IRAQ: The first alarm bell that an Irish citizen was in trouble in Baghdad went off at 2.03pm on Wednesday, writes Mark Hennessy, Political Correspondent
Euan MacAskill, the Guardian's diplomatic editor, rang the Department of Foreign Affairs after lunch on Wednesday.
Rory Carroll had been kidnapped in Baghdad by assailants unknown, he quickly told the department's secretary general, Dermot Gallagher. Within minutes Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern, who was having lunch with Northern Secretary Peter Hain, was told.
Soon the phone lines hummed to embassies abroad, to Ann Anderson in Paris, Daithí Ó Ceallaigh in London, Frank Cogan in Rome and Tom Bolster in Tehran. Besides having strong diplomatic interests and operations in Baghdad, each of their host countries has intelligence agents working in the city's troubled streets.
Contacts were also quickly made with Britain's MI6 in London, the French Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure in Paris and the Italian intelligence agency, SISMI.
Baghdad-based Irish, now working for the United Nations and non-governmental agencies, were contacted, as were former Irish soldiers working as highly paid security guards.
Mr Ahern spoke to British foreign secretary Jack Straw, on business in Jamaica, who promised every possible assistance. "The intelligence services were very helpful," one senior diplomat said yesterday. "The British were absolutely first-rate, could not have been more helpful."
The advice came back quickly that the Government should play a delicate hand in the first 24 hours, emphasising Carroll's Irishness, but to do so quietly.
In the opening hours of the drama, therefore, Mr Ahern and other senior Government figures kept a low media profile. So, too, did the opposition, at the Government's request.
"If they thought he was a hugely important person, politically, I mean, we were afraid he would be sold on and that demands would escalate," a diplomat explained.
Within a few hours the intelligence emanating from Baghdad took on a certain hue: that Carroll's kidnap did not appear to be sanctioned by Islamic insurgents. By now, Iraqi deputy prime minister Ahmed Chalabi was involved, and by Wednesday evening he was offering hope that contacts could come the following morning from the kidnappers.
None came that night or on Thursday morning. The mood in Iveagh House had become despondent, as Mr Ahern said after the drama was over.
"I thought we were into a Margaret Hassan situation again. She definitely was Irish. Ken Bigley connections may have been more tenuous, but it didn't help her," he told The Irish Times.
The Minister and Taoiseach decided that an Irish team had to be sent to Baghdad immediately, to liaise with local authorities and to keep Dublin up to speed on changes.
Led by Ambassador to Finland Antóin Mac Unfraidh, who served in Baghdad until 1990, the membership of the mission was put together "within 15 minutes". The other diplomat was Michael Gaffey, another Baghdad veteran, although the identities of the Garda superintendent and two Army officers have not been released.
By now the Iraqi cleric and commander of the Mehdi army, Moqtada al-Sadr, who effectively controls the Baghdad neighbourhood of Sadr City, was also involved. "The impression we got was that al-Sadr was not pleased that the kidnapping had taken place," the senior Irish diplomat told The Irish Times.
By Thursday evening Chalabi was offering hope that release could come within 24 hours. In the end it came within little more than two. By then there were signals emerging from Baghdad that the Iraqi Interim Authority was prepared to launch a raid to free Carroll.
The Government insisted that such a move be cleared with it first and with the Carroll family, the diplomat said.
The Irish mission would not have had a role in any release effort, "but they would have been our eyes and ears if the situation went that way," a political source said last night. "We did not want to be out of the loop if something like that was being contemplated."
For now, the reasons Carroll's kidnappers freed him are not clear, though the release of al-Sadr supporters in Basra is probably not coincidental.
Not even Foreign Affairs is claiming that Carroll's Irish passport is the reason he was saved. He could simply have been incredibly lucky.
Nevertheless, few involved in the Government's efforts at political or official level can hide their pleasure that their response, which has already been praised by the Guardian, measured up.
"You can never be too sure in these situations," the diplomat said. "You just have to get your message out there. You have to prepare for every eventuality."