EYEWITNESS - The Irish Company at Jadotville, Congo, 1961: Soldiers or Symbols?

Abstract

The article examines an incident during the UN operation in the Congo (ONUC) in which a company of Irish troops under siege at the isolated post of Jadotville was forced to surrender to the authorities of the secessionist province of Katanga. It looks at the circumstances leading up to the incident; the confusion surrounding the role of the UN force, and in particular, the problems arising from assigning military tasks to troops equipped only for peacekeeping duties. It argues that failure to learn the lessons of the incident led to many of the problems encountered by UN troops at Srebrenica and in Rwanda and Sierra Leone.