Peace Operations And Intrastate Conflict PDF Download

The core of this thesis is a study of the operational aspects of Irish particpation in the UN peacekeeping operation in the Congo (ONUC) between 1960 and 1964. The involvement of Irish troups in ONUC is looked at under a number of headings - command, control and intelligence, mobility combat and non-combat engagements, negotiations, 'face' and logistics. ONUC was for many years the only case of a UN peace operation in an intra-state conflict. ONUC as a detailed case study is compared with several other, later peacekeeping operations in Lebanon, Somalia and Bosnia in order to demonstrate how those operations repeated many of the mistakes which were left as unlearned lessons from ONUC. This thesis argues that current doctrine emerges partly from the study of past military problems, and that the unlearned lessons of ONUC led to gaps in doctrine which were only gradually filled in the 1990s. The development of doctrine during the 1990s is therefore surveyed. The theoretical argument offered here is that narrative military history is a prime tool for observing and reflecting on the experience of past peace operations in order to form useful doctrine for the future. The work integrates recent debates on narrative in history with material on the formation of military doctrine and 'learning organisation' theory in a new synthesis. This applied to a particular case, ONUC, which has not previously been studied from an operational perspective and therefore uses previously untapped primary sources. The Irish Army learned much about operations, logistics and tactics, techniques and procedures in Peace operations from ONUC. The UN, however, failed to learn many lessons about logistics, intelligence, clarity of mandate, rules of engagement, use of force and force size in civil conflict.