Defence Forces Review 2008

Lessons from The Congo
The biggest mistake the Defence Forces made in the interim was to consider all of this a blot
on their collective copy book and quietly hope the incident would go away. In reality Quinlan
and his soldiers did extremely well at Jadotville. However, there were many others within in
the ONUC chain of command who bore huge responsibility for their inability to take hard
decisions, and support their troops on the ground when the most needed it 2 .
Fo o t n o t e s
1 When Ralph Bunche arrived in the Congo he immediately and clashed with the professional military advice of his
Force Commander, Gen Carl von Horn. This was compounded by the fact that intelligence gathering and public
perception management as tools of peacekeeping or enforcement were ignored. Having UN Headquarters in New
York influence operational decisions on the ground, as in the case of insisting on troop deployments to certain
regions caused numerous problems. While some of the problems von Horn faced were later abated, there were
still considerable obstacles of this nature facing General Sean McKeown when he was appointed ONUC Force
Commander.
So u r c e s
Cruise-O’Brien Conor To Katanga and Back, Hutchison, London 1962
Power Declan Siege At Jadotville, Maverick House, Dublin 2005
Smith Raymond Under The Blue Flag, Aherlow Press, Dublin 1980.
Smith Raymond The Fighting Irish in the Congo, Lilmac, Dublin 1962.
Rikhye IJ UN Peacekeeping and the Congo Crisis, Hurst, London 1993
Von Horn Carl Soldiering for Peace, Casell London 1966
O’Neill JT
The Irish Company at Jadotville, Congo, 1961: Soldiers or Symbols Taken from
International Peacekeeping, Vol 9, Winter 2002, No 4. A Frank Cass Journal,
Crown House London 2002.
Dorn Walter
The Cloak and the Blue Beret – The Limits of Intelligence Gathering in UN
Peacekeeping, Pearson Papers No 4 Intelligence in Peacekeeping, Clementsport,
Nova Scotia: The Lester B. Pearson Canadian International Peacekeeping Centre,
1999.
Hays & Maloney Canadian Peacekeeping and the Congo 1960-1964.
Gaffen Fred Position Paper 4, Waterloo University, OntarioNovember 18, 2003.
Bloomer David R.
Violence in the Congo – A Perspective of United Nation’s Peacekeeping. Subject
Area: Foreign Policy 2 April 1984 Marine Corps Command and Staff College.
Carr, Carey,
UN Operations in the Congo 1960 – 1962, Irish Defence Force
Dignma,Lawless
Military College, 5th Junior Command and Staff Course
& O’Neill Curragh, 1995.
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