In the Service of Peace: Memories of Lebanon

In October 2001, Ireland begins its withdrawal from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), having finally succeeded in implementing UN Security Council Resolution 425 of 1978 and confirming Israeli withdrawal beyond the international border, or what in UN parlance is now referred to simply as the 'Blue Line'. Since 1978, An Cosantoir, the Defence Forces magazine, has chronicled the lives and duties of Irish soldiers through twenty-three years of difficult UN peacekeeping operations in the rocky, barren hills of south Lebanon.This is the story of what Irish soldiers said and did in the Lebanon for twenty-three years. It does not pretend to be a definitive history of their involvement but of necessity every memory recounted is steeped in the history of the region and the savage multi-dimensional war which raged there for a quarter of a century.