the previous day. Izzy walked beside the vehicle as it moved forward to the remainder of the route to be cleared. The vehicle’s track touched a near-invisible piano wire that had been stretched across the road. This detonated an explosive only a few metres away, instantly killing Master Corporal Mark “Izzy” Isfeld.

  Following her son’s death, Carol Isfeld continued to make the dolls. The word soon got around about her personal commitment in support of her son’s memory, and other mothers in and around Courtenay joined the knitting campaign. The mother of the province’s lieutenant governor, Iona Campagnolo, joined the effort and then, thanks to the Isfelds’ Web site,* the knitting campaign went national. Izzy dolls are now handed out by Canadian soldiers in war and peacekeeping zones all over the globe—in Afghanistan, Sudan, Haiti, Bosnia, the Congo, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. Altogether, ICROSS Canada has sent out more than 200,000 Izzy dolls to distressed areas.

  The dolls have also served a very practical purpose of providing packing material for shipping medical supplies. ICROSS Canada doesn’t use bubble wrap; it uses Izzy dolls, by the thousands. They are produced in all shades of brown and black, and when they reach their destination they are given to children with AIDS and orphans of victims of AIDS. Many of these children have absolutely no other worldly possessions, and many of them, when they succumb to the disease, are buried still clutching their little doll from a mother in Canada.

  Izzy Isfeld’s compassion for these children, so much less fortunate than ours, is chipped in stone, thanks to his mom. Carol Isfeld succumbed to cancer in August 2007, and Brian Isfeld died only five months later. Their son’s legacy, however, lives on through the fingers of hundreds of moms across this country, who continue to knit ICROSS Canada’s “packing material.”

  * Online at www.isfeldbc.com.

  19: Accused Rapist, Again

  “I wish to formally complain regarding the unprofessional and irresponsible conduct of Mr. Oleg Cavka.”

  AN IRATE LETTER-WRITER

  I DOUBT THAT any of my retired military colleagues have an entire drawer in their filing cabinet labelled “Rape Allegations.”

  Following the orchestrated allegations against me in 1992 and ’93, kickstarted by the evidence offered by the alleged war criminal Borislav Herak and subsequently discredited (as described in chapter 13), I assumed the issue of my complicity had been laid to rest. But once or twice a year, I would receive a call or an e-mail from a friend living abroad, usually in Germany or Italy, indicating that yet again they had heard or read about the same allegations but nothing more.

  But the matter resurfaced with a vengeance in late 2006. The president of the Congress of North American Bosniaks, Emir Ramic, “representing the interests of the 350,000 Bosniaks who live in Canada and the United States,” repeated the accusations from 1992 and ’93 and inserted some new ones based on “eye-witness” accounts. He wrote to the following individuals and organizations: Her Excellency Michaëlle Jean; the Right Honourable Stephen Harper; the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women; the National Action Committee on the Status of Women; the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights; the Ontario Women’s Action Coalition; and five other associations concerned with women’s issues. In his covering letter to the accounts of new witnesses, Ramic asked that I be made available to the authorities in Sarajevo. Fortunately for me, his letter was riddled with factu
al errors, and empirical evidence was readily available to disprove his allegations.

  The letter contends that I told Bosnian President Alija Izet-begovic: “If you don’t sign this now, I will fry your ass on CNN tonight!” 5 Ramic goes on to say that my shameless display of arrogance was in relation to a massacre of citizens of Sarajevo at a local market. In fact, there was no attack and no massacre at any Sarajevo market during my service in Sarajevo. The record confirms that.

  Mr. Ramic goes on to say that the so-called free world, especially Canada’s establishment, “know that Gen. MacKenzie ate, drank and danced at the Karadzic’s daughter’s wedding.” I didn’t even know Karadzic had a daughter. Presumably I was in Canada or elsewhere if and when the event took place.

  In the strongest indication that this is a letter based on rumour rather than on readily available facts, Ramic states that it “finally is the time to investigate why Mike Harris, former Premier of Ontario, wanted to install Gen. MacKenzie as his personal advisor on terrorism at the time. And also to find out why he did not do it, although he made public proclamation about that appointment. Was it because he received an email from a Bosniak who warned him about Gen. MacKenzie and his ultra-nationalist Serbian friends?” 6

  In fact, immediately following 9/11, I held the appointment, along with retired RCMP commissioner Norman Inkster, for the remaining term of Mike Harris and his successor, Ernie Eves. There was a fair degree of publicity surrounding our appointments and work in the public news media. I can only assume that Ramic wasn’t paying attention to information available to everyone else at the time.

  While the errors of fact were just bad propaganda, the “personal” accounts of witnesses to my alleged war crimes were infuriating. Some of them were ludicrous in their over-the-top descriptions of my actions; however, those who bought into the accuracy of earlier accusations were certainly reinforced in their hatred of me.

  Remembering that we were in the middle of a war zone at the time, one witness recalls: “One afternoon, as I was cleaning up the garbage around the barracks, MacKenzie arrived in a transporter. They rolled out a red carpet, all the way to MacKenzie’s transporter. He saw me bruised and bloodied, opened the door of his transporter and showed me in. He said, ‘We must not give them Marija.’ [Marija is presumably the witness’s name.] He put his hand on his chest and said, ‘I am now responsible.’ ” 7 This is a particularly ingenious accusation: it reads as though I did a good thing, but its more subtle and damaging message is that the Serbs found a red carpet and treated me like royalty when I arrived at their barracks. Where they would find a red carpet at that time and place is beyond me.

  Other accusations were more direct. One elaborated on the accusation involving the return of a child to his mother: the “witness” described: “I was scared for myself and even more frightened about my baby. Shortly thereafter, an older officer entered, accompanied by two in his escort. I recognized General Lewis MacKenzie, who approached me with his hand straight out, and addressed me ‘miss’ (in English). In his right hand he held a red rosebud and he clumsily pressed it in my hands—I was terrified. As he was doing that, the two escort [sic] left the room and locked the door. General MacKenzie asked me what my name was, where I came from. I was silent and I pretended that I could not understand anything he was saying. I just pulled my shoulders together and retreated, as General MacKenzie was saying, in English: ‘You can speak English very well and you understand everything. I am here to help you. That is in your interest as love, led by interest, is the strongest love.’ I knew what situation I was in.” 8 One paragraph later, she continues: “With a trashy Serbian music emanating from that radio in the background, the General admitted to his passion and I defended my imprisoned infant boy. With my jaws clenched, with my heart shut. It lasted, with shorter intervals, some twenty minutes. The General visited me seven or eight more times. I asked him to intervene with the Chetniks to give me my baby back and to let us go.” 9

  The sweet and sour genius of this accusation is that it describes me as a rapist and ends with the victim getting her baby returned to her, for which she is grateful.

  The accounts of many other new “witnesses” were posted on the Congress of North American Bosniaks’ Web site.

  This new assault on my character followed on the heels of a press conference held by Oleg Cavka of the Sarajevo Canton prosecutor’s office on October 12, 2006. During his statements to the media, he made public the dated and “untested” accusations that were contained in the file dealing with me, in spite of the fact that I had not been indicted.

  This was the final straw. I sought and got advice from an old friend: my legal adviser during my last year as commander of the army in Ontario, Peter Tinsley. I decided to go on the offensive.

  Since the war, Bosnia has established an Office of the Disciplinary Counsel, which accepts and deals with formal complaints regarding the conduct of the country’s judges and prosecutors. Somewhat ironically for me, the office was established with significant funding from Canada, via the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). On October 23, 2006, I submitted my complaint to Judge Branko Peric:

  Dear Sir,

  Permit me to introduce myself. I am retired Major General Lewis MacKenzie and from March to end July 1992 I served with UNPROFOR, first as chief of staff and lastly as the first commander of Sector Sarajevo during which time the UN opened the Sarajevo airport for the delivery of humanitarian aid to the citizens of Sarajevo.

  In July of 1992 I requested that I be replaced as the sector commander as my officers, including my deputy, a Russian colonel and some of my soldiers were frequently threatened with death by execution by members of the Bosnian Army primarily due to my personal unpopularity in the Bosniak community in Sarajevo at that time. Following my departure to Canada on the first of August 1992 and immediately thereafter following my appearance as a witness before a number of US Congressional committees I was subjected to a number of false allegations including rape and murder by the Bosnian authorities.

  With my encouragement the UN Secretary General launched a thorough investigation of all the accusations against me and subsequently concluded in writing to me that all the allegations were unfounded. The investigation revealed that I had departed Bosnia, “approximately one month prior to any alleged incident.”

  It appears that the allegations originated from media interviews with the captured Bosnian Serb soldier, Borislav Herak who claimed to have murdered and raped Bosnian Muslim women. During an interview he indicated that I had frequently visited Sonya’s Café in Sarajevo, selected captured Muslim girls, raped them and subsequently murdered them. It was subsequently revealed that Herak’s evidence was a fabrication having been well coached and his descriptions of myself, my rank badges and vehicle bore no relationship with reality.

  During the past decade as these libelous accusations reappear in the media it is frequently stated that I have been approached by the Bosnian authorities to be questioned and that I have refused. That sir is blatantly untrue. I have never been asked if I would agree to be questioned and frankly I would be happy to respond to questioning here in Canada. It is also stated that the UN and Canada have been approached to permit me to be interrogated and both have refused. To the best of my knowledge this has not happened as I assume that I would have been notified of such a request.

  On the 12th of October 2006, Sarajevo county prosecutor Oleg Cavka repeated the unfounded allegations against me yet again to AFP and the comments received international attention. He again stressed my visitations to Sonja’s Café, a location I have never seen let alone visited.

  Friends who have served in Bosnia more recently tell me that the Bosnian judiciary has made giant strides in the past decade and has earned a reputation for fairness and honesty. It is with these facts in mind that the professional misconduct of Mr. Cavka is so troubling. I was shocked that Mr. Cavka would go to the media with the presumably confidential and “untested” contents of an investig
ation file and make public that information against myself while admitting that I have not been indicted. It is bad enough that I had no opportunity to defend myself; however, the clear inference of Mr. Cavka’s statement that, “he has not been indicted because he has not been questioned” is that, but for the questioning, I would have been indicted. This conclusion on the part of Mr. Cavka demonstrates a clear absence of impartiality. Furthermore, he usurps the function of a court or judge in the indictment process, i.e. a prosecutor brings or files an indictment and a judge rejects or confirms and indicts.

  I wish to formally complain regarding the unprofessional and irresponsible conduct of Mr. Oleg Cavka.

  Respectfully, Lewis W MacKenzie, Major General (ret’d)10

  On October 25, 2006, I was advised by the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina that I would have a response to my complaint within two years. To date, I have heard nothing.

  20: Off’s Fox

  “Plumbing new depths in Canadian journalism.”

  J.L. GRANATSTEIN, IN A REVIEW OF THE LION, THE FOX AND THE EAGLE

  IN 1999 I RECEIVED a call from Carol Off, the award-winning CBC reporter whose documentary work I had much admired. She explained that she had been contracted to write a book about the Canadian judge Louise Arbour, soon to be appointed a Supreme Court justice and since 1996 the chief prosecutor for the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague. The more Off researched the madness of Bosnia and Rwanda—the dual focus of Louise Arbour’s efforts during her tenure at The Hague—the more she realized the critical involvement of General Roméo Dallaire in Rwanda and yours truly in Bosnia. She requested, and I agreed to, an interview.

  Having read my book Peacekeeper, Off was well prepared for the interview and merely sought clarification and elaboration regarding some of the more interesting events that occurred during my six months in Sarajevo. Whenever there was a discrepancy between her research and my recollection of events, I offered her my daily diary and the names of non-Canadian members of UNPROFOR who had been witnesses to those events. I had served many years on peacekeeping duty in areas where not all the locals appreciated the UN’s usually inadequate response to their crisis. They were therefore inclined to accuse the peacekeepers of bias and worse, so I always made sure that I was accompanied by some soldiers from other nations to serve as less-biased witnesses in dealing with any fabricated accusations. I explained to Off that she should not take my word where there were discrepancies in specific details, but rather that she should track down other, more unbiased witnesses. God knows there were enough of them.