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BOOK
REVIEW
The art of
keeping the peace
Trumpets and
Tumults. The Memoirs of a Peacekeeper
by
Indar Jit Rikhye
Reviewed by Sreeram Chaulia
 India's claim to permanent membership of the
United Nations Security Council rests inter alia on its
diligent participation in UN peacekeeping missions since
the conception of neutral blue berets to separate
warring parties. Major-General Indar Jit Rikhye was
"present at the creation" when Jawaharlal Nehru flagged
off regiment after regiment from independent India's
army to global hotspots in a show of internationalist
solidarity.
The remarkable growth in number and
complexity of peacekeeping ventures since 1991 and
"increasing demand for first-hand accounts of previous
peacekeeping missions" persuaded Rikhye to overcome
initial hesitancy and write an autobiography. The story
of Rikhye's involvement in some of the most monumental
post-war world events is, however, only one part of
these colorful memoirs of a well-travelled soldier and
educator of peace.
Making of a
soldier
Rikhye was born in Lahore in 1920 to
aristocratic Hindu scions whose forefathers were
courtiers of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the 19th century
Sikh martial hero known as the "Lion of Punjab". Growing
up in Gujranwala and "staying next to where Ranjit Singh
was born and on a street whose houses had been owned by
famous Sikh generals of the past" had a strong impact on
Rikhye's mind. (p 24) "My ancestors passed on to their
successors a strong work ethic and a commitment to
serving the community." Rikhye's father worked in the
Indian Medical Service of the British Indian army and
helped set up health centers for refugees on Lady
Mountbatten's invitation during the bloody partition of
1947. "I grew up in the belief that all men are equal.
Some of us had a few advantages, but that did not make
us superior." (p 39)
After a BA from Government
College, Lahore, Rikhye eyed a career in the army. "I
had read a lot on war, both fiction and history. I loved
to see military parades." (p 45) His relatives
discouraged the ambition and wanted him to take up the
legal profession. When his father took him to see
Mahatma Gandhi at a public meeting in 1937 and lamented,
"This silly boy wants to join the army," pat came the
reply from the great leader, "But that is good. We want
good, educated young boys to become officers of the army
of free India." (p 48) Gandhi was reflecting the line of
thinking among Indian nationalists that Indians should
gradually replace British officers in the armed forces.
After this chance encounter, none could obstruct
Rikhye's soldiering dreams.
In 1941, Rikhye
joined the Punjabi Muslim squadron of the 6th Lancers
after passing out from the Indian Military Academy. The
commanding officer expressed doubts about posting a
Hindu officer to the squadron, but Rikhye was in "good
company" and never felt any difference from his
co-linguists who merely followed a different religion.
In September 1941, the 6th Lancers were ordered
to embark overseas to fight for the British in World War
II. British troops in the Persian Gulf were being
positioned to defend Allied interests in the region from
possible attack by the Axis powers from the north.
Rikhye's division was responsible for protecting Mosul
and preventing entry into Iraq from Turkey or northern
Syria. Later, it replaced the Trans-Jordan Frontier
Force and manned Syria's border with Turkey to stall
German agents from crossing over and joining sympathetic
Arab tribal chiefs.
In 1943, Rikhye's division
was moved to Alexandria, Egypt, for an assault landing
on Italy. Advances in Italy exposed Rikhye to the
humanitarian consequences of war. "Our targets usually
were roads, bridges and villages. I was always appalled
to see the effects of attacks and the suffering caused
to civilians, especially to women and children." (p 76)
Once the war in Europe ended, Rikhye was asked to return
to India and reorganize for war on Japan in Singapore
and Malaya. The atomic bombs of August 1945 obviated
this need and new instructions sent Rikhye to Kohat in
the North-West Frontier Province to safeguard British
bases, maintain forward posts in hostile tribal areas
and keep communications open. An amusing sidelight of
peacetime soldiering was the threat of his superior to
"write to my father to get me married" so that an
officer's wife could assist in the regimental family
center at Kohat.
While Punjab and Bengal were
simmering with communal passions in 1947, "from Kohat it
seemed that the Muslim League was either dreaming or
else attempting to leverage the best bargain for the
minority Muslim community in a Hindu-dominated India".
(p 84) The Pashtuns opposed creation of a separate
Pakistan and Rikhye could find little evidence of any
pro-Jinnah wave in the frontier provinces. As a
professional soldier who never discriminated on the
basis of religion, Rikhye was keen to stay on in the new
state Pakistan, if it was created. But "Jinnah had
instructed that no Hindu or Sikh officer was to be
permitted in the Pakistan army ... I would have to go to
India." (p 86) Rikhye's train to India was attacked by a
mob beating drums ominously, but he commanded the trip
to safety.
In October 1947, Pakistan sent hordes
of Afridi raiders into Jammu and Kashmir and India
declared a national emergency. Rikhye was dispatched to
deter the invaders owing to his past experience in
battling the frontier tribesmen. Once regular Pakistan
army forces joined the irregular raiders, Rikhye engaged
in heavy tank-to-tank fighting in the Chhamb sector of
Kashmir until the ceasefire order in 1948.
Keeping peace in a troubled world
Indian army chief Thimayya sprang a surprise on
Colonel Rikhye in 1957, assigning him for a special UN
job in Gaza. The importance of the peacekeeping mission
was evident. "The prime minister [Nehru] takes special
interest in international affairs and he is particular
about the UN, and especially Egypt." (p 107) India had
supplied the strongest contingent of troops to the UNEF
(United Nations Emergency Force) which was attempting to
prevent war between Israel and Arab states.
On
arrival in the Gaza strip, Rikhye straightaway spotted
coordination problems in a multinational peacekeeping
force. The force commander, a Canadian, did not invite
national contingent liaison officers to his dining mess
and the latter were sore at this "discrimination".
National liaison officers were directly responsible to
their governments and not to the force commander, a flaw
that was not resolved until eight years later, when
Rikhye assumed command of UNEF. Another bottleneck was
adjustment blues between Canadian and Indian
administrative units that were required to function as a
single service.
UNEF was interposed between
rival Egyptian and Israeli forces for implementing the
1950 "Uniting for Peace" resolution. In the beginning,
the "presence of the force provided protection to both
Egypt and Israel ... both the Israelis and the Arabs in
the area came to know peaceful conditions". (p. 116) In
1958, Rikhye was appointed chief of staff of UNEF on
recommendation of the UN secretary general. A spate of
reforms was inaugurated. "I gave special attention to
patrolling and to maintaining equipment and vehicles. In
isolated camps, morale was a problem, which we sought to
address." (p 119)
When Druz-Maronite civil war
broke out in Lebanon, UNEF was given the additional
mandate to assist the UN Observers Group in Lebanon
(UNOGIL). Lebanese leader Chamoun claimed that
"communists" (supporters of Egyptian President Nasser)
would take over his country and the US responded by
landing its marines on the beaches of Beirut. UNOGIL had
to perform the difficult task of coexisting with
heavily-armed American soldiers. In Gaza, Rikhye placed
UNEF troops on maximum alert.
Tensions mounted
in Sinai in late 1958 and Rikhye negotiated the
withdrawal of advancing Egyptian army units from the
general armistice line. Though the standoff eased
through UN and American mediation, Nasser argued that he
had a sovereign right to defend his territory and deploy
Egyptian troops all over his territory, regardless of
ceasefire agreements. In 1967, this reasoning was to
have fatal consequences for peace.
In 1960,
Nehru met Rikhye and intimated his appointment as UN
Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold's chief military
adviser for the boiling crisis in the Congo. The prime
minister "advised me to serve the secretary general
loyally. As an international staff member I was to
accept instructions from the UN alone.".(p 132)
The UN Congo Operation (ONUC) was extremely
difficult due to its permeation by Cold War ideological
rivalry. The task of disarming the Congolese army,
sections of which were entering into clashes with ONUC
troops, was riddled with complexity as newly independent
Third World countries opposed the move and the Soviets
threatened a veto. On a field visit, Rikhye noted with
dismay that the Swedish force commander of ONUC was
"more concerned with personal comforts and matters of
prestige than with the conduct of operations". The
general was on poor working terms with Ralph Bunche, the
civilian mission chief. "There had to be close
cooperation between the UN force and civilian operations
and I had to make necessary arrangements to achieve
this." (p 140)
In spite of Rikhye and
Hammarskjold's personal efforts, Belgian mercenaries
remained in the secessionist Katanga province and
threatened the unity and integrity of Congo. The "Rikhye
Line", a demarcated neutral zone in northern Katanga for
inserting more UN peacekeepers, failed to have any
impact on Belgium's sabotage activities. When prime
minister Patrice Lumumba was imprisoned by US-backed
military colonel Mobutu, Hammarskjold instructed ONUC to
"do everything possible to protect his personal rights".
This was not to be as peacekeepers did not forcibly
challenge the detention and murder of Lumumba.
New UN resolutions beefing up the use of force
to achieve objectives also fell flat. An Irish
contingent of ONUC was held captive for five weeks in
Katanga. Compounding the cup of woes for the UN was the
mysterious airplane crash that killed Hammarskjold, the
only flight during the crisis for which Rikhye was not
in the secretary general's party. The most important
lesson learned from the Congo operation was "the need to
organize peacekeeping operations suited to the specific
needs of each situation." (p 158) There was no
boilerplate model.
Continuing as military
adviser to Hammarskjold's successor, U Thant, Rikhye
organized a UN presence to stabilize de-colonizing
Rwanda and Burundi in 1962 and oversee the withdrawal of
Belgian colonial forces. As in the Congo, Rikhye was
"saddened to learn that the Belgians made very little
effort to prepare these colonies for independence". (p
160) In the same year, Rikhye was sent to West Irian as
head of the UN observer mission to monitor
Dutch-Indonesian ceasefire agreements. To persuade
Indonesian fighters to demobilize, Rikhye met Sukarno in
Jakarta.
In October 1962, Rikhye was used as a
channel by the US government to convey to U Thant news
about Russian nuclear missiles in Cuba. On assessment,
"I was certain that if these weapons were not withdrawn,
war was inevitable." (p 166) Rikhye received
confidential information that the US military was "just
short of" launching an air assault on Russian targets in
Cuba. U Thant quietly facilitated East-West dialogue,
though his role was never properly recognized by
historians who wrote hundreds of books on the Cuban
missile crisis.
In 1963, political succession
struggles in Yemen led to a UN observer group of 200
personnel and an air unit. Rikhye's inspection visit
found that the force commander and his operations
officer were "out of their depth and failed to grasp the
nuances of this sophisticated political operation, of
which the military observers were only a part". (p 174)
The area of operation was too large to be covered by
limited UN aircraft by day and only a few approaches
could be kept under observation at night. U Thant
frankly admitted that the Yemen mission was a failure.
In 1963-4, Rikhye supervised the UN Force in
Cyprus (UNFICYP). Determined to avoid relying on
Security Council resolutions alone to guide the force
commander, Rikhye ensured that guidelines for rules of
engagement were laid down in writing. In 1965, U Thant
sent a special mission of Rikhye and Pier Spinelli to
Amman and Jerusalem to help avoid growing violent
clashes between Jordan and Israel. Meetings with Levi
Eshkol, Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein cooled tempers,
but only briefly. Later that year, Rikhye was mandated
by the Security Council to go to Santo Domingo in the
Dominican Republic for observation of ceasefire in an
erupting civil war, where the US government sided with
one military faction. Rikhye's car was on one occasion
sprayed with heavy-caliber bullets by pro-American
insurgents, without damaging the occupants.
In
1966, U Thant appointed Rikhye commander of UNEF. After
a situation analysis, Rikhye had reached "the unhappy
conclusion that the Arabs and Israelis were hurtling
toward a serious crisis". Though it was beyond his
brief, he apprised U Thant and Ralph Bunche of the
omens, but his report was ignored. By May 1967, Nasser
moved armed troops into the Sinai and Egypt demanded an
end of UNEF presence. As the Sinai was being overrun by
Egypt, Israeli air force jets attempted to hijack
Rikhye's UN plane by mistake. The Israeli defense forces
went on to attack UNEF in Gaza and Rafah, killing and
imprisoning UN staff and looting UN stocks. "The
manhandling and disarming of UN personnel and the
indignities they had to suffer would not be easily
forgotten." (p 203)
Educating for peace
Just before retiring from UN duty in 1968, U Thant
introduced Rikhye to American philanthropists who wished
to start an institute for research and training on UN
peacekeeping. Prominent peace scholars and practitioners
were brought together under the banner of the
International Peace Academy (IPA) for "systematic
scientific knowledge and skills concerning the means by
which conflict resolution and change may be achieved
without violence". (p 212)
Rikhye officiated as
president of IPA for two decades and helped launch many
institutional initiatives for peacekeeper training,
negotiation programs ("peacemaking"), and the onerous
skills of "peacebuilding" in transition states. His
emphasis was on higher leadership training for
peacekeepers, knowing that many of the loopholes in UN
missions existed not at the middle or lower level of
contingents but at the top command positions. "My
association with UN staff and diplomats proved most
helpful" in expanding IPA's outreach into a global
research body. In 1985, Rikhye was awarded the UNESCO
peace prize for education.
On a personal level,
Rikhye also tried "track two diplomacy" by trying to
dispel misconceptions between India and Pakistan. In
1982, he visited Pakistan on the invitation of his old
army subordinate, Zia ul-Haq. Rikhye realized that
elimination of stereotypes was a necessity because
Indira Gandhi held the same negative views of Zia as Zia
held about Gandhi. Interestingly, Rikhye noticed that
"Zia was the face of the military and not its master."
(p 237) The Inter-Services Intelligence had become so
powerful since it was given freedom of operation in
Afghanistan in 1973 that Zia, though not taking orders
from it, "could no longer ignore this organization".
Somewhat reminiscent of another distinguished
Indian general, Krishnaswami Sundarji's memoirs Of
Some Consequence, Rikhye's book lacks a single dull
moment. Written with wit and sincerity, Trumpets and
Tumults is a great work of military history and an
essential read on the subject of UN peacekeeping.
Trumpets and Tumults. The Memoirs of a
Peacekeeper, Manohar Publishers, New Delhi,
2002. ISBN: 81-7304-409-0. Price US$38, 266 pages.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
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