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Into Action. Dan Harvey
Читать онлайн.Название Into Action
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781785371141
Автор произведения Dan Harvey
Жанр Учебная литература
Издательство Ingram
The degree to which all or most of these determinants were present and played out had a significant bearing on what the peacekeeping force was able to achieve. The absence of any one, or more of these factors, adversely affected the context in which the peacekeeping force was able to perform. This had often and all too frequently been the case, resulting in the peacekeeping force of which the Irish were members being tasked to keep a peace where there was, in fact, no peace to be kept. Throughout the Irish Defence Forces’ rich experience of peacekeeping in many mission areas throughout the world, confrontation was sometimes part of this ‘strange soldiering’ involvement. Irish peacekeepers have been severely challenged, tested, and become embroiled in some noteworthy actions. Irish peacekeepers have seen action in the Congo (Niemba, Jadotville and ‘The Tunnel’ at Élisabethville); in Lebanon (At-Tiri); in Kosovo (the St Patrick’s Day Riots of 2004); in Chad; and more recently in Syria.
Interestingly, an analysis of these engagements illustrates the presence of some distinguishing commonalities, such as unexpected ‘mission command’; sub-unit involvement; leadership; the value of training; strategic implications of a tactical incident; and not to overstate it, bravery. These incidents were all the more remarkable because the Irish, adhering to peacekeepers’ strict rules of engagement, had to act against protagonists engaging without such rules.
‘Peacekeeping’ is not mentioned in the UN Charter, it evolved out of necessity. So what was a ‘New Departure’ for the United Nations also became one for the Irish, and for six decades this Irish participation has greatly contributed to peace throughout the world.
Departure for the Congo. Members of 33rd Irish Battalion boarding a United States Air Force C-124 Globemaster transport plane at Baldonnel Aerodrome, 18 August 1960.
Courtesy of the Military Archives, Dublin
PART I
CONGO (1960–4)
CHAPTER 1
Chaos in the Congo (Niemba)
Congo’s vast natural resources of mineral wealth were in stark contrast to its people’s poverty. An enormous country, Congo’s former colonial history had been brutal, yet its independence in 1960 swiftly brought it towards, then beyond, the brink of bloodshed. A huge humanitarian tragedy was in the offing and the country itself faced fragmentation. Now Katanga, its primary province, was perched perilously on the precipice of pandemonium.
Soldiers from seventeen countries, including Ireland – all member states of the United Nations – had contributed to a peacekeeping force attempting to stabilise the situation before it imploded. That such an undertaking had come to pass owed its origins to when the European powers – Germany, Britain, France, Belgium and Italy – some seventy-six years previously at the Berlin Conference hosted by Otto Von Bismarck in November 1884, entrusted the Congo not to Belgium per se, but rather uniquely to the personal control of King Leopold II of Belgium. Unwilling to risk hostilities over the, as yet, unclaimed regions of Africa, the European colonists were happy to amicably divide up what was left.
Initially a loss maker, Congo’s bountiful wild rubber was soon exploited, resulting in huge personal financial gains for Leopold II by satisfying the demand for tyres for the newly emergent and thriving car industry. In their quest for ever-increasing quotas of rubber produce, zealous overseers inflicted appalling abuses and atrocities on the native Congolese when failing to meet these laid-down quotas.
Congo’s abundance of raw materials – timber, ivory, rubber and vast quantities of minerals – were quickly monopolised by Belgian firms paying high dividends to Leopold for the privilege. Inevitably, envious competing interest from others, including British businesses unable to gain a highly lucrative market share, exploited the concerns of outspoken missionaries over the shockingly inhumane treatment of the Congolese and raised such concerns in the British Parliament. As a result, in mid-1903 Roger Casement, at the British Consul in the Congo, was directed to conduct an investigation. By the year’s end, after a thorough, systematic and highly conscientious undertaking, his report laid bare in graphic detail the maltreatment being meted out to the Congolese, including the severing of hands which were then preserved by a smoking process – proof of money not wasted on bullets. Casement’s report earned him a knighthood and caused widespread condemnation and criticism of Leopold II. The resultant international hue and cry led to Belgium itself being given control of Leopold II’s personal African fiefdom. However, the horrors did not fade overnight.
Diamonds, uranium and other minerals from Congo’s seemingly inexhaustible supply of valuable natural resources soon replaced timber, ivory and wild rubber as income-earning exports for the Belgians. It was shortly after the First World War that the province of Katanga, where vast resources of copper had been discovered in 1913, attracted fortune-seeking European and American mining and mineral firms led by Union Minière, a large Anglo-Belgian concern. It became one of the most highly lucrative mining centres in the world, accounting for 50 per cent of Congo’s wealth.
An Irish search party arrives at the broken bridge ambush site over the River Luweyeye at Niemba.
Courtesy of the Military Archives, Dublin
The preservation of potential ongoing returns focussed the attention of these corporations as the region prepared to enter the countdown to its post-colonial era. However, while other colonial countries had prepared their respective indigenous populations to ease the transition towards independence, Belgium undertook no such preparations for the Congo. Theirs was the presumption of continuance through utter necessity. Disastrously, they believed that the existing white administrative level would continue to administer. There were few Africans in positions of responsibility in the Congo and its 25,000-strong army was commanded by in excess of 1,000 Belgian officers. On being granted independence, this army became the Armée Nationale Congolaise (ANC). Its layer of white command was removed and with it, it has to be said, control. In addition, some 200 Congolese tribes were just released from Belgian control.
Granted sudden independence, the Congo – with huge mineral wealth but no public administration layer – was unable to impose control on its so-called army to ensure stability and security – its new government’s first duty – and the result was chaos. This disintegration arose directly from two speeches, the first by King Baudouin of Belgium, the second by Patrice Lumumba, the new prime minister of the Congo. In his address to the Congolese, Baudouin encouraged them to be deserving of the advantages granted by his grandfather, Leopold II, a personage hugely disliked throughout Congo. Insulted, Patrice Lumumba set aside his prepared conciliatory speech, instead delivering an impassioned denunciation of the Belgians, which had immediate repercussions. Political opportunists seized the momentum, the army mutinied and many tribesmen sought reprisals for generations of white supremacy.
There were some 10,000 Belgians living in Congo and many white families, previously associated with mining and plantations, became targets for robbery, rape and murder. Lumumba, not anxious to seek the assistance of Belgium, hinted he might contact China for support. He did in fact communicate with the Russians but then, advised by Congo’s US Ambassador,