Ireland’s Wars: Syria

From the baking heart of the African continent, our extended look at Ireland’s peacekeeping missions in the 21st century now turns back to familiar territory in the Middle-East. We have already discussed at length Ireland’s ongoing commitment to Lebanon and UNIFIL there, but in the last decade or so Irish Army personnel have also been stationed at a different point of Israel’s border with her neighbours, slotting in to an already long-running United Nations mission that had spiralled into an incredibly dangerous situation owing to a catastrophic civil war. It is apropos that we discuss Syria now as it happens, because the Irish involvement has just concluded at the time of writing: their time on the Golan Heights has been one of the most critical peacekeeping commitments in Irish history.

The United Nations Disengagement Observer Force, or UNDOF, has been in existence since the Summer of 1974. Created in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War that had taken place the year before, the mission was mandated to monitor the implementation of a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Syria. With the consistent consent of both parties, UN personnel were placed in a buffer zone between the two countries, largely situated in or next to an area of land known as the Golan Heights, internationally recognised as being part of Syria, but largely occupied by Israel. Since 1974, UN peacekeepers have occupied this buffer zone, observing the military movements of either side, investigating perceived breaches of the ceasefire, neutralising landmines and engaging in humanitarian assistance in the regions as required. Renewed every six months like clockwork since 1974, Irish soldiers became part of the mandate in 2013. By that time the ongoing Syrian Civil War had created a new dangerous paradigm to the area and the UN mission, with various anti-Syrian government forces liable to act erratically.

Irish duties on the Golan Heights have been similar in some respects to those that they have undertaken as part of UNIFIL in another part of the same general region. In line with the other members of the mission, the Irish established bases and forward observation posts, undertook presence patrolling, engaged with the local population as part of efforts to normalise their presence and, as necessary, met with members of the Syrian and Israeli militaries to investigate breaches of the agreement. More specifically, Irish soldiers have operated as the larger missions designated Force Mobile Reserve, a unit with capability of mechanisation and ability to react rapidly to changing circumstances in the event of serious incidents.

Irish soldiers had barely been on the Golan Heights for a month-and-a-half when they encountered their first serious incident of the mission. In late November 2013 a convoy of Irish soldiers was carrying out a routine transfer of UN personnel between posts, about 25km away from the main Irish base, when they suddenly came under fire, both from small arms and the detonation of a roadside improvised explosive device, that left one of the MOWAG’s APC’s used by the Irish damaged. The use of the IED indicated that the ambush was a carefully planned affair, though whether it was Irish peacekeepers who were the intended target is up for debate. The Irish, taking advantage of the somewhat looser rules of engagement in effect for this mission, returned fire from their vehicle’s mounted machine guns for a time, before withdrawing back the way that they came. There were no casualties, and no reported casualties on the part of the initial attackers, presumed to be a group of anti-government militia. The incident was part of a move to the Israeli side of the border, that would last for the better part of four years.

Just under a year later, Irish peacekeepers were involved in a more dangerous mission. In August of 2014, anti-government rebels of an Islamist persuasion attacked and seized a Syrian border crossing, killing 20 Syrian government soldiers in the process, alongside the capture of 44 Fijian peacekeepers. A Filipino contingent was also present: one company of this deployment were able to make good their withdrawal, but another was surrounded by hostile forces. The Irish were called in to make good a rescue attempt and did so, arriving in force, engaging in several exchanges of fire with the rebels and creating the conditions for the Filipino soldiers to get out of their encirclement. The captured peacekeepers would be released unharmed the following month. The incident, which remarkably came without any fatalities to the UN forces, was a sure sign that the original mandate of UNDOF was starting to slip, with the peacekeepers now more likely than ever to be engaged in combat operations in defence of themselves and their comrades, rather than acting as a mostly observational buffer force: the Syrian Civil War, where the identity of attackers was often a dicey thing to come to a conclusion on, was re-writing the rule book.

The Irish experience of Syria in the time since then was thankfully less dramatic, though it could never be fully considered safe. Being positioned next to an ongoing, and extremely complicated, civil conflict will always engender tensions and Irish soldiers, as well as other peacekeepers based on the Golan Heights, have routinely had to deal with small arms fire aimed in their direction, or stray artillery rounds (or intentional: it is often hard to tell). The ability to re-position some of their posts on the Syrian side of the border has brought welcome expansion of UN presence, but has not been a cure-all for every ill in the region.

In March of this year, perhaps partially in response to the wider regional instability caused by the renewed conflict between Israel and Hamas, but also because of the more basic reason of personnel shortages, the Irish Army concluded its commitment to UNDOF. This drawdown comes at a time when the Irish Defence Forces, under the auspices of the government, is undertaking an examination of its future roles in such operations, which may change from the sort of md-sized commitments that the Golan Heights deployment exemplified, to smaller, but more numerous, involvements in other missions.

The Syrian deployment was a mainstay of the Irish peacekeeping experience in the 21st century, with a huge number of personnel rotating in and out of the Golan Heights. Perhaps only UNIFIL was more important an outlet for the Defence Forces at that time. The Irish there acquitted themselves well in numerous incidents, both in the upkeep of the UNDOF mandate, and in the support and rescue of other peacekeepers. The conclusion of the Irish involvement in the mission paints a picture of a force in transition in some ways, perhaps less likely to be involved in missions like UNDOF in the future, but it is not the end of our look at similar missions in the history of the Irish Army.

To read the rest of the entries in this series, click here to go to the index.