Our troops should be serving in Darfur, preventing genocide and taking justified risks, writes Edward Horgan
A LEADING article in The Irish Timeson August 2nd stated: "It is wrong that the military side of [EU missions in Bosnia and Kosovo] is occasionally viewed in Ireland through a distorting and insular prism."
It also referred to Ireland's "military neutrality". The latter is a recent Government invention intended to blur the damage done by the abandonment of Irish neutrality at Shannon airport since 2003.
Neutrality is a political decision by governments giving states international-law neutral status and protection, but also imposing obligations. On March 20th, 2003, the Government invoked the status of neutrality by declaring Ireland a neutral state, but contravened the Hague Convention by allowing US troops to use Shannon airport for its war on Iraq. An implied condition of neutrality is that states do not enter into military alliances, such as Nato, or an EU army if such develops.
The leading article incorrectly implies that I, and others who have been publicly critical of Ireland's abandonment of neutrality, are distorting the truth and viewing aspects of Ireland's international relations in an insular manner. My views are very much internationalist, not nationalist or insular.
There appears to be a lack of comprehension, and resultant anger, in Irish political and media circles, at the decision by a mixed coalition of Irish civil society to reject the dictates of Irish politicians and Eurocrats during the Lisbon referendum. Instead of seeking to understand the message(s) that a majority of Irish people are trying to communicate to their political and European servants, it seems that discrediting the messengers is the preferred response.
Those who are genuinely concerned about issues such as abortion are described as "right-wing Catholics". While I have not campaigned on the abortion issue, I have been publicly critical of the Catholic clergy's silence on the immorality of torture and crimes against humanity, in the context of Shannon airport.
My campaigning has been on the related humanitarian issues - the right to life and bodily integrity of non-combatants, including prisoners, who become victims of conflicts.
I consider that almost all wars are avoidable, if conflict prevention is given sufficient resource, and that the concept of just war is an oxymoron. Peace must be created by peaceful means, not warfare. In exceptional circumstances peace must be enforced by legitimate UN authority, not by self-appointed vigilantes such as the US, the UK or the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. UN reform is needed to ensure that spurious enforcement mandates are not agreed, as occurred for example in the Korean War, the Rwandan Operation Turquoise, and arguably, in the case of EUfor in Chad. Peace should have been enforced by the UN in Bosnia in 1992, not in 1995, and in Rwanda in April 1994. My views are activist, therefore, not pacifist.
The neutrality I support is positive neutrality - if a country declares its intention to remain neutral in wars, it should use all practicable means to promote international peace. This goes further than the Hague Convention on Neutrality, and is in keeping with past Irish policies of Éamon de Valera and Frank Aiken who were active supporters of the League of Nations and the UN.
The Defence Forces have played a very honourable role as UN peacekeepers since 1958. As a small country, Ireland's international role should be confined to UN peace missions, including peace enforcement, where required. At present Irish soldiers are over-committed on several questionable peace missions, such as Afghanistan and Kosovo. The Chad EUfor mission combines the flaws of French Operation Turquoise in Rwanda and the UNprofor mission in Bosnia that facilitated the continuation of those conflicts.
I do not advocate only risk-free peacekeeping missions. East Timor and Liberia were examples of appropriate Irish-UN missions. Irish troops should be serving in Darfur, preventing genocide, and taking justified risks. The Government should be insisting that the UN is properly reformed, resourced, and authorised to do this, as obligated under the Genocide Convention.
I speak from experience and expertise in these matters. Like very many Irish peacekeepers, I have risked my life on UN peacekeeping missions. I worked for nine months as a UN volunteer on election missions in Central Bosnia and in Vukovar, Croatia, in 1996/97, in heavily mined areas, subject to militia threats. I did not "sit on the sidelines".
Yet, I seem to have aroused the anger of some who support deeper integration of Europe as a federal state. Peter Murtagh's article, and the leading article ( The Irish Times, August 2nd), represents unjustified criticism. Murtagh wrote: "If I'm angry at anything, I am angry at some of the views back home in Ireland." This criticism appears directed at a small number of people associated with the Peace and Neutrality Alliance ("These neuralgic and myopic arguments over neutrality.")
By implication, he accuses me, and others, of being dishonest. I have always endeavoured to behave honestly, and I find this comment unjustified: "It really is a gross and dishonest misrepresentation to suggest - as it was in the Lisbon referendum campaign - that by participating in the sort of EU or Nato military missions in the Balkans and in Chad, our country has somehow signed up to an 'EU army' with imperialistic ambitions."
These criticisms appear specific because virtually the only criticisms of the Chad EUfor mission made during the Lisbon campaign were by me and Roger Cole, chairman of Pana. Murtagh wrote: "What sort of morality is it to sit on the sidelines when others are trying to prevent war, impose peace and help nations rebuild themselves?"
I, and many others in Pana, have not been sitting on the sidelines. We have campaigned for basic human rights on issues such as the unlawful killing of hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq and Afghanistan, and against the torture of prisoners, often at considerable personal cost. I call on the Government to withdraw Irish troops from the French-dominated, inappropriate, EUfor Chad mission, and to send these troops to the Darfur border to join the United Nations/African Union peace mission, and help prevent the ongoing genocide.
As a civil society activist, I take inspiration from the late rights activist Alexander Solzhenitsyn who believed that "we must not restrain our social consciousness within the [wretched dimension of politics]". The gulags created by Stalin, Bush and others will not be decommissioned by shooting the messengers.
• Retired Comdt Edward Horgan is international secretary of the Peace and Neutrality Alliance (Pana)