East Timor
Another 50 Irish soldiers flew out to East Timor this week, bringing the total number of Irish troops serving as peace keepers around the globe to more than 900, or 10 per cent of the strength of the Army. The Republic is now the sixth largest troop-provider to peace missions in the world.
Comdt Sean Fox was in the last convoy out of the UN compound in Dili. Like other volunteer officers who worked as MLOs (military liaison officers) during the referendum period he acted as a proper soldier and held on - as a hostage to fate - to see that the 1,400 or so refugees in the compound were not butchered.
He, and the other MLOs who remained, watched during the last alarm-filled days in the compound as the Indonesian army thinned out their cordon around the compound allowing encroachment by the anti-independence militias. It "got real dangerous" in the last days, he said. "They [the Indonesian army] had tipped off the militias. We were very concerned about the refugees."
In the last days in the compound, Comdt Fox travelled from the only convoy allowed out to the airport outside Dili to collect food after the evacuation of the UN civilian staff. "The city was ablaze. But we got out and we were successful in getting supplies in. We were very lucky."
As international pressure built up on the Indonesians they agreed to allow the Timorese refugees in the compound passage to the airport. Comdt Fox was with the last truckload of refugees to the airport and flew with them to Darwin.
Aside from the unspoken admiration of an outside world, Comdt Fox and his fellow 40 or so MLOs were to enjoy few personal plaudits. Nor were they allowed time to relax. As the only soldiers with any real knowledge or experience of working in the region, they were on the first flights back, a week or so later.
Almost half the MLOs who had stayed on in the compound also had another legacy of their time as hostages. They tested positive for tuberculosis contracted in the cramped and desperate conditions. Fortunately for Comdt Fox and his similarly infected colleagues, the condition had not set in. They were not ill. "I tested positive for TB, so did about 40 per cent of the MLOs. We tested positive but the X-Rays cleared me. It was quite widespread among the Timorese and in the close confines . . . all the dirt and filth, the lack of toilets and some dead bodies and all that, it spreads very easily."
During his few days in Darwin he was able to make contact with his wife, Mary Rose, and five children in Greystones, Co Wicklow. They had barely spoken since he went to Timor in July and was posted to the Ermera region where there was no telephone contact with the outside world, nor any postal service. When he left Ireland at the end of June, Comdt Fox had anticipated a three-month tour of duty in Timor. He is not sure now when his duty will end. The original MLOs built up invaluable knowledge of the situation in Timor and the international force deploying there now depends totally on their insights.
He speaks longingly of getting home for Christmas. He spoke to The Irish Times on one of the lovely autumn days of the past week and momentarily paused as though imagining Greystones in the bright, slight chill of October. He then asked if the DART extension to Greystones was up yet.
Although they have worked seven days a week, starting at daybreak and working late into the evening, the MLOs have had almost no respite. Comdt Fox managed a few days' leave to Darwin last weekend. His flight out of Dili was cancelled at the last minute, but he managed to scrape a lift on an Australian plane.
His return to Timor after the siege lifted was not a happy time. His interpreter in Ermera, a young graduate called Agus da Silva who supported the independence movement, was one of the disappeared and is believed to have been killed.
Another key figure who he met in the independence movement, Ann Limas, who had liaised with the UN at Ermera, was last seen in a UN convoy to Dili. She did not go to the compound, but left for the home of another pro-independence leader in Dili at the St John de Bosco seminary. She was not seen alive again. One of the deserting Indonesian soldiers reported that she had been captured, raped, tortured and then murdered.
Comdt Fox said there is still no accurate information about the numbers of dead and disappeared. People who had been reported dead were still being found alive.
The main concern of the MLOs is now the 250,000 East Timorese held captive by the militias in West Timor. Most buildings in East Timor have been destroyed and there is now growing concern for the lives of the tens of thousands of people still living in the open.
The early showers of the rainy season have begun and the torrential rain is due at the end of the month. There is now a desperate scramble to provide shelter for the internal refugees in East Timor as well as the arriving multi-national force. This new military force will include a contingent of 50 Irish soldiers.
Kosovo
The other side of the globe, in eastern Europe, another scramble by a multi-national peacekeeping force is under way to provide humanitarian relief before the onset of winter in Kosovo.
Around the clock, the members of the Irish Transport Unit Kfor (Kosovo Force) run convoys from the Greek sea port of Thessalonika to Pristina. Further re-supply convoys are then run to the rest of the Kfor brigade based around the Pristina.
The 100 or so Irish troops in the Transport Unit at least have the benefit of Army catering. One of the Defence Force's top cooks, Tommy Mellon, who also fed the Transport Unit which served in Somalia in 1992, is overseeing the provision of sustenance to the troops in Kosovo. Sgt Liam Owens describes the food as "superb".
Sgt Owens, who is from Derry and is stationed in Letterkenny, leads the security element of the Transport Unit. The job of these infantry soldiers is to provide protection at the Unit's camp on the outskirts of Pristina and to accompany the convoys. Since they arrived at the start of September, the Unit has been running several major convoys each week from Thessalonika along the 140-mile-long main supply route to Pristina. As well as supplying Kfor troops, the Irish Unit has been moving humanitarian aid into the stricken region.
"The main convoys eased off a bit in the past week or two and we have been doing humanitarian aid from European NGOs [non-governmental, or aid, organisations]. We brought stuff direct to two schools. They had pretty abysmal conditions. One of the schools had absolutely nothing, no infrastructure for a school at all. It had all been destroyed."
Although the initial rush to supply Kfor has reduced the workload of the 103 members of the Transport Unit, led by Comdt Martin Gibson, it is still arduous. Only 26 members of the unit could be allowed free time to attend the Ireland v Macedonia soccer match at Skopje last week.
So far, the Tranport Unit has encountered no serious security problems. However, the nearest town, Litjan, is almost equally divided between Serbs and Muslims. "There is nothing directly concerning us, but it is tense. There is social unrest and a feeling of unease."
South Lebanon
As the peace-keeping missions in Kosovo and Timor are just beginning their lives, so the 23-year-old mission of UNIFIL (the UN "Interim" Force in Lebanon) to bring peace to southern Lebanon looks like it could be entering its final stages. It is now, at this crucial point, in the hands of an Irish officer, Maj Gen Jim Sreenan.
As acting Force Commander of the multinational force of 4,500 soldiers and 500 UN civilian staff, Maj Gen Sreenan surveys a rapidly changing political landscape in the Middle East. He commands the force from a spartan office in an old French colonial villa on the Mediterranean coast in the UNIFIL headquarters at Naquora.
Of most significance to the UNIFIL command is the declaration earlier this year by the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak that he intends pulling Israeli troops out of the strip of land just inside the Lebanese border which the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) seized in 1978. Barak has set a deadline of next July for the Israeli withdrawal.
The promise of an Israeli withdrawal has had good and bad consequences in south Lebanon.
The local Hizbullah Resistance guerrillas, who have de facto support from the Lebanese government, decided to step up hostilities against the Israelis. In July, the Israeli Air Force bombed power stations and plunged the Lebanese capital into darkness. There was a lull in Hizbullah attacks and then an upsurge in August when they fired 200 "katushya" rockets at the Israelis who replied with 3,500 artillery shells. The Israeli Air Force has since stepped up its attacks into south Lebanon, bombarding centres of Hizbollah support.
There have been two UNIFIL deaths in action this year, one of those who died was the Irish soldier, Pte Billy Kedian from Ballyhaunis, Co Mayo.
Near misses for UN troops are almost a daily occurance, Maj Gen Sreenan points out. "The other day a 120mm mortar landed into the middle of a post in the Finnish Battalion area. It was a miracle no one was killed there. A few weeks ago, a Fijian patrol was hit by a roadside bomb. It blew a wheel of their APC [armoured personnel carrier] and injured three guys. That attack was by the [Hizbullah] Resistance. It was deliberate. It is more dangerous now than at any time in years because of the huge amount of ordnance falling around."
Brig Gen Sreenan, who arrived in Lebanon in May after working on the re-structuring of the Army's support corps, is tipped as a future chief of staff of the Defence Forces after his year-long tour of duty in Lebanon.
The coming months in Lebanon are not likely to be easy. "The main focus is on what is likely to happen next, whether there will be an IDF withdrawal as part of a peace agreement whether will unilateral Israeli withdrawal.
"The chief of staff of the Israeli Defence Forces spoke this week about contingency plans. There has been a shift in Israeli action with more surgical bombing by the Air Force," Sreenan says. "But Barak has injected a lot of hope into the situation. He seems prepared to give up land for peace."
In the hills above Maj Gen Sreenan's post lies the Irish Battalion's "area of operations" a 10-kilometre square patch of land abutting onto the Israeli "buffer zone". The zone, known as the Israeli Controlled Area (ICA) is a Biblical land where old farmers and their wives work their fields by hand.
Right smack in the middle of this occasional hell, in a ghost town called At Tiri, is UNIFIL Post 6-44, manned by a unit of 13 or 14 young Irish soldiers. The Irish have doggedly held this position inside the Israeli Controlled Area for 20 years, some giving their lives to keep the UN flag flying there.
As the heat of summer began to build this year the command of Post 6-44 fell to Lieut Alan Gallagher, a 27-year-old officer from Templeogue on his first six-month foreign tour of duty with the UN.
He and his platoon had the misfortune to arrive in At Tiri just before the Israeli elections when there was every chance of a major escalation of trouble in this region. The Hizbullah, seeking to drive home the message that it was time for Israel to withdraw from south Lebanon, killed the head of the Israeli army's Northern Command and then fired rockets at Israeli civilians in Kiryat Shimona.
In the recent past this kind of action was the signal for an Israeli bombardment of south Lebanon. Instead, there was two months of steady shelling and bombing, much of it around the 100-square-kilometre area where the Irish UNIFIL battalion serves.
"The first two months here were very, very busy all right, but since the [Israeli] elections and Barak getting in things have quietened considerably," is Lieut Gallagher's remarkably sanguine observation on his introduction to south Lebanon. The post is isolated from the rest of the Irish Battalion as it is the only one actually inside the Israeli controlled zone. At night the road closes and every morning a mine-sweeping team from "B" Company headquarters, a few miles away in the town of Haddatah comes out and "clears" the road before it can be traversed by vehicle or on foot.
Part of the raison d'etre of Post 6-44 in At Tiri is to bestow an international censure on the actions of Israel in invading and seizing this land.
The village of At Tiri was once a beautiful hilltop village with a population of around 4,000. Since it was seized and depopulated by the Israelis, only 50 or 60 ageing inhabitants remain. They depend on the Irish troops for help with food and, increasingly as they grow more frail, for medical help. The young Irish troops also provide protection and support for them when the Israeli-backed SLA militia move into the town.
The assertion of the UN mandate that Israel should withdraw from Lebanon continues to claim Irish lives, 20 years on. Pte Billy Kedian was killed and his friend Pte Ronnie Rushe critically injured in action this year. Several others had remarkably lucky escapes when mortars fell on their posts.
The post at At Tiri was cut off for days at a time from the rest of the Irish Battalion in early summer. But after the worst of the trouble died down the soldiers were able to go on leave, many visiting parts of the Middle East they may never again get the chance to see.
It is typical of the exuberant young soldiers to remember only the excitement and good bits of their tour of duty. "It has been an absolutely brilliant experience for all of us. It is a huge learning experience for myself. Their [the soldiers] morale is exceptionally high and they are great at working together. If someone is down everyone else helps him up. One of my platoon had a 22nd birthday and they all chipped in and bought him a big cake and brought it to the post for the party. These are simple, little things but important."
After serving his time in At Tiri, Lieut Gallagher moved to another, equally difficult post at nearby Bayt Yahoun, one of the most fought-over parts of south Lebanon. Less than 12 hours after speaking by telephone to The Irish Times recently, the Hizbollah launched an attack killing two SLA members. In the resulting barrage from the Israeli side five shells landed in close proximity to the Irish post. No one was injured.
Mijek
If you travel west from the Levant, flying over the Egyptian and Sahara deserts to the border of Morocco and Mauritania almost to the coast of the Atlantic, you will find a speck on the map of Western Sahara called Mijek. Here, too, Irish soldiers serve.
Mijek is one of nine UN encampments in Western Sahara belonging to the MINURSO mission, whose work and objects are a mystery to the outside world. MINURSO was put in place to stop the war between the Saharawii people of Western Sahara and Morocco which claims sovereignty over the desert. For more than a decade the UN has been attempting to establish conditions for a referendum so the inhabitants can decide on their future. It is a bit like East Timor, but in slow motion and playing out on a vast stage.
Until the past few weeks, Comdt Phillip Brennan, from Kilkenny, served with the other UN observers at Mijek. It is 400 kilometres from the coast in a desert of hard-packed sand. It is one of the hottest places in the East, and daytime temperatures can reach 60 degrees Centrigrade.
"When the wind blows the sand storms come and behind every wall there is a bank of sand so you have to load a trailer full of sand and move it out. You can do six or eight trailers in an afternoon.
The military observer work requires patrolling into the desert and along the huge sand wall, known as the Berm, a folly erected in the 1970s by the Moroccans in an effort to keep the insurgent Polisario guerrillas at bay.
The UN teams set out from Mijek and the other posts to monitor the activities of the Polisario and the local Berber population. These patrols can take between a few hours and a day. There are no roads and all navigation is by satellite positioning.
Comdt Brennan, who is married with three teenage children, is serving a year as a military observer (MO) with MINURSO. He is now based in MINURSO headquarters in the large coastal town of Laayoune. It is his fourth UN mission. He served in Lebanon four years ago and in 1982 he and his family spent two years in the Middle East, mostly in Damascus, while he worked as an observer.
The continuity - near permanence - of Irish involvement in UN service shows up in the fact that Comdt Brennan's first service abroad was as a young officer in Cyprus in 1969, three years before Lieut Gallagher was born.