A rotating team of three dozen Canadians worked tirelessly in West Africa over the past four months to secure freedom for two Canadian diplomats, sources say. Drawn from the ranks of the foreign service, Mounties, spies and other agencies, they ran the most sophisticated rescue operation Canada has ever known.
Using the wizardry of modern surveillance, calling in favours and exerting pressure on African governments, the team considered every option, up to and including a military raid.
Robert Fowler, a distinguished Canadian civil servant and a former ambassador to the United Nations, and his colleague Louis Guay, also a senior diplomat, were captured on a desert road in eastern Niger just before Christmas. Today, the two men are expected to fly out of Bamako, Mali, on their way to be reunited with their families.
While the full story of the mission may never be known, it's clear the stakes for the rescue were high.
To add to the complexities, The Globe and Mail understands, there was suspicion that people in Niger had tipped a criminal gang to the Canadians' travel plans. When the UN jeep was stopped at gunpoint, the kidnappers knew they had prized assets.
The hostages were “traded up” at least twice, sources say, before ending up in the hands of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, a group that emerged from the civil war in Algeria. The ransom demand that came to Prime Minister Stephen Harper's attention included the freeing of AQIM members imprisoned in neighbouring Mauritania.
“The longer it went on, the more it seemed likely that there might be a positive resolution, because clearly they had value to whoever was holding them. Whether it was political or financial, they had value,” said Gerald Ohlsen, a retired senior diplomat and long-time colleague of the captured men. “There were clearly an awful lot of people involved in the negotiations.”
Geography, intergovernmental relations and quality of intelligence all factor into decisions made by Ottawa in terms of what can be done. Each kidnapping is different and officials stress that the fact that the targets were two former ranking diplomats was not material to the scale of the response.
The first challenge for Canada was found in the vehicles carrying the hostages. Cellphones the Canadians had been carrying were left behind, sources say, indicating the kidnappers were aware signals intelligence could be used to triangulate a phone position.
The Canadian military, Mounties and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service were mobilized. A rich contributor to the Malian infrastructure over the years, Canada has forged close relations with the government. This gave the rescue team a considerable advantage, allowing for relatively easy transfer of Canadians in and out of the sovereign country.
In January, for example, two Canadian military officers were spotted in Mali. “They believe Mali is the Islamists' base, so they have come to seek the support of our security sources in finding the hostages,” an anonymous source told Reuters.
Then, in the country's northeast regions at the edge of the Sahara, Canadians in chartered planes introduced themselves to community leaders.
But it was the hidden hand of a signals-intelligence agency that is being described as key to the success of the whole operation. Sources say the eavesdroppers in the Communications Security Establishment are the “the unsung heroes” of the mission.
That is because the Ottawa-based CSE can go where human agents cannot. The signals experts have increased their capability to listen in to conversations around the world. Sources say the CSE provided pivotal information, although what they obtained is classified.
Among the Canadian officials involved in the operation was a husband and wife team. They took turns leaving the comfort of Canada, their mission being to replace one with the other in the field. Mounties were seconded from their regular jobs in Ottawa to join the mission on the ground.
