Kevin Smith
Appearances
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)
Hey kids, it's me, Kevin Smith. And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)
Hey kids, it's me, Kevin Smith. And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
When the kids turn unholy, Harrelson's Own keeps my patience divine.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Yeah. When the kids turn unholy, Harrelson's Own keeps my patience divine.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: Part Two: Dr. Oz: Why 'America's Doctor' Is A Bastard
I'm Hannah Smith. And I'm Pasha Eaton. We host The Knife, a podcast from the Exactly Right Network that cuts to the heart of the story.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: Part Two: Dr. Oz: Why 'America's Doctor' Is A Bastard
But for the people left behind, their story is just beginning.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: Part Two: Dr. Oz: Why 'America's Doctor' Is A Bastard
How high are you on the list?
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export
After a crime, you read the headlines. But do you know the story?
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export
I'm Hannah Smith. And I'm Patia Eaton. We host The Knife, a podcast from the Exactly Right Network that cuts to the heart of the story. Through in-depth interviews and candid conversations, we'll bring you firsthand accounts of people living through the ripple effects of crime.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export
These are the scars that are left behind. These are the voices you haven't heard. New episodes every Thursday. Listen to The Knife on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?
After a crime, you read the headlines. But do you know the story?
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?
I'm Hannah Smith. And I'm Pasha Eaton. We host The Knife, a podcast from the Exactly Right Network that cuts to the heart of the story. Through in-depth interviews and candid conversations, we'll bring you firsthand accounts of people living through the ripple effects of crime.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?
These are the scars that are left behind. These are the voices you haven't heard. New episodes every Thursday. Listen to The Knife on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History
I'm Hannah Smith. And I'm Pasha Eaton. We host The Knife, a podcast from the Exactly Right Network that cuts to the heart of the story.
Behind the Bastards
We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History
I'm Hannah Smith. And I'm Pasha Eaton. We host The Knife, a podcast from the Exactly Right Network that cuts to the heart of the story.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff
Stop hitting snooze on new tech. Upgrade the whole team at Lenovo.com. Unlock AI experiences with the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, powered by Intel Core Ultra processors, so you can work, create, and boost productivity all on one device. Win the tech search for business PCs at Lenovo.com.
Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff
Stop hitting snooze on new tech. Upgrade the whole team at Lenovo.com. Unlock AI experiences with the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, powered by Intel Core Ultra processors, so you can work, create, and boost productivity all on one device. Win the tech search for business PCs at Lenovo.com.
Behind the Bastards
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And also, quite importantly, we had liaison assistants who were locals, like translators, but they're a lot more important than that. Yeah. And based on the sectarian nature of the area, you know, you'd always have a Christian, you'd always have a Shia, but you could have a Druze if you were further up to the north, you could have Sunni.
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And each team had four or five of these because we used to send two patrols out each day. So we had huge interaction with the local gendarmerie, with the mayors and the muqtars. And we were very much a force multiplier for Unifil because we could get information from people. You know, we used to stop and have lunch in some of the little restaurants and we were always talking to people.
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And, you know, it was the window down, waving out, having a chat, learning a bit of Arabic, whereas Unifil by its nature, Goes around in armoured cars. Right. And even if you stop and you get out and you take off the sunglasses, people will just react differently to two guys with a local that they know in the car.
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As opposed to someone in full battle rattle getting out. We definitely were. But the war kicked off... On the 12th of July, 2006, and I had done on patrol to pick up our Christian liaison assistant in her village. And literally, we were heading off on patrol and over the radio, all stations go to the nearest UN position immediately.
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The nearest UN position to us at the time was an Indian platoon position on top of a hill. From my past experience, I had reckoned that there was a bit of
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stuff going on either in Shea the Farms which is a disputed area in the southeastern part of Lebanon up in the mountains so I said to the guy that was with me I said look this could be over in a couple of hours let's go straight back to our patrol base and you know we knew we had a food facility and we also knew we had a good bunker in the place yeah
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So we had it back at a fair rate or not, shall we say. And normally when we would have two patrols out, there'd be one guy left in the patrol base and he'd be responsible for radio checks and all that kind of stuff.
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But what we'd do is when we were about maybe a kilometre away, we would inform our headquarters in Nakura that we're closing down at our final destination, which would give this guy time to come out and unlock the gate to let us in. And just as I had transmitted that, he comes up on the air and says, don't come in, don't come in, we're getting hit up. So at that stage, we were at the gate.
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And about maybe two kilometres away, there was a huge IDF position. And they were just banging with the .5s and GPMGs, not directly at us, but kind of in the general area.
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Oh, okay. Sorry. So if everyone is familiar with, we'll say an AK-47 or an M16, which would be known as small arms. In other words, the caliber is 5.56 or 7.62. Then you have medium machine guns, which are generally belt fed, and they're 7.62. And then you have heavy machine guns, again, belt fed, and they're 12.7 or .50 caliber. So we were getting a fair bit.
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But it took us maybe an hour of listening to various news channels, both in Lebanon and in Israel, to realize that Hezbollah had carried out a cross-border attack, hit up an IDF convoy, kidnapped two who were seriously injured and subsequently died and killed initially four.
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And then against their own orders, an Israeli Merkava went into Lebanon to have a kind of commanding view over where they thought the Hezbollah were bringing these guys. Hezbollah were knew that that's what they do and big anti-tank mine and kill four guys inside the Merkava so Israel had lost eight and two kidnapped in the space of maybe an hour so the reaction was was fast and furious and Yeah.
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It took us nearly six days to get our liaison assistant back to her village. Oh, wow. It took the UN nearly two and a half weeks to have acted with the families. Because at that stage, UNSA was a family mission.
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And where I was, I could see the jets dropping bombs into Tyre. And my wife could look up on the skyline knowing where I was and see the same thing happening. I was sort of used to being under fire, but it's a different thing to see your family under fire as well. And eventually when they chartered a sort of a cruise liner from Cyprus to come over and stand offshore and send in its lifeboats,
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to bring the families out. So when this was being planned, UNSO had tried to organise that an armoured convoy would bring those UNMOs that were deployed on the four posts down to Tyr to say goodbye. But where I was, we were getting hammered with artillery fire and tank fire. So I was the only one with family that couldn't get out.
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So when my wife and two kids that were five and seven at that stage were getting into the lifeboat to bring them out to the ship, I rang her and I said, look, I'll see you when I see you. Jesus, yeah. Which is not a great way to end a family mission, let me tell you. No. And then in the space of the next three days, we had a strength of 52 officers. And in about three days, we lost over 10%.
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We had one Italian captain shot in the back He's now in a wheelchair. Jesus. We had another Australian captain, seriously injured. When the convoy she was in was, I suppose targeted is probably the way to explain it, but she was thrown up against the inside of the armored car and essentially her back was broken. She was evacuated with my wife and kids.
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And then I think it was the day later or two days later, The Israelis dropped the JDAM, which is a bunker-busting missile, into the post, just up from me, killing four very good friends of mine. So, yeah, 2006 was a bit rough.
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The first thing I should say is that 21 years previously, that observation post was completely destroyed, but there was no one in it at the time.
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So when it was rebuilt, it had the best bunker in Lebanon. So they dug down first and had a lot of the bunkers currently in Lebanon are overgrown bunkers. But this was dug down into the rock, essentially. And its roof was about a meter and a half of reinforced steel and concrete with the two-story concrete building on top of it. So without doubt, it was the best bunker in Lebanon.
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So this happened on the 25th of July. And on that particular day, we'd already lost the patrol base in Maroon Arras when Roberto was shot. And they had to, I have to say, in fairness, there's a liaison branch that kind of liaises between IDF and UNIFIL.
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And UNIFIL couldn't launch one of its helicopters to do a medevac. So the decision was made that the guys would get into an armoured Land Cruiser and follow Israeli tank tracks back into Israel.
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There was too much kinetic activity. It wouldn't have been able to land. It was a battle ongoing. So they essentially followed Israeli tank tracks that had come into Lebanon. They followed those tank tracks back into Israel where they were met by an Israeli patrol and Roberto was flown to Rambam Hospital. But yeah, going back to Kiam on the 25th of July, we were all taking a fair bit of incoming.
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Where I was, it wasn't targeting. It was more sort of harassment fire. Yeah. Like the house next door, took three direct tank rounds and it was five metres away. Jesus. From our post. And our post was tiny. Yeah. But the guys in Kiang were taking a good bit of artillery, but there was a lot of airstrikes coming in close.
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And again, for your listeners, the UN has a designation, what it calls a firing close. So we'll say a firing close from...
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an m16 is i don't know something like 50 meters or something like that firing close from an artillery shell is 500 meters and a firing close from an aerial bomb is a kilometer so if it lands within a kilometer it's officially designated as a firing close and it's recorded and it you know both sides get you know it's an official account of what's happening
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So the guys were getting a good few firings close from area bombs, and there was three distinct waves of attack in the general area. So naturally, Force Commander Unifil, Chief of Staff also... UN headquarters in New York were screaming at the Israelis, you know, stop targeting this position. Yeah. Was there Hezbollah in the area? Of course there was. Qiyam is a Hezbollah stronghold.
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But eventually that evening, the decision was made that the patrol base is going to be evacuated. But because of the level of kinetic activity that evening, it was going to be done at first light the next morning. And since the war had started, we had all been on a... 24-7, 20-minute radio check. So every 20 minutes you had to respond to a radio check.
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So the last transmission from the post was from a Canadian friend of mine, ex-special forces, really, really cool. And I could hear it in his voice. He was requested to log in time for a firing close. It's danger close. It's danger close. Get them to stop. And that was the last transmission.
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So when they missed the next radio check, he presumed another shell had come in and blown all the aerials off the building. So myself and an Aussie friend of mine requested permission to take our armoured Land Cruiser and try and drive up and see what was happening. That was refused by UNIFILM. So they sent a patrol from the Indian battalion, which was kind of, in fairness, it was nearer.
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So we switched on to their radio frequency to hear what they were saying. And so they approached the base. They obviously had to break down the gate and said the base had taken a direct hit by an aerial bomb. And at that stage, we were still thinking maybe they're trapped under the rubble or something like that. And then one of them transmitted, we have found the body of a Chinese officer.
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Okay, well, just I suppose as a brief reminder to your listeners, UNIFIL is the United Nations interim force in Lebanon. And it's been interim since 1978. When it started first, the Irish were one of the first countries to sign up to deploy a battalion there. And we had a battalion in Lebanon from 1978 until 2000.
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So we knew the four guys were killed. And the Indians found three bodies that night and brought them to the mortuary in Maratayoun, which is a large Christian town. So the next morning there was, I think, five of us tasked to go up and identify the bodies. Yeah. So the first guy was Chinese, was over pressure killed him. So that was an easy one to identify.
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The next guy had no arms, no legs and no head. Jesus. And where his head should have been was the chain of a dog tag. And I went down into his body parasol and found it. Yeah. And the other guy... Yeah, so it was a difficult procedure.
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And then we had to try and arrange to get the bodies transferred into Israel to where you and colleagues from Jerusalem, so they could go to Rambam Hospital and have a proper identification and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, eventually be returned to their families, I suppose. And that was a difficult procedure because... Where the IDF said they could meet us, there was a minefield in front of us.
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And where we said we could meet them, they thought it was too exposed. So eventually we went into a small, tiny Indian platoon position. And about 100 meters away, There was a gate that the Israelis used to use to come in and out when the security zone was there. But the area between the UN position and the gate hadn't been mineswept in six years. But we had no choice.
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We couldn't bring the guys back to the mortuary because it had resorted to using refrigerated trucks to store bodies because the mortuary was full. Yeah. So there was an IDF company there under, I think it was a full brigadier. And there's a war going on, naturally. Yeah, all the time. Gunships and Katyushas passing each other over our heads.
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So when we had the three lads transfer over to our colleagues from Jerusalem, I stood in front of the IDF brigadier and I lined up all the UN troops and I says, we're not going to have a minute's silence in memory of our friends who were murdered in the cause of peaceful. And no, having a minute silence in the middle of a battle is an odd experience. In fairness to this guy, he stood to attention.
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And because I lived in Tiberias, I had a small bit of Hebrew and I went over afterwards and thanked him for his respect.
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And we didn't find the fort body until after the ceasefire. Jesus Christ.
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Sorry for that. That's terrible to think about. So the obvious question is, I know what the one you want to ask, why? And I should have said that at the start. Anything I say here, it's my personal opinion. So it can't be construed as being the views of the Irish Defence Forces. Yes, of course. Or certainly not the views of the United Nations. They're my personal views.
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So, you know, people should just take it that it's Kevin Macdonald describing what happened to him and what his personal views on it are. Yeah. So why did they do it? Well, I think there's a couple of things. Hubris is one. I think at that stage, they were like a schoolyard bully who got bet and wanted to lash out at anything and everything.
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A second, probably more tactical reason, is that the village of Qiyam is on a ridge. We say at the end of the ridge closest to Israel, because it's only about four miles away, is where this OP was. And that's the reason it was there. And between Qiyam and we say the frontier with Israel is the Hula Valley, which is
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And in 2000, the Israelis withdrew from what they called a security zone, about like a 10 kilometer buffer zone in southern Lebanon. So when they did that and retreated to the frontier between the two countries, Ireland departed its battalion. It left a few staff officers there, but it didn't supply a battalion anymore. It was concentrating on the missions in Syria and Egypt. other places.
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The biggest manoeuvre space, if you want to manoeuvre armour and stuff into Lebanon with plenty of space, that's where you do it. In fact, decided as an old Vichy French airfield from the Second World War. So it's low space. And I think they didn't want eyes on the ground seeing what they were doing. And one of the things for military observers is you observe and you report. That's your task.
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So was there Hezbollah in the area around the OP? Yes, there was. But as you probably know, if you want to attack troops in the open, He used airburst artillery shells, which the Israelis did in 1996 when they fired 15 of them into a UN battalion headquarters, killing 106 Lebanese men, women, and children, seeking shelter in the UN headquarters.
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But you don't fire a bunker-busting missile into a UN post to attack Hezbollah. There's a subtle difference.
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Okay, well, the rules of engagement, we say for a peacekeeping mission, like we park on sort of one side because they're unarmed. But for a peacekeeping mission... So peacekeeping is generally based on three principles, consent, impartiality, and the use of force in self-defense of the mandate.
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So naturally, like the guys there at the moment aren't going to try and take on three or four more CAFA tanks. First of all, they don't have the capability to do it.
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I'm not sure what they have currently. Certainly, we didn't have. Okay. And it wasn't ever going to be an issue because that's kind of not our job. Yeah. The sole responsibility to protect the people of Lebanon is the Lebanese government. UNIFIL is there to assist. It's not there to say, okay, you step back, we stand up and protect you. That's not what UNIFIL or any peacekeeping mission.
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The only peacekeeping mission that eventually had an offensive capability built into its mandate, was the mission that's now closing down in the DRC, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And it's Minusco.
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And they specifically changed the mandate to include an offensive capability to go after the M23 rebels in the Kivus, in sort of the northeast. And when they did it, you know, attack helicopters, special forces, a lot of
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it was quite effective but which kind of brings me to another point because I just last year I completed a Masters in Peace and Conflict Studies and mandates was the evolution of mandates was what I sort of looked at and having robust mandates is all well and good but the TCCs the Troop Contributing Countries
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have to have the ability, the capability, the training and the will to carry out the robust nature of the mandate. So, you know, we have a saying in Ireland, paper never refuses ink. You can put whatever you want into a mandate, but you have to be able to effectively implement the mandate. And I think often that's the reason that maybe people are kind of broad in how mandates are written.
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But that's for someone way further up the food chain than me. Yeah.
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And then after the 2006 war, they were asked to come back with a battalion and we've been there ever since with an infantry battalion. In relation to your question about is it a volunteer mission, it is for most people. However, there have been people who would be what's known as mandatory selected if they have certain skill sets, whether it be a doctor, whether it be whatever it happens to be.
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Well, it is, yeah. And of course, they're all conscious of the fact that they're families back in Ireland are fully aware of what's going on. And shortly after the invasion, the IDF decided that they told UNIFIL they wanted them out, essentially. And not just the Irish, but other nationalities said, we're not going.
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So the IDF, everywhere they go in Lebanon, the first vehicle is a D9 bulldozer because that is more robust than a Merkava. And it can also very quickly throw up earthen ramparts to sort of, you know, protect from direct fire at the IDF troops. So they decided that they would literally conjoin an IDF position to the Irish position, hoping that they could intimidate the Irish into leaving.
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And the position's name was 6-5-2, very close to the frontier. Ironically, when the Israelis withdrew in 2000, they recognised that this particular area was what we in the military would call key terrain, Because that area overlooked a vulnerable part of northern Israel, villages like Avavim and a few others.
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So the IDF requested UNIFIL to put a position there, which would say, stop, Hezbollah from putting a position there. Right, yeah. And then suddenly they're up close and personal trying to intimidate the Irish and other nationalities as well. Yeah.
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So it's one of the things, and I think one of the reasons that they didn't want Unifil, and there's about 20 of these small positions, mainly close to the frontier.
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I think one of the reasons that they, and again, this is a personal point of view, I think one of the reasons that they didn't want Unifil in any of these positions was A, to turn it into a free-fire zone, but B, one of the things that Unifil is supposed to do is to monitor and report, monitor and observe And of course, if you're not there, you can't do it.
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That's actually one of the things that Unifil, even though they're hunkered in their bases with very little mobility, they can still monitor and observe what's happening in the general area. Now, we'll say in the case of this position, 6-5-2, if the IDF's ultimate gain or goal is was to take a major Hezbollah stronghold, which is called Bin Shabal.
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That's a good bit further north than this position. So the focus of attention would move on from with the hour guys and go a wee bit further north.
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Well, it makes a change from having a tanker on fired into an OP, which they did a few days previously.
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If the army can't get sufficient volunteers, then they will mandatory select. But generally speaking, certainly in the early years, it was actually quite difficult to get volunteers. to become a volunteer for Lebanon because so many people wanted to go there. Because there is, you know, there's a bit of financial incentive to do that as well. I deployed there as a private soldier in 1984.
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They're somewhat isolated. Now, all these positions would be well-stocked with water and emergency rations and stuff like that. And as I mentioned before, Unifil do have a liaison branch, which I'm sure are talking to the IDF on an hourly basis. And they will coordinate everything the movements of UNIFIL would say to supply their positions.
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Or I think last week they had a convoy went into the city of Tyre, which is probably 12k from the headquarters to distribute aid, especially medical aid. Because Tyre is getting fairly whacked, like all of the south, I suppose. So there is engagement to make sure that these posts aren't completely isolated, that there is a means of doing resupply
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They stopped things on a regular basis. As I said, there is interaction. Like, nothing happens in a vacuum. Like we said, the Irish battalion headquarters would not send a convoy to 6-5-2 without it being communicated to the Israelis and saying, we're going to go in three vehicles at 700 hours, blah, blah, blah. and get the confirmation back that, yeah, that's okay.
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Because, you know, the mention to follow the war, that's often fairly real, as you can imagine yourself. It's a fairly real thing that happens. You know, sometimes, you know, instructions don't get passed down or sometimes instructions are ignored for whatever reason. So it's a bit of a delicate, delicate balancing act. But from what I understand, it's working well. That's good.
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No, you're looking at maybe 3,500 compared to 43,500 killed.
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I think it's a fair point. Of course, there's no real... The UN footprint in Gaza, my understanding is it's extremely, extremely light. And as you know, the banished UNRWA, Whereas, I mean, UNIFIL has 10,000 troops in southern Lebanon. So there's very much more, maybe there's more consciousness, but they're still flattening the place. But it's in terms of civilian...
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casualties, as we said, it's not going on as long as Ghazi either. But on the, we'll say the combat front, they're not exactly having things their own way either. They've been trying to take the village of Khian for the last, I think, two weeks. And my understanding is they haven't, they've destroyed it, but they haven't taken it. And it was like in 2006,
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They claimed that the town of Binch of Isle was the Hezbollah capital of the south, which I suppose in a way it was. But they turned it into Grozny, but they never controlled it. They were still getting attacked, you know, days after they had seized it.
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I wasn't even 12 months in the army at that stage. Oh, wow. And within two months, I was made an acting corporal. Wow. So then I went back as an officer in 1993, where we had a seven-day war, Operation Accountability. Yeah. I was back in 1996 as an officer for another seven-day war, Operation Grapes of Wrath.
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Oh yeah, hugely proud. And the Irish have always been... extremely proud of what our defence forces have achieved, despite us being a very small defence force. I think at the moment, between the Navy, the Army and the Air Corps, we're probably looking at, in total, 9,000. In total. Well, yeah, very small. And then we're overseas in a lot of places as well.
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So like deduct that from the 9,000, you're probably down to eight. Yeah. But we do tend to punch above our weight internationally. We obviously have no colonial baggage, which affects some other countries. Yes. And I think generally speaking, we're seen as, I'm not sure if honest broker is the right word, but certainly not as threatening and not coming with an agenda.
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whereas other countries might have a certain agenda for whatever political reasons at home. And it's certainly in Ireland's case, as I said, we were there from 78 until 2000 and now from 2006 to present day. And a lot of it has been in the same general area. So people would know Irish soldiers, some Lebanese talk with an Irish accent.
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Yeah, yeah, it's true. And depending on what part of Ireland the troops were from, you could even go further down. Like some of them talk with a very broad Dublin accent. Some of them would talk with a very broad Cork accent because of that interaction. And I know one of the first big projects the Irish did, certainly from the early 80s, was to build a...
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an orphanage in a provincial capital called Sydney. And they've been doing that. Like, even when we had no troops there, guys were still sending money and toys and everything. That's been demolished last week, unfortunately. Jesus, an orphanage.
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Well, you know, there's a lot of evil stuff going on in the Middle East at the moment, unfortunately.
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Okay, so this initially started off as a lockdown project during the COVID lockdown in the Central African Republic. And initially it was just for my wife and family. But as I started writing, you kind of start remembering it. It's not just your typical military guy tells about how brave he was. I have a separate career in mountaineering and a separate career in archaeology as well.
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And I ended up there with my family as an unarmed military observer in 2006 for a full 34 days of carnage. Yeah. So, yeah, Lebanon was always well regarded by... the Irish Defence Forces because it did a couple of things. It exposed troops to not just new cultures and new areas, but it exposed them to danger as well. And it also gave a chance for young NCOs and young officers to
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So it's a kind of a much more different mishmash of stuff going on. So the book is called A Life Less Ordinary and it can be purchased online at mayobooks.ie. M-A-Y-O-B-O-O-K-S.
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We are right about this in the book. I mean, like I've lived a few times in Lebanon and I've lived and worked in Jerusalem a few times. And it's a fascinating region. Oh, yeah. And the people in both countries, I have some really good friends in Israel and some really good friends in Lebanon. And I've been treated extremely well by people in both countries.
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Certainly, if you have an interest in archaeology, where else could you not want to be? You know, like the Phoenicians in Tyre. And no matter where you go in Tyre, you can pick up Roman pottery or you can... see all these amazing sites, whether it's from the Phoenicians, from the Romans, from the Crusaders. It's just, it's all there in front of you. Yeah, yeah, cradle of civilization there.
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physically lead their troops in a challenging environment which you don't always get you know when you're at home in Ireland or with the UK or whatever you don't always get that type of leadership experience yeah plus you're exposed to other cultures whether it be the Nordic countries or you know you're exposed to different ways of operating and um
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Yeah, all in all, it's been a positive experience, but I would point out that since we started there, we've lost 48 troops killed in Lebanon.
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When I went there in 1984, there was a battalion from Fiji, Finland, France, Ghana, ourselves, the Netherlands, Norway, and Senegal. Wow. With a strength at the time of about 6,000. When I was there as an unarmed military observer with UNSO, which is a different mission, the strength had dropped to 2,000 in 2006 with just two battalions, a Canadian battalion and an Indian battalion.
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And now, essentially since after the war in 2006, they started building up, there's probably about 10,000 troops there at the moment.
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There isn't a huge interaction at the battalion level between different nations. In other words, a battalion will have its own area of responsibility. It's responsible for patrolling in that area.
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Now with the likes of UNSO, you're much more exposed to other armies, other nationalities, because essentially every time you go patrolling, you can't, like two Irish officers couldn't patrol together because if they see an infringement, whether it's a firing clause, whether it's one side sending drones into Lebanon or the other side sending Katyusha rockets into Israel. They're all violations.
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But to record it as a violation, you can't have two people from the same country. So you're much more exposed, as I said, to foreign nationalities.
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No, I think it's a fair assessment. And if both sides are complaining about you, as you say, it probably does indicate that you're at least doing something right. So UNIFIL, it's a peacekeeping mission, and they're there with the agreement of both parties. So in other words, the Lebanese government and the Israeli government have agreed that UNIFIL be established in Lebanon.
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That's the first thing to point out. The second thing, which is kind of contentious now, especially with the extent of Hezbollah's tunnels is being exposed, is that there's a lot of generally misinformed chatter about what UNIFIL can and cannot do. So after the 2006 war, Resolution 1701 was enforced or was brought in to develop more thoroughly the mandate for what UNIFIL can and cannot do.
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And one of the stated paragraphs is that UNIFIL will assist the Lebanese armed forces in taking steps towards the establishment between the Blue Line and the Latani River of an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the government of Lebanon and of UNIFIL deployed in this area.
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And this is one of the failings, but it should be pointed out that it's the responsibility of the LAF, of the Lebanese armed forces, to instigate it, supported by UNIFIL. Right. Not UNIFIL going in looking for arms and weapons supported by the LAF. It's the other way around. And one of the difficulties that you're always going to have is that Lebanon is a divided society.
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It's an extremely rich and significant society. And I've lived there quite a lot and have great respect for the people and their traditions. However, the sectarianism is kind of baked into how the government works and that kind of works its way down. So the president has to be a Marianite Christian. Speak with the House has to be Shia and the Prime Minister has to be Sunni.
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And that division was based on the last time there was a census in Lebanon, which was 1932. And since then, the dynamics have changed. So Hezbollah is not just... a military organisation. It's a political organisation and it's a welfare organisation. Yeah, I think a lot of people don't get that. And it's Shia. And the majority of the people in the south are Shia.
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And, you know, a lot of them get their schooling and their medication from Hezbollah. So it's not just a military organisation. And there's various estimates, but you could be looking at what we said prior to the present conflict. maybe 70,000 Hezbollah in south of Beirut, shall we say. Yeah.
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And some of them are full-time, some of them are part-time, some of them are just sympathizers, helpers, friends, you know, it's difficult. And another factor that has proven extremely difficult. So when UNIFIL patrol with the LAF, there is certain restrictions that even the LAF have in terms of entering certain areas.
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And what Hezbollah have done is that they have designated certain nature reserves and generally speaking, the LAF won't go in there. And if the LAF won't go in, UNIFIL can't go in. So the LAF are kind of, you know, they have a balancing act to do in terms of retaining the trust, of the people in the South and also not causing a sectarian divide within their own ranks.
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And also they have another problem in terms of equipment. They're sort of relying on other countries, the UK, the US, France, to supply them with equipment. But like I said, they have no tanks. Yeah. They have a few helicopters. They're very much, like, there's no way they will take on Hezbollah. No way. Right, yeah. Or the IDF. And UNIFIL itself is lightly armed.
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You know, it's not going around in tanks or anything. Armored cars, yes. But the only time, the last time UNIFIL had tanks in Lebanon was just after the war when the French deployed with Leclerc tanks. Right. Which did not please the locals because the Leclerc tanks... Driving up and down the roads was nearly doing as much damage as the Merkava tanks during the war.
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And plus, Lebanon isn't a very tank-friendly area to be operating in, shall we say.
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And I'm not aware of that, but it will happen because I know certainly back in the 90s... That may have been when it was. When Israel was operating the security zone, we, the Irish, and our colleagues from Finland and Norway had numerous standoffs with Israelis trying to enter certain villages and... Yeah.
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But yeah, I saw the day before yesterday, I think two bulldozers in the Merkava, or I said, yeah, two D9s broke down a UN watchtower and a UN fence at the UN UNIFIL headquarters in Nakura, which is a few K from the frontier with Israel. I should point out as well for your listeners that Israel and Lebanon have been at a state of war since 1948. Yes.
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They've never had a ceasefire or a peace agreement.
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Yeah, so there is a UNIFIL host, a meeting, normally right at the frontier where you can cross between one country and the other. And I keep using the word frontier because it's not a border. It hasn't been officially demarcated. The blue line, which I mentioned earlier on, simply verifies that the IDF have withdrawn into Israel, but it's not the border. Right.
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However, going back to your point about the tripartite agreement, and that's where the senior Israeli officials, senior Lebanese officials, under the chairmanship of UNIFIL meet, and they discuss items of concern that maybe UNIFIL can help iron out between the two of them. Right. And in 2022, they managed to organize a maritime boundary.
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between Lebanon and Israel, which was kind of fascinating because On the western side of Lebanon and the northwestern coast of Israel, there's huge gas fields. So the two countries actually, they've agreed their maritime boundary under the auspices of UNIFIL.
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They still haven't agreed their land, but it's the first time that a peacekeeping mission has arranged, encouraged, developed and led successfully discussions about a maritime boundary. So UNIFIL does have some successes.
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So one of the oldest missions in the world is UNSO, United Nations Troops Supervisory Organization. And that essentially was established, I suppose, after the 48th War. And it had, we'll say, offices and observers in Egypt, Israel, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. you know, they were quite effective in certain ways.
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Like certainly the eventual peace agreement between Egypt and Israel was very much helped along by the presence of UNSO in Cairo and Shamr-Sheikh. The peace agreement between Jordan and Israel, again, was very much assisted by UNSO. So they have a kind of a fairly good track record. And what they bring to the table is that First of all, they're unarmed military observers. Yeah.
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Which takes some of the sting out of having, you know, a heavily armed guy with a helmet and sunglasses walk around. Yeah. And some armies, as you know, can tend to be more intimidating than others in how they carry themselves. Yeah. So I went there, I went to the region in 2005. Yeah.
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And I was working on the occupied Golan Heights, living in Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee with my wife and two kids who then were four and five. And in February 06, I was transferred to Lebanon and we were living in the city of Tyre. The kids were going to a local English speaking Arab school and Lebanon was absolutely thriving. It was hopping.
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We had the kids in Beirut, we had them in Amman, down in Wadi Rum and my normal routine was We had four observation posts along the frontier with Israel. Staffed by five guys who would spend a week, seven days up there. Then you come down for four or five and then go back up again. And each team had its specific area to operate with and would say a specific battalion that we would interact with.
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It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
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Hey kids, it's me, Kevin Smith. And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith. That's my daughter, man, who my wife has always said is just a beardless, dickless version of me. And that's the name of our podcast, Beardless Dickless Me. I'm the old one. I'm the young one. And every week we try to make each other laugh really hard. Sounds innocent, doesn't it? A lot of cussing, a lot of bad language.
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It's for adults only. Or listen to it with your kid. Could be a family show. We're not quite sure. We're still figuring it out. It's a work in progress. Listen to Beardless Dickless Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever. You get your podcasts.
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protection by projection rather than protection by presence. So not alone did they have the Force and Divergation Brigade. They had the joint protection teams and also an idea of a rapidly deployable battalion. So the idea was that the Sports Intervention Brigade would say do the heavy lifting.
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And then when hot spots would flare up, they could use either the rapidly deployed battalions or the joint protection teams. So the idea was that rather than having static positions trying to protect people, they would go where the action was. That was the idea. And in fairness, the FIB had...
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artillery, mortar, snipers, attack helicopters, UAVs, special forces, they retook GUM in, I don't know the exact timeframe, but I think it was less than a month. One of the problems, and I think we touched on it the last time we spoke, and I think this was a specific problem to how the FIB didn't really keep going the way it should have, is that two of the main TCCs were Tanzania and South Africa.
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And they would have had slightly different agendas in terms of who they should and they shouldn't attack. based on your government's position. Sorry, TCC is a Troop Contributing Countries. Excuse me, I should have said that.
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Yeah, like here in South Sudan, Most of the big battalions are Rwanda, Nepal, Mongolia, China. Generally speaking, in my experience in the Central African Republic and here, a lot of the battalions come from Africa, which is... Fair enough. I mean, it's their continent.
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And they should have a stake in trying to foster peace and develop peace and help countries in less or more dire situations than they themselves perhaps are. And so it's... I understand your point about... different countries being aware of what the UN does based on... I take, for instance, everyone in Ireland knows about the UN and they know about the Irish in Lebanon and in Syria and in Africa.
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I'm sure in the United Kingdom, because you've got a very small UN footprint, Cyprus being one, and there's a few of you guys here. Generally, people in the UK, I'm sure you'll be able to enlighten me on this, wouldn't have the exact same intimate knowledge or even interest in the UN because... Basically, they don't have a big footprint, deployable footprint.
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Yeah, I think I'm sure I mentioned this when we last spoke. It's one thing developing a robust mandate. But if the TCCs don't have the skills, the experience, the training, the equipment or the will to enforce the robust nature of that mandate, well, then the mandate isn't...
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really worth anything you know so it's it's kind of like yes the FIB was extremely effective for a while until it wasn't now whether that was a lack of will on the TCC's or on New York or mission leadership I have no idea but but it was a great idea, and it worked, and then it didn't work.
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Plus, the fact that the DRC wanted the mission to downsize and eventually leave, that added to the, well, should we really invest in something when we're going to pull out? Because the country doesn't want us here anymore, which is, again, it's a fair point.
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Well, let's discuss for a few minutes the alternatives to UN peacekeeping. And there's a lot of them here in Africa. So, you have the South African Development Community, SADC, the East African Community. There was an African Union stroke UN hybrid mission in Darfur, UNAMID, which is closing. There was an AU mission in Somalia. There is the Lake Chad Basin Multinational Task Force.
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There's the Group of Five for the Sahel. Then you had EUFOR, which was an EU force in Chad and in Mali, and subsequently became MINERCAT in Chad and MINUSMA in Mali. Then you have the EUTM mission in Mali, which I was part of at one stage, and another one in Somalia.
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And of course, we have our mercenaries, you know, and when it emerged that there was over 300 of them allowed into Rwanda, I was reading a report that they were getting something like three and a half thousand dollars a month, whereas the DRC soldiers were getting maybe $300 a month. And these guys were brought in to protect the mines, because again, it goes back to money.
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I think it's certainly worth a try, because the UN hasn't the ability, nor indeed the money, I presume, to keep doing these large, big missions. At one stage, the three largest missions were Minusco, which we're discussing, Minusca in the Central African Republic, and Minusma, which was in Mali. Mali's gone. DRC is on the drawdown. Central African Republic is still there, but I've noticed...
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I spent four years there and obviously I have a keen interest in the place, but there has been a big increase in anti-French, it's a francophone country, anti-French and linked with a kind of an anti-UN sentiment. No. The special advisor to the president is from Russia. Wagner had a big part to play when I was there. They were key players. Yeah. Most likely they're interlinked.
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Yeah. I'm not sure who's running it now, but I'm sure the strings have been more closely pulled by Putin as opposed to having very loose control when Prigozhin was there. Yeah, yeah. It was giving him like a standoff capability.
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This is just a PMC. Nothing to do with me. Yeah. But I would imagine after his drive to Moscow and his subsequent demise, I'm sure that whoever is running the Africa Corps is much more tightly controlled by the Kremlin. I would imagine.
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Thanks very much for having me. And just as a sort of disclaimer at the very start, any... views or opinions that I expressed are the opinions of a retired senior officer from the Irish Defence Forces. Can't be construed as being in any way the views of the Irish Defence Forces, nor indeed that of the United Nations. So I just wanted to
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That's a difficult one to answer because ideally, African problems should, in my opinion, be solved by African nations. And that's the reason that the African Union and all these other ones that I mentioned, I think are an attempt to do that. And certainly... Europe and the US shouldn't be dictating how Africans govern themselves.
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They should be assisting in good governance, good policing, good judiciary. But it kind of goes back to money again because there's so much of a vested interest. I heard a figure that M23 would get an $800,000 a month from some of the mines in Kivu. Yeah, I can believe it. So when you get that kind of money floating around,
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a lot of people maybe don't want to sort things out and it may suit to leave the mayhem there and use all these artisanal miners who are getting paid a couple of cents a day And Rwanda has just got a big contract with the EU in terms of diamonds.
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Yeah. And everyone has a stake in the pie, whether it's the overseer of the mine, whether it's the company that owns the mine, whether it's the people that move the product from Kivu into some neighboring country, and then ultimately the people that buy it commercially in Western Europe or around the rest of the world.
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Because this is it, yeah. You're willing to pay double the price for more ethical mining methods most people probably earn.
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You wouldn't have expected them to promote ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
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I live in a town towards the west coast of Ireland and there's a guy from there. What I'll do is I'll send you a link. Yeah, yeah. But he's passionate about getting free education in Africa between online courses and online libraries. Mm-hmm. Obviously, the more education you get, the better chance you have of having a better life.
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So, yeah, I did go through some stuff and I'll send it on to you and then you can figure out whether it would be an interesting topic or whatever. But I just literally, as we were talking, I was thinking of how one guy is trying to change conditions for younger people in Africa and trying to give it to them for free.
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any more than anyone else. I was born in 1960 when the first mission went to the Congo.
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And it's been going on. Like I'm 64. It's been around 64 years. Yeah. So no more than the problem with the Palestinians. I think some people, unless you have a specific interest in it or feel passionate about it, a lot of people just, I think, tune out and to go to the next pronouncement from the White House, you know, it's like clickbait.
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So I think it's a sad fact, but it's a factor, I think.
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Okay, so what started off as a lockdown project when COVID hit back in the day, I decided I would write an account of my weird and wonderful life just for my family. And once you start writing, as you're no doubt aware, you start remembering. And suddenly I was at something like 100,000 words and I thought, right, there might be a book in this.
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And now, obviously, I'm opinionated about my own book, naturally, but it's not just a book about some random military guy waffling on about his military career. I've a separate career in mountaineering and a kind of a nearly separate career in archaeology. So it's a mixture of soldiering, mountaineering and archaeology.
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As someone said it to me, it's a bit like Chris Bonington meets Bear Grylls meets Indiana Jones. which is kind of a weird and wonderful way to do it. So the title of the book is A Life Less Ordinary, which this was a recruiting slogan in the 1990s for the Irish Defence Forces. Oh, I didn't know that. I think I'll send you the link. Yeah, yeah. If not, I'll do it immediately.
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So all your viewers can order the book. You can only get it online at the publishers. It's not on Amazon, unfortunately.
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The book is probably the best one. It's probably the best way to get in contact. I'm on LinkedIn. Yeah. the normal stuff. Just Google Kevin MacDonald and I should come up. I was resisting for years and years and eventually I Googled Kevin MacDonald. And I was surprised at the amount of Kevin MacDonalds there is. There's a famous American actor, I think, called Kevin MacDonald.
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But just as a small parting shot, when I was in Mali, I was researching the archaeology of Mali. And the world expert on Malayan archaeology is a professor, naturally, Kevin MacDonald. So I sent him an email and I said, by the way, I'm also an archaeologist and my name is Kevin MacDonald. And he goes, my word, I'd be in Bangi or in Bamako.
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in two weeks time let's meet up so the two kevin mcdonald's two archaeologists met up in in bama cup to discuss archaeology so that's nice when these things come together another one of my weird and wonderful stories yeah yeah well thanks so much for joining us today kevin so it's nice to hear from you you're more than welcome james
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Yes, captured, surrendered. Either way, they went into Rwanda. I think about 300 of them, which is a significant amount of mercenaries.
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Yeah, so the first mission in the Congo was Onok. in 1960. And a lot of people would say that that was the first UN mission. But as I think we discussed the last time, the first UN mission was full-scale war in 1950 in Korea. And that mission is still in existence, the UNC, the United Nations Command. But I suppose speaking about... about the Congo specifically.
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So in 1960, there was 17 newly independent states, of which 14 were from Africa, agreed to a call from the UN to establish this mission in the Congo. And Ireland answered the call as well. So we deployed. It was the first time that we deployed with the UN. And we had a battalion there from 1960 to... I think 1964 or whenever the initial deployment ended.
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And it was a fairly tough, intense introduction to peacekeeping. In early 1960, there was an engagement between an Irish platoon and a large group of Beluba tribesmen. And there was nine Irish soldiers killed and 26 Belubas killed. And that was the first time that Ireland kind of had to deal with that kind of death overseas. Yeah. So it was pretty traumatic.
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And then in 1961, you've probably seen the film The Siege of Jadavid.
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But it recounts the true story of an Irish company under Colonel Pat Quindlen. His company was 158, roughly, strong. And they were attacked while they were at mass on a Sunday morning by a group of between 3,000 and 4,000 Katanganese, well-armed soldiers, backed up by French and Belgian and South African mercenaries. They also had an attack helicopter and they had an attack jet.
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Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately. Anything for a fight. But the Irish held out for, I think, over a week. And they didn't give up when they ran out of water. They didn't give up when they ran out of food. It was when they had no bullets left. They negotiated a surrender. thanks to the skill of the officers and NCOs and men, not one fatality on the Irish side.
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Unfortunately, when they came home because they had surrendered, they were treated like pariahs for years. It was seen like a stain on the nation. Now, if God forbid they had 50% casualties, they'd have been treated like heroes. And it's only in recent years that they're getting the recognition that they should have got back in 1961.
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Yeah, yeah. It's a strange one. And a lot of the people that were, we'll say, shunning these officers and NCOs and men, it's hard to serve overseas. And like if the UN, they tried once to resupply them with ammunition from the air, but it wasn't successful. So if the UN had fully supported that company, they would have held out even longer. Yeah. But I suppose that's the way things go.
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So that's the first mission to the Congo. And I could be corrected, I think 64, 65, it might have sort of started to draw down. Then in 1999, after it was the first or the second war, the UN established MONUC, M-O-N-U-C. And that lasted from 1999 until 2010, when it was renamed and rechanged into MONUSCO. And the difference between the two is that MONUSCO is what we call an integrated mission.
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And the three pillars of an integrated mission are the restoration of the rule of law, the protection of civilians, and the provision for long-term recovery and democratic governance.
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So it's combining, we'll say, the force of a military presence, but also there's special advisers on justice, on policing, on governance, all that sort of stuff, which you wouldn't have in a mission like UNIFIL, which we discussed the last time.
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Which is the earlier form of peacekeeping. So... MONUSCO was supposed to have left the country in 2024, but they were given, I think, a one-year extension. And unfortunately, with the M23 rebel advance, the mission is relocating most of its staff, evacuating others. The difference between the two terms is very specific. You relocate within a country and you evacuate out of a country.
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And I also note that some of the hybrid African Union peacekeeping operations, there was, I think, 13 South Africans killed in the initial stages of the onslaught towards Africa. So that's kind of where we are. I think at its height, in 21, 22, there was probably a strength of 20,000. But if you think the DRC is the second largest country in Africa. It's vast, yeah.
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And the 11th largest country in the world. The size is just phenomenal. So you can imagine what the Congo in its entirety, no more than Sudan, but what the Congo in its entirety was back in the day. Yeah. Absolutely huge.
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It's complicated, and it goes back to the genocide back in 19... 94, I think, yeah. And the two Kivus, North and South Kivu, which is on the border with Rwanda, there's a large amount of ethnic Tutsis, Congolese Tutsis there. I think Rwanda has always projected force into the two Kivus and Katanga because... Like literally, that's where the money is.
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Of course, Rwanda would say they don't, but they are actively supporting M23 and have. And most of the M23, certainly the leadership, would be ethnic Congolese Tutsis. So ostensibly, I think the raison d'etre for Rwanda's involvement was to protect the ethnic Tutsis from Hutus that had escaped from the genocide.
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So it's complicated, but if you kind of park those complications and think of the money trail, it kind of leads to the two Kivos. Because 70% of the world's cobalt, I think, is kind of located between the two Kivos. And then you've gold, diamonds, all the other sort of rich minerals.
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Yeah, but I was reading that the estimated deposits
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 172
in eastern Congo is something like 23 trillion like it's it's off the wall stuff yeah so it's no wonder it's become the battleground that it has essentially since 1960 because in 1960 after getting independence the Kivu and Katanga wanted to secede yeah backed by Belgium and that's kind of what what kicked off a lot of the conflict in 1960 and the reverberations from that are still are still kind of being felt and being exploited because
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 172
Everyone wants to get a piece of the action, like all the surrounding countries. I see, I think it was yesterday, that they're planning a meeting, I think it's this week or this weekend, to try and resolve the conflict. And this time they're going to try and include M23 in the meeting. rather than ex-Google. I don't think they have a choice.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 172
Yeah, and that's when the, which we'll probably discuss later, the Force Intervention Brigade retook GOMA in 2013 in a relatively short space of time compared to how long it took to regain it fairly quickly.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 172
The concept of the Force Intervention Brigade was, I think, to my knowledge, it's the first UN mission that developed that concept. And they actually changed the mandate to include an offensive capability for UN troops, as opposed to defensive or separation of warring factions. This was full on
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 172
warfighting yeah and what they had figured out because because the drc is so big but the footprint even with 20 000 troops the footprint on the ground was not sufficient to would say as i said one of the three pillars of of an integrated mission is protection of civilians and they were finding that very difficult so they they decided to use a concept of
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
“I’m The Party” (w/ Amy Poehler)
Yeah. Hey kids, it's me, Kevin Smith. And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith. That's my daughter, man, who my wife has always said is just a beardless, dickless version of me. And that's the name of our podcast, Beardless Dickless Me. I'm the old one. I'm the young one. And every week we try to make each other laugh really hard. Sounds innocent, doesn't it? A lot of cussing, a lot of bad language.
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
“I’m The Party” (w/ Amy Poehler)
It's for adults only. Or listen to it with your kid. Could be a family show. We're not quite sure. We're still figuring it out.
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
“I’m The Party” (w/ Amy Poehler)
Listen to Beardless Dickless Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Short Wave
The Indicator: American Science Brain Drain
It's about 44,000 people who make up the community at UHN.
Short Wave
The Indicator: American Science Brain Drain
Well, a small city for sure, but by far Canada's largest academic health science centre.
Short Wave
The Indicator: American Science Brain Drain
All of a sudden, the phone started ringing and saying, hey, I'm kind of interested in what opportunities you have. It was a sizable shift. I would say it was, you know, 5 to 10x increase in
Short Wave
The Indicator: American Science Brain Drain
It was a big deal. And what was most notable is where they were from. Among the finest academic organizations in the United States, Harvard, Stanford, NIH, National Cancer Institute, Hopkins, the list goes on. We were hearing from a lot of early career scientists who'd recently discovered that perhaps their funding was not as assured for even the next year.
Short Wave
The Indicator: American Science Brain Drain
For example, some in vaccine science who felt like maybe they'd have less access to grants than they had in the past.
Short Wave
The Indicator: American Science Brain Drain
We stepped back and said, this is a profound opportunity that we have not seen, at least in my career, to this level. And why don't we move on it?
Short Wave
The Indicator: American Science Brain Drain
Scientists are sending a message. They want to be in an environment where they can ask curiosity-driven questions that are of importance to them, and they want to be able to disseminate the results of those findings.
This Is Important
Ep 242: Are You Smarter Than A Podcaster?
Hey kids, it's me, Kevin Smith. And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith.