With thousands of US troops moving through Shannon Airport as part of themilitary build-up in the Gulf, protesters strike back with a peace march today, writes Kathy Sheridan
There is no mystery at Shannon, at one level anyway. Contrary to reports, the airport's viewing tower is wide open. You may walk into the airport, take the lift to the floor marked Viewing Gallery and chances are there will be a white DC10 or two across the way, unmarked but for a sketch of the globe and a tiny US flag painted on the wing-tip.
This is a World charter plane, one of the main civilian contractors for carrying American troops. In the fully-glazed, air-side building opposite the gallery, groups of fit-looking, crew-cut lads in desert camouflage can be seen strolling to and from the shopping area. This reporter paid a random visit to the gallery at noon at Wednesday and that was the scene. The most furtive behaviour was from the only other observer in the gallery, who blurted he was "only a visitor" before packing his sophisticated camera equipment into an aluminium case and bolting for the exit.
Why he ran is the mystery. Cameras were never banned, according to the airport director, Martin Moroney. And the viewing space was never closed, he insists, except at night - "and that's for the simple reason that no normal viewer can view anything in the dark". Moroney has the slightly wounded air of a man blamed for sins he never committed. War or no war, his unashamed, sole objective is to win and keep enough business to keep Shannon viable.
Aer Rianta employs 500 there. Overall the airport provides work for 1,700 and a study suggests another 36,000 jobs in the area depend on it. After September 11th and foot-and-mouth fall-out, Shannon lost 25 per cent of its capacity, but has scrambled back to the promise of substantial growth in 2003.
Aviation sources cite Prestwick (Scotland) and Keflavik (Iceland) as Shannon's other two European commercial competitors for US military business. The fear is that the heightened publicity of recent weeks may drive the business from Shannon into their arms.
All of this may explain why threatened workers' boycotts have not materialised and why locals are deeply divided. An employee in one small division who considered a petition backed off when he realised that less than a fifth was prepared to sign it.
The lack of overt local support is evident in the make-up of the peace camp on Aer Rianta land a few hundred yards outside the airport perimeter fence. The small core of protesters is a diverse group who see their task as monitoring the aircraft and publicising US troop movement.
By Moroney's own figures, the military throughput has been a tiny element of Shannon's economy. Military cargo flights accounted for 1.5 per cent of Shannon's throughput in 2002.
"These were 26 flights - for which Evergreen International is the main operator - which we are aware carried military spares and equipment but none of those required clearance," he says. As is now known, one clearance exemption was granted by the Government last year. This is believed to have landed at Shannon in August and to have been flown by Air Foyle, a non-US operator. The single exemption granted so far in 2003 is not believed to have been for Shannon.
Moroney says that clearance for these flights is a matter for the Department of Foreign Affairs. "I don't get a document for every flight. Approval may come in a number of ways and I don't want to comment on that."
Of the 2.35 million passengers who passed through Shannon in 2002, just 73,000 or 3.1 per cent were military personnel, which were evenly distributed throughout the year, according to Moroney. If - as Minister for Foreign Affairs, Brian Cowen stated - about two-thirds of this was American, that reduces the US military input even further. (The remainder is believed to have included military flights from Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Bahrain, Jordan and Turkey).
So has the pattern changed in 2003? Speaking on Wednesday, Moroney said the airport had handled 35 commercial flights carrying military personnel in the previous seven days, of which 15 were empty on the homeward run. In the next seven days, another 34 flights were expected, of which 15 would be empty. "It's safe to say there is a slight increase on the typical movements of 2002," he said.
On a conservative estimate of 200 troops to a 757 or 767 aircraft, this means that in two weeks, at least 8,000 US military will have passed through Shannon on commercial flights, compared with last year's two-week average for all military of about 3,000. Sources vary as to their destination. Activist Tim Hourigan suggests Italy, Doha and Turkey.
An airport source believes the majority are headed for Larnaca (Cyprus), with the remainder destined for Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Cairo. "I don't know and don't want to know where they're headed from here. If airlines want to use Shannon, I'm more than delighted," says Moroney. "All Aer Rianta does is provide facilities and allocate a parking stand. I'm keenly determined to win new business and I view this business exactly in that manner. I want to keep it and ensure we give a very good service to these airlines."
Moroney will not give financial information, which he says is commercially sensitive. But he is particularly exercised by the suggestion that US commercial aircraft carrying military are not paying for the use of the airport.
"For us, these are commercial flights the same as any other airline transiting Shannon. They are paying Aer Rianta charges for landing, taxi-ing, parking and use of the airbridge and those charges are competitive with other airports seeking the same business."
It's a small but valuable part of their business, he says. "These flights generate revenue for ground catering, in-flight catering (they are always long haul, so require meals), re-fuelling charges and shopping." Sources suggest other beneficiaries include Aer Lingus, which is World's handling agent at Shannon.
By all accounts, soldiers flying east spend very little in the shops. During the average re-fuelling stop of 45 to 90 minutes, some money is spent in the restaurants and bars. Whether alcohol is consumed seems to be at the discretion of the officer in charge, according to one observer. In any event, they are "very pleasant, cause no difficulty and seem to get on very well with all other passengers", says Moroney. Flying home, their spending habits are about the same as any transatlantic passenger and given that these spend four to eight times more at the Duty Free than other passengers, Shannon values their custom.
On the odd occasion, the largesse extends to the surrounding hotels, as anti-war protesters have noted. If an aircraft "goes technical", i.e. needs repairs or replacement, troops may have to be accommodated overnight. There was one such case in the past few weeks, when US soldiers in civvies stayed in a local hotel.
As they passed the peace camp in a bus, some of the soldiers even gave the thumbs-up sign to the protesters, according to the camp stalwart, Tipperary-born Tracey Ryan. Other than that, there is little to connect the two.
In the camp, creature comforts are minimal. Caoimhe Butterly, lately deposited on the Jordanian border by Israeli police after a lengthy campaign as a witness for the Palestinian people and for which she sustained a bullet in the leg, confesses to being a "wimp" in the face of the biting easterly winds. It cuts through layers of clothing and sends even the dogs for cover into the tiny caravan where the donated soup is heated and a few activists sleep and take refuge from the cold.
Visitors from as far apart as Galway, Dublin and west Cork drop in with firewood, bags of fruit and words of support - "the kind of people you wouldn't associate with hippies living in a field," smiles Tracey Ryan. Augustinian father, Liam Ryan, calls with peace candles. When activists stand on the roundabout with placards reading "Beep for Peace", the response is loud and lively. There are forays to the airfield fence a few hundred yards away for monitoring duties. With their chief plane- spotter, Hourigan, mostly engaged now in media manoeuvres or on Internet research, the tiny resident core has had to take a crash course in aircraft types and branding.
Back at the "Peace House", a modest dwelling on loan to the protesters in Shannon town, Mary Kelly, the 50-year-old nurse who risked her life to bring food and medicine to 150 besieged and wounded people in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity and conveyed the truth to the world by mobile phone, is trying to bring order to the organisation. "I want to run this in a military way," she says, grimacing at the "m" word she has just used. "No, it's a good word", she says after a pause.
"There must be rules in camp. Everyone has to make a pledge to agree on the rules. All must agree with the principles of non-violent direct action. There must be agreement that there are no drugs, no alcohol. And I'm not keen on dogs in camp. [There are three already]. I'm making enemies fast. But we're here to do a job; this is not Eco-topia or the Glen of the Downs." Becky Garcia from Cork nods. "We want this to work. None of us wants to be here for 20 years."
A problem - common to all such movements though most will not talk about it - is the type of person who turns up without even a sleeping bag, expects a hero's welcome and is "pissed off" the next morning after a coolish night. "We are completely determined to know who people are, what their background is, what they're offering, what their interest is . . . We must tighten our security," says Mary Kelly. "We're not interested in parasites and vultures. We like the couple who drove up from Cork, stayed 15 minutes, and brought their solidarity." They don't want mobs of people chatting around the open fire. "We want short, sharp, real support".
The job, she says, is to monitor the aircraft and to bring this to public attention. "The gardaí are not doing the job they're there to do - checking on security. If the gardaí won't do it, we want the UN to come and do it."
They have already achieved a significant victory. When Brian Cowen conceded this week that personal arms were travelling in troop flights, it was a triumph for activists such as Hourigan, Eoin Dubsky and ex-Army commandant, Ed Horgan, who have been insisting for months that Irish law was being flouted. Their objective is to have cargo planes routinely searched, in the belief they are carrying "large amounts of military material, including explosives and heavy weapons", in the words of Ed Horgan. "What we were saying about the rifles was being denied by everyone until Tuesday. I'm saying the same about chartered cargo."
Meanwhile, the war of words is escalating and anyone dropped into the middle has to accept that spin, obfuscation and a degree of paranoia are not entirely one-sided. The fact that no cargo planes are searched has naturally aroused suspicions of foul intent. Activists assert that when a military plane developed smoke in the cockpit and made an emergency landing at Shannon on February 14th last year, three units of the fire service were denied access to it.
"There were probably weapons of a significant nature on board, possibly nuclear," said one earnestly. But according to Martin Moroney, Aer Rianta's fire service did enter and search the aircraft and he talked to the men who did it.
A news item quoting a senior local garda as saying that Shannon was reported to be a target for al-Qaeda was expressly rejected by Commissioner Pat Byrne at a meeting in the airport this week, according to a source there.
Meanwhile, Tim Hourigan spent a good deal of Tuesday afternoon angling for a live Prime Time debate on RTÉ between himself and Cowen. He wanted to ask about a specific cargo plane - registration number N485EV - which landed on Monday morning and which seemed to trigger "unbelievable activity around it. That plane was not carrying pack rations. That's what I wanted to ask Brian Cowen about". At one point, it seems that Prime Time was getting so many calls demanding that Hourigan be put on live, that it threatened to withdraw the slot. In the end, he had his say from a Limerick studio, without any debate with the Minister and without posing the question.
For Hourigan and the rest at the peace camp, today's anti-war march at Shannon will tell a tale. Horgan - who has participated in about 10 "very lonely" protests around there since 2001 - expects maybe 1,000 people to turn up. With all their hard work, have they managed to shake up public consciousness? Or will commercial considerations, confused loyalties and lethargy win through in the end?