Force Reserve: Ireland’s role on the Golan Heights

Undof is the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force. Since September 2013 Ireland's Defence Forces have provided Undof with a quick-reaction force: an armed rapid-response military force capable of intervening to aid UN personnel, as well as imposing itself on adversaries if attacked.

Undof has 789 troops, many of whom are UN observers. There are also 51 international staff and more than 100 locally recruited civilian staff. Countries assigning military personnel to Undof include Fiji, India, Nepal, the Netherlands and Ireland, which has eight personnel at Undof headquarters. The main, 130-strong Irish component of Undof is known as the Force Reserve Company. It must be capable of deploying a quick-reaction force with 15 minutes’ notice, reduced in recent times from the previous standing-order notice of 30 minutes.

Undof's lineage may be traced back to the decision, by the UN General Assembly in November 1947, to divide Palestine and allow for the creation of two states: a Palestinian Arab one (partition was rejected by Palestinians) and a Jewish one, Israel. In May 1948 Israel was proclaimed a state amid civil-war conditions between Israelis and Palestinians. This prompted a coalition of Palestinians, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, disparate elements from across the Arab world, and also Iraq, to wage war on Israel.

Ireland and Untso

Simultaneous with the creation of the state of Israel, the UN set up the Truce Supervision Organisation, or Untso; it is the oldest UN peacekeeping operation; Ireland, which has been involved since 1958, contributes 13 soldiers to it.

Untso was created to monitor a then-hoped-for end to hostilities, a state of affairs that did not actually come about until July 1949 (although some would argue has never really come about in terms of Arab-Israeli or Palestinian-Israeli relations). Untso has monitored events in the Middle East ever since. It has its headquarters in Jerusalem and today also oversees two subsequent peacekeeping missions: Unifil, in southern Lebanon, and Undof, which is based on the Golan Heights and Mount Hermon, a mountain that straddles the border of Syria and Lebanon at the northern end of the Golan.

Israel’s presence on the Golan dates from the Six Day War, in June 1967, between Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Syria. At the time Israel’s border in the area, also known as the 1949 Armistice Line, was the eastern shore of Lake Galilee and a line extending from it, more or less straight, north to Lebanon and south to Jordan.

West of this line lay Israel, while east was Syria and the strategically important Golan Heights, a mountain range with a plateau top, a commanding position from which Israel was permanently vulnerable.

During the Six Day War Israel captured about 70 per cent of the Golan, as well as the southern slopes of Mount Hermon. In the Yom Kippur War, of October 1973, Syrian forces initially recaptured much of the southern Golan but were pushed back by Israel. Undof was set up when Israel and Syria agreed the Yom Kippur ceasefire, in March 1974. Israel’s occupation remained in place, and in 1981 the Israeli parliament formally annexed the land, a move unrecognised in international law. Between the boundary of the Israeli-occupied Golan and Syria proper, however, both sides agreed to respect a UN-patrolled buffer zone. This is a tadpole-shaped strip of land, about 75km long and never more than 10km wide, in the north central area, and a mere 200m across at its southernmost point, which is on the border with Jordan.

The buffer is known formally as the Area of Separation. The area is under Syrian jurisdiction and policing. It contains several dozen towns and villages that are home to thousands of civilians. It is bisected, diagonally just north of the halfway mark, by the main road from the Golan to Damascus, a road the military knows as MSR7 – main supply route 7, after the number given to it on Syrian maps.

The western side of the area is delineated by the Alpha Line and the eastern side is shown as the Bravo Line. Radiating out from either side, east into Syria proper and west into the Israeli-occupied Golan, are three further Areas of Restriction.

Troop maximums

Under the 1974 ceasefire, each side agreed to a maximum numbers of troops and military equipment it would station in each of the three zones. Each side may base up to 6,000 troops in the zone closest to the two lines, 75 tanks and 36 pieces of artillery. This increases to 450 tanks and 162 artillery pieces in the middle zone, after which restrictions cease. The only restriction across all three zones, from the lines to 25km out, is on rockets: they are banned. Undof inspectors examine 500 locations and count, with clockwork regularity twice a month, the military hardware each side stations within the zones, to ensure the agreed limits are being kept.

Undof observers (known collectively as Observer Group Golan) watch both sides from observation towers along the Alpha and Bravo lines, which are separate from UN posts. Should any UN personnel or installations come under attack from whatever quarter, the Force Reserve Company – Ireland’s 48th Infantry Group – is to come to their rescue.

In 2011, with the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, the relative stability of the area began to weaken. By 2013 the Syrian army had lost control of a swathe of territory bordering the southern end of the Bravo Line.

As the Syrian Arab Armed Forces of President Bashar al-Assad fought to retain control in northern Syria and around Damascus, a motley collection of insurgents known as Anti-Government Armed Elements gained supremacy east and south of the Bravo Line, and penetrated the Area of Separation. The insurgents are a movable feast of local warlords and rebel groups. These include al-Nusra, a former al-Qaeda affiliate that is opposed to both the Assad regime and Islamic State, and which has been accused by human-rights organisations of staging suicide bombings, using sarin gas, beheading opponents and enlisting child soldiers.

Tracking the activities of the insurgents is made especially difficult because of shifting alliances between local strongmen and the more coherent insurgent groupings, including al-Nusra.

Israeli forces do not cross the Alpha Line. In 2013, because of the deteriorating situation east of the Bravo line and within the Area of Separation, Israel built what is known as a technical fence immediately west of the Alpha Line. This steel barrier includes concertina and razor wire, touch sensors, motion detectors, infrared cameras and ground radar.

From behind the fence the Israeli Defence Forces observe events in the area and beyond. Insurgents have occasionally attacked the technical fence with the apparent aim of breaching it. On each occasion the Israeli troops have hit back. The Israeli Defence Forces allow Undof personnel and vehicles, including the Force Reserve Company, to pass back and forth through the technical fence. This allows movement up and down the Alpha Line.

In 2013 Syria's civil war ratcheted up in intensity and military operations, with the Syrian army and insurgents encroaching seriously into the area. This adversely affected the efforts of Undof to carry out its mandated tasks. In a number of instances UN personnel were attacked, taken hostage or both, and UN installations were looted of weapons, ammunition and other equipment, forcing them to be abandoned. The result was that in March 2013 Croatia withdrew from participation in Undof. Austria followed suit. These departures prompted an urgent plea from the UN for the Irish Defence Forces to step in, which they did in September 2013.

According to Defence Forces sources, events on the ground on the Golan are changing almost constantly. Within the area itself, all UN positions on the Bravo Line have been abandoned, as has the main Undof camp just outside the eastern side of the Area of Separation. Camp Faouar was close to MSR7, the main road to Damascus, where Undof retains an administrative presence.

Undof’s main remaining base and operational headquarters is Camp Ziouani, where most of the 48th Infantry Group is now based. The camp is on the Alpha Line and backs on to Israel’s technical fence. Built to accommodate about 250 people, it now copes with more than double that number.

Most UN positions on the Alpha Line south of post 80 (known as UNP80) have also been abandoned, and the post can only be reached by patrols travelling between it and Camp Ziouani inside Israeli-occupied Golan.

Recent intelligence suggests that insurgents operating within the area are entrenched virtually outside the entrance to Camp Ziouani, as well south of the camp and north of UNP80 (sandwiched between UNP80 on the Alpha Line and the abandoned UNP69 on the Bravo Line). Intelligence also suggests that heavy weaponry is stationed just outside the Area of Separation, east of Bravo Line around Khan Arnabah, and is pointing at Camp Ziouani.

Two divisions of the Syrian army launched an offensive against the insurgents in February, seeking from the northern flank of the Bravo Line to drive them south. The offensive was only partly successful, stalling at a new front line south of Camp Ziouani and on a line between the villages of Kafr Shams and Naba Alsakher.

The question facing Undof is whether efforts will be made to re-establish full UN authority along the Bravo Line, clearing the buffer zone of all non-UN military.