THE SATURDAY INTERVIEW:Lt. Gen Pat Nash
ASKED WHAT WAS the most powerful experience of his 44 years in the Irish Defence Forces, Lt Gen Pat Nash does not hesitate one moment. “Good Friday. April 1984. Bra Sheet, southern Lebanon.”
Nash was a company commander when Hassan Abdul Nabbi, a psychopathic local leader of the South Lebanon Army militia, which was armed and trained by Israel, took hostages in a house in the village. Nash went to negotiate their release, but Nabbi took him hostage too, then imposed a 45-minute game of Russian roulette on the Irish officer. “It’s a day I’ll always remember,” says Nash, with his usual understatement. Despite the harrowing circumstances, he managed to negotiate his own and the hostages’ release. Nabbi was later assassinated by Shia militiamen.
The French authorities who in October 2007 welcomed Nash as the future commander of EUFOR, the European protection force in eastern Chad, briefly mistook him for a cheery, portly, mustachioed “modern major-general”, like the one in Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera. Appearances are often deceiving.
Nash was promoted to lieutenant general when he assumed command of the EUFOR operation, at the historic French fort of Mont Valérien, west of Paris. The French may have thought he’d be a pushover, but they soon discovered the underlying steel, forged in years of service with peacekeeping forces in Cyprus, the former Yugoslavia and southern Lebanon.
It was an unexpected fate for Pat, the only child of Dick and Biddy Nash from Ballyvarra, in rural east Limerick. A teacher in Ahane, John Healy, saw potential in the boy and encouraged Dick and Biddy to send him to the Christian Brothers School in Sexton Street, Limerick. “The Christian Brothers had their flaws, but I would not be where I am today without them,” says Nash. He thought vaguely of becoming an accountant. “Sport was the big thing for me, particularly hurling. The great love of my life.”
The cost of university in Cork or Galway was prohibitive in the days before “the great economic move in Ireland”, Nash says. “If you didn’t got to university, you had primary school teaching, the civil service, the ESB, the banks and the army.” When he did his leaving cert in 1964, he applied for a cadetship in the army, and entered the 39th class later that year. “Nobody would have guessed I’d be the general out of my class.”
When Nash commanded the Irish Battalion in southern Lebanon 10 years ago, Hizbullah were driving the Israelis out of the country, and his men were caught in the middle. Both sides retaliated against “Irish Batt”, and an Irish soldier was killed. An officer who’s been through that is not impressed by bluster from European partners. “He’s stubborn as a mule,” sighs a French colonel. “He’s a hurricane that never blew,” says another.
Contradictory as it may seem, the French colonel praises Nash’s negotiating skills: “He’s decisive, but he never hurts anyone. He’s very diplomatic.” Those twin characteristics, an iron will cloaked in velvet manners, saw Nash through the March 2008-March 2009 EUFOR mission. It was Nash’s last assignment before retirement next June 17th, on his 63rd birthday.
Without French support, the regime of Chadian President Idriss Déby would probably have fallen to Sudanese-backed rebels long ago. EUFOR was a French idea, and France contributed 55 per cent of EUFOR’s 3,700 troops.
British and German reservations about French ulterior motives prevented both countries participating in EUFOR. A study of the mission by a French official writing under an assumed name on the website of the left-wing think tank Terra Nova notes that France wanted to “Europeanise” its relations with its former colonies, but adds: “This Europeanisation is only a facade. It is France – and the Élysée, in the great tradition of French African policy – who led the operation from start to finish.”
Not so, says Gen Nash. From the outset, he saw the mission as “a major projection of European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP)”. For over a year, Nash was the keeper of the ESDP flame, the guarantor of European neutrality in Chad. Whatever European character the mission had – a question that is subject to debate – was preserved by Nash.
Asked about the pressures he came under, Nash laughs. “I’m a long time on the road. My very first mission overseas was as a young lieutenant in Cyprus in 1967. I’m very thick-skinned as a result . . . I had no problem in maintaining the mandate, the mission and the impartiality.”
Nash says the responsibility of signing contracts committing millions of euros in European taxpayers’ money weighed more heavily on him than the risk of offending those who sought to manipulate EUFOR. “You must always decide where you are going to make your stand, because you must win it,” he says. “On three occasions, I had to make a very firm stand.” He won’t reveal details, but says it was “in the area of impartiality and interference”.
French forces deployed in Chad for the past 23 years under the separate Opération Épervier have repeatedly come to the rescue of the Chadian regime, including twice during EUFOR’s March 2008-March 2009 deployment. President Déby attempted but failed to involve EUFOR in his battle with the rebels.
Nash calls the threat of resignation his “nuclear option”.
“There were occasions when it was, ‘Back off or I’m gone’,” he admits. “All three were won because I was on high ground. On all three occasions, done and dusted, and then we carry on the following day. Now they know, whoever they may be, that they are dealing with somebody of substance. Okay, you will not win all the battles, but you must win the ones that are of critical importance to you.”
NASH CAME UNDERa different kind of pressure, from Washington, during the Russian-Georgian war last summer. EUFOR had leased badly needed helicopters and crews from Russia. When the August conflict started, with its undertow of Cold War rivalry, the Bush administration objected to Europe working with the Russians in Chad.
“We weren’t going to embarrass anybody,” Nash says. “But we kept contact, and then at the very first opportunity we were back in. I needed those helicopters. I wanted those helicopters. Anybody who might have got in my way as regards those helicopters was answered very clearly: Be consistent in your own policy. You are using corridors to support Afghanistan. I need helicopters for Chad.”
EUFOR had its problems, but for the most part, notes the Terra Nova report, “the objective was reached. The shelter zone for the refugees (500,000 people over 70,000sq km) was secured”. Gen Nash carried out Mission Impossible, overcoming mind-boggling obstacles to build bases for 3,700 troops 5,000km from Brussels, in a country so isolated that surface transport takes six weeks.
If there is failure, analysts agree, it is the fault of politicians, not the military. For the most part, EUFOR fulfilled its mission to protect refugees, the internally displaced and aid workers. But world leaders have not devised a way to end misrule by the presidents of Chad and Sudan, nor the proxy war between them.
When rebels staged yet another offensive from Sudan into Chad this month, the UN Security Council could not agree on a resolution, because France supports Chad and China supports Sudan. “As long as somebody feels they have a protector on either side, you are not going to get full progress . . . It doesn’t need Nash to spell it out,” says the general. “In the meantime, do we abandon the unfortunate people?”
EUFOR’s greatest utility may have been as a learning experience. Roland Marchal, a prominent French expert on Africa, says: “The only thing positive I see in this operation over the medium term is the fact that the Europeans, and Monsieur Nash in particular, know more about what’s going on in Chad. They no longer have the stereotype of the wicked Sudanese. Now they know that we’re dealing with bad guys on both sides of the border.”
Nash is too diplomatic to say such a thing, but he nods in agreement when I tell him what Marchal said. “During the 12-month period while we were operational, we had an average of 110 visitors per month to the area of operations: prime ministers, ministers, politicians, diplomats. We had over 450 international media visit our area of operations,” Nash says. “Nothing can ever be the same again in Chad, because of visibility. The government of Chad cannot act in the same way it did before.”
The Minister for Defence, Willie O’Dea, has committed 400 Irish troops to Minurcat until the end of this year, with the possibility of renewal for up to three years. Nash says he is particularly proud of the Ireland’s role as the second biggest contingent (after France) in EUFOR. “In the concept of ESDP, the Irish played an absolute blinder . . . They were the people who initally embraced NGOs . . . who changed the attitude, who changed the approach. We were not this foreign, European colonial power coming back in to rule Africa. We were there to support them.”
EUFOR was the biggest of 23 civil-military missions undertaken by the EU in recent years, and it marked the first time an Irish officer has been overall commander of an international peacekeeping mission.
AS IRELAND PREPARESfor a second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, Nash is conscious of the implications for the domestic debate. Is there not a degree of confusion over the relationship between Irish neutrality, Lisbon, ESDP and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), I ask.
“It’s very simple to me. It’s people who have an agenda who make it woolly, not the people who have to implement it,” says Nash. “In the context of Ireland and in the context of this mission, we had to have a Security Council resolution. It has to be unanimous at European Union level, 27 countries, where Ireland has a vote exact same as any other of the 27. Nobody is walking into an invasion with their eyes closed.
“I hope that our mission will have brought clarity to people at home in the context of the debate that will arise sometime later this year. They’ll see that here am I, coming from a UN background, coming from Ireland, and I can go in as an operation commander and be absolutely loyal to the mandate, the mission, the concept of operations that I drew up and the op plan that I drew up, and carry out an operation that does not impinge upon Ireland’s position, and do that with 26 countries under command, 23 of them from the EU . . .”
Article 28 of the Lisbon Treaty notes that “Commitments and cooperation shall be consistent with commitments under the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which, for those States which are members of it, remains the foundation of their collective defence and the forum for its implementation”. European defence is also linked to Nato through “Berlin plus”, which provides for Nato assets to be put at the disposal of EU missions, and through Nato’s “Partnership for Peace” (PfP), which Ireland joined in 1999.
In a previous job, as Ireland’s deputy chief of staff operations, Nash oversaw Ireland’s involvement in PfP, which he says was “of huge benefit” in preparing Irish troops for the Chad mission. Had PfP not taught the Irish army ranger wing and engineers operational capabilities, interoperability and standards, they would not have been able to transform “a brown-field site in Goz Beida” into “the most magnificent camp” in just two months, Nash says.
“Ireland was able to go in and be part of an ESDP operation as the second largest contributor. That has brought us to a new level. That is peacekeeping.”
Irish neutrality is such a sensitive issue that Nash seems to avoid using the word. He reminds me that the point of the Chad mission was to protect internally displaced people and refugees. “Do we take somebody’s view that everybody is crying out do something for these people – oh yeah, you can’t do it because there is the obtuse reason that might be brought up that you are compromising some position?” he asks rhetorically. “I have great sympathy for governments and politicians who are being harangued – and I think rightly so – to do something for the most unfortunate in the world, and then when they do something about it they’re accused of betraying somebody . . . I think it’s unfair. Everything we have done has been above board. Total visibility.”
THE CHAD MISSIONalso focused Nash's mind on a burning issue in Ireland: whether to seek an opt-out from the European Defence Agency (EDA), in the hope of encouraging reluctant voters to ratify Lisbon. (The EDA seeks to coordinate European weapons production and procurement.)
“I’m not going to get into the politics of it,” says Nash. But “if Ireland goes outside the EDA and opts out of the situation, certainly the defence forces are going to have to pay more for what they need, and in these economic times we can ill afford that. And there’s inevitable degrading of the operational capabilities of our defence forces. It would take a little time, because the assets we have at the moment are very good. But over a period of time, you will lose your place. We certainly would not be in a position to replicate a Chad-type mission under ESDP policy in a couple of years time.”
GEN NASH PAID A LAST VISIT TO CHADfor 36 hours this week, and is tying up loose ends at Mont Valérien. He and his wife Deirdre are about to return to Blackrock, Co Cork, the golf club and his "great neighbour" Finbar Lawless, whom he'll relieve of house-sitting duties.
In the meantime, some of Nash’s staff are humming the line from My Brother Sylvest, who has “a row of 40 medals on his chest”. The Chadian government just awarded Nash and his number two, French Brigadier General Ganascia, its highest decoration. For leading the Chad mission, Nash is expected to receive medals from Poland and Ireland, too.
On Monday, President Nicolas Sarkozy will pin the medal of Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur on Nash’s chest, in a ceremony at Les Invalides. Among the French and Irish officials at Les Invalides will be Deirdre, Nash’s wife of 36 years. They met when Nash and fellow army officers went for a drink in the Royal Hotel in Fermoy, County Cork, which her father owned. Their three sons, Kieran, an electrical engineer in Athlone, and the twins Alan and Gary, will all travel to Paris for the occasion. Alan is a chartered accountant with CRH in India, Gary a civil engineer in London.
When the State recently purchased Sir William Orpen’s portrait of the Irish tenor John McCormack, Nash noticed the red rosette of the Légion d’Honneur on McCormack’s lapel. “Apparently he always wore it. When I was a child, John McCormack on the old 78s was what we listened to. To think that Pat Nash from Ahane, Co Limerick, will be getting the same honour as John McCormack! My God, it’s beyond my wildest dreams.”
