Defence Forces Review 2008

Defence Forces Review 2008
This is what Col Waern meant when he referred to “my spies” and O’Brien later rightly
described the intelligence gathering, particularly what intelligence professionals call handling
or running agents as having been bound to become a little comical. Frankly, it beggars belief
that Gen McKeown, much less O’Brien himself, was expected to operate a complex civilmilitary
operation with such a set-up.
Ni e m b a – t h e p r o d u c t o f i n t e l l i g e n c e d e f i c i t
A number of incidents involving Irish troops took place some months after their arrival in the
Congo. The most infamous, and the one which had the greatest impact in the minds of the
Irish public, was the Niemba massacre on November 8, 1960. Niemba was an isolated trading
post on the river Lukuga in Katanga and was of no real tactical importance. However, nine
Irish soldiers, including platoon commander, Lt Kevin Gleeson, while on patrol in the area
were slaughtered south of Niemba by marauding Baluba tribesmen in an unprovoked and
ferocious attack.
A primitive tribal people, the Baluba had been regularly terrorised and abused by the mercenaryled
forces in Katanga with many of their number having already fled to Elisabethville, where
ironically they were being protected by Irish and other UN forces. It likely that the attack
itself was a knee-jerk reaction by a primitive people who had already been terrorised by white
soldiers - but in the aftermath both the Katangans and the Balubas constantly blamed the UN
for siding with one or other faction. The Irish troops had been instructed to go out and remove
roadblocks that had been set up by the Balubas and it was while they were doing this that they
were set upon. Studies and reports in the aftermath acknowledged that had there been greater
intelligence available to ONUC at the time, it would have been clear an attack was imminent.
If proof were needed that ONUC HQ had no general or regional intelligence pictures, and little
real understanding of the complex environment into which their troops were being deployed,
then Niemba proved that point. After the massacre instead of trying to discover what had
provoked the Baluba ONUC simply withdrew from the area as newspaper stories about the
arrow-pierced bodies of the troops recovered after the ambush fed into the mindsets of the
general public. As far as the Irish people were concerned, our troops were fighting a savage but
ignorant force armed with stone-age weapons and our soldiers had died because they did not
want to intimidate or take aggressive action. The reality, however, was distinctly different.
Th e Ja d o t v i l l e Eq u a t i o n
And then there was Jadotville. I do not wish to go back over the details of the battle that took
place at the mining village in September 1961, but rather I want to look at some of the things
that led its strategic failure. The battle itself was a tactical success - a company of 150 Irish
troops well dug-in and defending their ground successfully against a mercenary-led force that
at one point numbered up to 3000. The fact the Irish troops of A Company, 35th Battalion were
able to hold out for a week in the face of a numerically superior force with support weapons
and airpower should be a matter of pride to all of us who have worn the uniform. However,
many of the mistakes made were to come after the battle and they were largely made through
lack of information at all levels in both the Irish and ONUC command structure.
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