BALKAN JOURNEY:Brigadier General Gerry Hegarty completes his tour of duty as commander of Nato's Kfor force in central Kosovo today - the first Irish Defence Forces officer to hold such a position
BRIGADIER GENERAL Gerry Hegarty sits in his tiny, windowless but functional office at Task Force Centre in Camp Ville in central Kosovo, a portrait of Mary McAleese and two flags - one the Irish Tricolour, the other the flag of Nato, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation - unfurled and on show.
There are maps of Kosovo on the wall showing the deployment of the Nato-led Kosovo Force, or Kfor for short, and head and shoulder shots of the key figures in the general's operation. There are posters advertising the National Museum's Soldiers and Chiefsmilitary exhibition at Collins Barracks in Dublin.
And there's a framed CD of Frank Sinatra's classic hits from 1953 to 1960 with some advice written across it. "In stressful times or emergencys (sic) break glass," it says.
The glass is intact but perhaps this weekend, when he is back home having handed command to his Finnish successor, Brig Gen Halanon, Brig Genl Hegarty will allow himself a moment's relaxation.
Since July last year, he has been the commanding officer of approximately 1,500 soldiers from six countries - Ireland, Finland, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Latvia - who have been enforcing the peace in the central zone of the Nato-led multinational 15,000 strong force in Kosovo. The central zone includes the capital, Pristina, and some 45 per cent of Kosovo's total population of just under two million people, 90 per cent of them ethnic Albanians, the rest Serbs or Roma.
It is the first time that an Irish Defence Forces officer has held such a position and today at Camp Ville, it comes to an end.
"I think we've achieved our mission which was to maintain safety and security," Brig Gen Hegarty said in an interview marking his handover. "For some time to come, Kfor will be required here but the omens are good in Belgrade and their willingness to do business with Brussels."
This squaring up to obligations expected by the international community was seen dramatically with the recent arrest in Belgrade of Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb political leader charged with war crimes and genocide for his role during the siege of Sarajevo, in which some 11,000 people died, and the murder of over 8,300 Muslims in Srebrenica. The hope now is that his wartime general, Ratko Mladic, who oversaw the genocide, will also be arrested.
In 1999, Nato's four-month long bombing campaign against Serb positions in Kosovo and against military and infrastructure installations in Serbia halted the war in Kosovo and, the alliance would argue, prevented an escalation of that war into the murderous abyss to which the conflict might well have descended, as in Bosnia.
But after Srebrenica, where 400 UN troops were based protecting a so-called safe area - all to no avail - the international community adopted a "never again without an appropriate mandate and equipment," as Brig Gen Hegarty puts it.
Several Irish officers under Hegarty's command expressed their satisfaction at being part of a Nato operation - matters were clearer, they said, things happened with a certain military efficiency - did he agree?
"The difference between Nato and the UN is that Nato is primarily a military organisation. I can call in reserves when I need them; that would be different with Unifil, for instance," he said. Hegarty served with Unifil, the UN peacekeeping, as opposed to peace enforcing, mission in Lebanon.
Irish troops are in Kosovo via Ireland's participation in Partnership for Peace (PfP), the Nato led adjunct to the alliance which allows non-members of Nato participate in Nato-led operations if they wish and, in Ireland's case, if they have a UN mandate.
"Membership of PfP has upped our standards. The PfP mechanism has been very successful in getting us to upskill and re-equip . . . And always to be remembered is that we cannot participate in any of those missions without the triple lock mechanism ," he said.
Some of those newly acquired skills and equipment is evident in what the 282 Irish troops with Kfor have been doing. About 50 headquarters personnel who were working with Brig Gen Hegarty will return to Ireland after the handover.
The Irish involvement in Kfor has clearly been successful, both before and during Hegarty's tenure in overall command of the central zone. At the outset of his tenure, he outlined his intention in terms that have been admired by senior colleagues from other contributing countries.
Hegarty declared to the troops under his command: "In the execution of our mission our behaviour must be above reproach and be rooted in professional competence, a sense of decency and fair play."
He adds now: "What I said to our guys was 'I want you to be ambassadors for human rights while you are here'." Kfor's central zone contains a crescent-shaped necklace of Serbian villages in an east-west arc south of Pristina.
"At the outset, I wanted to concentrate on protecting the people in the Serbian crescent and concentrate on training the police in crowd control so that they were to the forefront, not us," he said.
The greatest test came in February with Kosovo's declaration of independence on the 17th, now recognised by over 40 countries, including Ireland and most of the EU
"We knew it was coming but not exactly when," he said.
The potential for widespread unrest and rioting, as occurred in 2004, was obvious, with Serbs likely to feel threatened and isolated, and Albanians behaving in a triumphalist manner, possibly shooting into the air or speeding in cars through Serb villages waving flags of Kosovo and the KLA, the Kosovo Liberation Army which Serbs regard as a terrorist.
Hegarty and his team embarked on a crash course PR campaign targeted at both sides, with Hegarty chairing a series of meetings with local politicians and community leaders.
"We told the Serbs we would not allow a repeat of the serious civil disturbances of 2004 and I also did interviews for local Serbian radio. We reassured them and spoke also to the Albanians.
"We asked them to be dignified and said the story of their declaration would be the biggest story in the world when it happened and they should present a good image of their country. It should not be an image of them attacking Serbs." He addressed some 5,000 Albanian schoolchildren and told them independence brought obligations to adhere to democracy and the rule of law. The declaration of independence passed off quietly in the central zone. An incident a week later at the Serbian border, saw Czech troops under Hegarty's command relieving hard pressed police threatened by Serbs from Serbia.
"We came to the front and in Serb said 'We have taken over from the police and we are going to fire gas and rubber bullets' and the Serbs went away. It was all over in five minutes."
During his time, Hegarty has overseen the spending of €400 million aid from Ireland, Finland and Sweden. The money has gone into employment support schemes, water and sewage systems, and schools refurbishments. While Brig Gen Hegarty returns home in the coming days and will assume command of the Army's Western Command based at Athlone, Kfor will continue, with slightly scaled-back Irish involvement.
The UN interim mission in Kosovo, which is gradually handing over control of Kosovan affairs to the Kosovan authorities, is planned to shortly mutate in an EU-led mission, named EULEX - the EU Rule of Law Mission. The EU argues this is possible under existing UN authority of Security Council Resolution 1244; Russia, a Security Council member, disagrees.
EULEX, assuming it happens, will include 2,000 police officers (including four anti-riot units), prosecutors and judges, all focusing on issues relating to the rule of law, including democratic standards. The size of the mission means Kosovo will soon be home to the largest number of EU civil servants outside of Brussels.
Brig Gen Hegarty, sees EULEX as the way forward. "EULEX must convince the Serbs to play ball," he says. Athlone will be a little different from life in Kosovo. But while he's looking at the Shannon, Hegarty's colleagues will continue to patrol anxious villages, seeking to cement the secure environment and respect for human rights. From all sides.
Read Peter Murtagh's blog as he travels through the Balkans on a motorbike at www.irishtimes.com/blogs
Peter Murtagh's Balkan Journey concludes in The Irish Times on Saturday with his personal reflections on the places he visited and the people he met