Government agrees to train African military officers

The Government has agreed to train African military officers, most likely from Ethiopia, Tanzania and Uganda, in peacekeeping skills in Ireland and Africa for missions at home under a newly announced initiative.

Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Charlie Flanagan announced the plans at a UN peacekeeping summit in New York where the Minister for Agriculture and Defence Simon Coveney was also in attendance.

Mr Coveney told The Irish Times that the African officers from the three countries – with which Ireland has a strong relationship through development aid assistance – were likely to be trained at Defence Forces locations at the Curragh Camp, Co Kildare and Haulbowline, Co Cork.

The officers will be trained under an initiative led by the US and the UN known as the African Peacekeeping Rapid Response Partnership that will help the three countries along with Senegal, Rwanda and Ghana deploy African peacekeepers to emerging crises on the continent.

The initiative was announced at the UN peacekeeping summit chaired by US vice president Joe Biden in New York.

The Irish Defence Forces will train African peacekeepers in areas such as international human rights law, responses to gender-based violence and measures to counter improvised explosive devices (IED) bombs.

“We need to invest in the capacity to be able to deal and manage with difficult conflict situations and primarily countries on the continent of Africa to be able to provide that capacity themselves,” said Mr Coveney.

Irish troops would provide training in Africa “when and where it is appropriate,” he said.

The Government decided to send a new deployment of 130 troops to the UN peacekeeping mission to the Golan Heights, the area between Israel and Syria, on that basis that UN troops would be kept out of the parts of this area that were affected by the Syrian civil war, he said.

He had been assured at the New York summit about the importance of the role of Irish peacekeepers in the UN Disengagement Observation Force (UNDOF) mission that has been in place since 1974.

The area was targeted by heavily armed Syrian rebels from al-Qaeda offshoot, Al-Nusra Front, last month. Syrian rebels kidnapped Fijian peacekeepers and a Filipino UN detachment had to be rescued by an Irish UN reaction force.

To remain involved in Golan, the Government also wanted a review of equipment available to peacekeepers and a UN security council statement backing the changes and making a strong commitment to the mission.

Mr Coveney said that the Irish soldiers had shown themselves to be highly professional, efficient and courageous in difficult circumstances.

“That is why the UN I have been very anxious to facilitate Ireland and to reassure us in order that we would stay. On that basis, we are going to stay,” he said.

Asked about the risk of “mission creep” in Golan the Minister said he would “keep an open review ongoing” on the risks but that sending Irish soldiers into a civil war situation was a “red-line issue” and would make it “very difficult for me to maintain an Irish presence in that mission.”

He was not concerned about a possible backlash against UN troops in Golan to the US bombing of extremist militant targets in Syria this week.

There had been many flash-points across the Middle East since 1974, including during the three-year Syrian civil war, and this mission has “remained relevant and solid through all of those,” he said.

“For Ireland to pull out of it and for all of the knock-on problems that would come with that I would want very good reason to pull out,” he said.