Irish troops are set to deploy to Chad tonight. Tom Clonanexplains what the Ranger Wing members will be doing.
Fifty members of the Army's elite Ranger Wing are due to fly by charter flight from Dublin to Ndjamena in Chad at around midnight tonight. The troops will arrive in the early hours of tomorrow morning and will remain at the French-held airport for some days while chartered Antonov aircraft deliver their specialised equipment, ammunition and supplies to the Chadian capital before the weekend.
From Ndjamena, the Rangers will deploy forward to Abeche in eastern Chad, just a few hundred kilometres from the border with Sudan and Darfur. As part of the initial entry of EUfor, the EU force to Chad and the Central African Republic, the Rangers will join special forces units from other nationalities in French-held positions at Abeche over the coming days.
During this period, they will acclimatise to the scrub and bush conditions of eastern Chad and will have an opportunity to fine-tune their weapons and equipment, while orienting themselves with the proposed Irish area of operations south of Goz-Beida, close to the border with Sudan.
From Abeche, the Rangers detachment will split into a number of smaller teams, each deploying forward to the proposed Irish area of operations - a corridor of territory parallel with the border between Chad and Sudan, running several hundred kilometres south of Goz-Beida. Equipped with special reconnaissance vehicles (SRVs) - Ford F350 SRVs armed with heavy machine guns - each team will begin patrolling between the many refugee and internally displaced persons camps in the Irish area and the border with Sudan.
The role of the Rangers will be to finalise the location and sites of up to three Irish base camps for the Irish battalion of over 400 troops, due to arrive in the area before the rainy season in May of this year. Each special forces team will conduct route reconnaissance missions into and out of each of these proposed locations with an emphasis on gathering vital information to facilitate force protection, logistics and supply, medical evacuation and air support.
In addition to route reconnaissance, the Rangers will do long-range patrolling and surveillance operations from the proposed Irish base camps forward to the border with Sudan, in order to gather intelligence on likely threats in the area - from rebel groups or other de facto militia groups. They will also liaise with local leaders to assess their disposition towards EUfor and its Irish contingent.
The Rangers will also liaise with the UN international policing mission in the vicinity of the refugee camps to best assess how the Army might provide a secure environment for the provision of humanitarian assistance to the hundreds of thousands of refugees located there.
Unlike previous peacekeeping missions, Irish special forces personnel will have full authorisation under the UN Chapter 7 peace enforcement terms of EUfor's mission to Chad to engage - if necessary - with such armed elements in combat in order to prevent criminal acts against refugees, NGOs or indeed attacks on Irish or other EUfor personnel.
The Rangers are well-equipped for their task in Chad. Each team will be heavily armed with individual weapons such as state-of-the-art Heckler and Koch assault rifles and machine guns. Each Irish special forces team will also have heavy support weapons such as AT-4 SRAAW short-range anti-armour weapons, M203 grenade launchers and other short-range missile systems.
Crucially, the Rangers will have French air support on call at all times - from Puma medium-range helicopters, Eurocopter helicopter gunships and, in extreme situations, French Dassault Mirage F1 fighters based in Ndjamena.
Irish commanders on the ground are mindful of the threat posed by rebel groups and bandits. They say they are, however, confident that their levels of equipment and air support, along with experience in peace enforcement acquired in Africa, will stand them in good stead for the challenges ahead.
Aside from the threat assessment, EUfor's main priority remains the provision and maintenance of humanitarian aid to the half-million men, women and children located along the border Sudan and Darfur.
Dr Tom Clonan is The Irish Times security analyst. He lectures in the school of media DIT. tclonan@irish-times.ie