Irish peacekeeping troops in Chad are too few in number to keep control of a huge and increasingly dangerous region
LAST SATURDAY, while observing a gun battle between the Chadian army and anti-government rebels in eastern Chad, Irish peace enforcement troops were fired on and returned fire. It was the first time since the so-called Battle of At'Tiri in Lebanon in 1980 that Irish troops had opened fire in anger on an overseas mission.
Later on Saturday, 800 heavily armed rebels travelling in a convoy of pick-ups rolled into the town of Goz Beida where just over 400 Irish troops serving with the European Union Force (Eufor) are based. Some of the rebels decided to loot a compound owned by the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). They stormed in, discharging their AK-47s and terrifying humanitarian staff before stealing vehicles, fuel and satellite phones.
In an interview published in The Irish Times on Wednesday, the UNHCR's official spokeswoman in Chad, Annette Rehrl, rounded on the Irish troops. She claimed the Irish had done nothing to stop the rebels despite having a specific United Nations mandate to protect humanitarian staff in Chad and to engage armed elements to fulfil that mandate. The comments, while not retracted, sparked a round of embarrassing apologies from the UNHCR.
To make matters worse, the Minister for Defence, Willie O'Dea, and Defence Forces Chief of Staff Lieut Gen Dermot Earley were in Chad on a three-day visit this week. They were forced to abandon plans to visit camps for refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) beside the Irish Camp Ciara base just outside Goz Beida. A statement released to the media cited the worsening security situation. It neglected to mention that it is the Irish troops who are mandated to keep the camps secure.
The problems for the Irish haven't been confined to maintaining security for those covered by their mandate. Last month 30 members of the elite Army Ranger Wing happened upon 200 rebels while on patrol in a village near the border with Darfur. The rebels were armed with AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns.
Fortunately, they agreed to talks with the Rangers through the Rangers' interpreters. To the outnumbered Rangers' immense credit, they talked themselves out of a very dangerous situation in a remote region with no other Eufor troops to call on for back-up.
Similarly, the conventional troops who returned warning fire towards rebels near Goz Beida last Saturday performed commendably. They showed enough strength to deter an attack without inflaming the situation.
But both incidents raise significant questions about how well we are communicating with our European partners in Eufor, particularly the French. France, the former colonial power in Chad, has contributed more troops than any other country to Eufor. Its fighter jets fly surveillance missions daily over Chad, a country twice the size of France with less than 400km of paved roads.
Convoys of rebel vehicles can be easily spotted moving across the sands below the French jets. But it seems the Rangers had no warning last month that they were driving into a village where 200 rebels had set down for a few days. Similarly, it seems the Irish troops last Saturday in and around Goz Beida had little or no intelligence about unfolding events.
The Irish have just 400 troops to enforce peace in an area the size of Munster, where armed rebels roam freely and where there are no other Eufor troops to call on for support. To maximise safety in the region the Irish need razor-sharp intelligence about rebel movements which, so far, has been lacking.
The Irish troops' handling of the rebel raid on the UNHCR compound in Goz Beida last Saturday raises other serious questions. In Wednesday's Irish Times interview, Rehrl complained that Irish Eufor troops did not come to her staff's aid until "after the whole thing happened".
The UNHCR moved quickly to defuse any fall out from Rehrl's remarks. It apologised - via personnel in Chad, Dublin and Geneva - to Willie O'Dea. The Minister sought to dismiss Rehrl's remarks, saying the official apology "speaks for itself".
But, inconveniently for O'Dea, a formal statement from the UNHCR in Geneva issued last Monday corroborates Rehrl's account given by her to this newspaper by telephone from Abeche in eastern Chad on Tuesday. The statement confirmed Eufor had evacuated humanitarian staff but only "as the situation became calmer" and only after UNHCR staff had been threatened at gunpoint.
IT LATER EMERGED that the Eufor troops who were first to the UNHCR compound just after the rebel attack were a small group of Dutch soldiers serving under Irish command in Goz Beida. The Irish only arrived on the scene when tensions had calmed to such a point that UNHCR staff could be evacuated. Rather than stepping in to stop the rebel attack, as they are mandated to, the Irish took up positions nearby around the refugee and IDP camps housing the tens of thousands that they are also mandated to protect.
They also needed to secure their own camp, which has a 1.5km perimeter, and to plan the evacuation to that camp of 300 aid workers in the region. While trying to perform all of these tasks the Irish were also doing their best to monitor the 800 armed rebels in the immediate vicinity who could have attacked them at any time.
Trying to execute so many life or death tasks in such a hostile environment sounds like an awful lot of work for just over 400 troops. O'Dea himself conceded this week that Eufor forces were "spread very thinly" in Chad.
Since last weekend, the rebels have moved away from the area around Goz Beida, wreaking havoc in other towns in the east and north. Eventually they will go back to Darfur. That will most likely happen in the next fortnight before the rains set in, making roads impassable. The rebels are almost certain to return via Goz Beida because it is a good place to rob fuel for their vehicles. It means the Irish are likely to face them again soon.
Six months ago O'Dea said the rebels were "not in a position to engage well-equipped, trained and organised" armies such as the Irish.After his visit to Chad this week he sounded slightly less sure. In the first signs of Government jitters about the mission, he made a point of releasing a statement saying the Government was committed to retaining troops in Chad "up to March 2009 only".
Many in the military believe that, given the expense of transporting almost 3,000 tonnes of equipment to the desert in Chad and building a camp there from scratch, a deployment of less than two years would not be justified in value for money terms.
But the rebels are more numerous and active than had been envisaged before the Irish were deployed. The Irish Times visited Goz Beida last month and met well-trained and well-equipped Irish troops who were clearly dedicated to the mission and took pride in their uniform. The primary question now is: have we sent enough of them?
