DROGHEDA ARMY MAN WHO SAW THE HORRORS OF BOSNIAN WAR
FORMER ST JOSEPH’S STUDENT, COL COLM DOYLE, RETURNED TO HIS ROOTS LAST WEEK. HUBERT MURPHY SPOKE TO THE MAN WHO WAS AT THE CENTRE OF THE BOSNIAN WAR AND HELPED BRING JUSTICE FOR SO MANY AT THE HAGUE WAR TRIALS
AS he chatted with old pals about past days in the Joey’s, of trying to buy ‘spitting polish’ in Barney Macs, lining out with the Wolfe Tones hurlers and obeying Michael Bell’s drill instructions in the old FCA hall, it was a million miles away from his days when his words and actions were paramount in trying to broker peace in the former war torn Yugoslavia in the early 90s.
Now retired, Colonel Colm Doyle was the man who acted as envoy to Lord Carrington as he tried to bring peace to an infamous conflict between warring Serb, Croat and Muslim factions.
Time and time again, he addressed the world’s media, a calm, reassuring voice in a time of horror and rage all around him.
Colm Doyle spent his early life at 23 Chord Road and completed his Leaving Cert in St Joseph’s CBS at Sunday’s Gate and then headed to Irish Army Cadet School.
He went on to serve with the UN in Cyprus in 1968 and then the Lebanon and the Middle East when he was appointed as a UN observer.
Life would then bring him to perhaps one of the most imfamous battlefields since the Second World War - the Balkans.
He was head of the European Union Monitoring Mission in Bosnia from October 1991 to April 1992 and returned to Bosnia for another year as personal representative of Peter Carrington, chair of the International Peace Conference on Yugoslavia.
Colm has now written a book about his life and times, with the Bosnian war paramount in it.
‘I spent 18 months getting it together,’ he stated. ‘ My kids said I should get it published and I’m delighted that I have now signed a publishing deal and it will be out in June. It’s entitled ‘Witness to War Crimes - The memoir of a peacekeeper in Bosnia.’
He says it’s a factual story of what he saw back then when he was serving as a middle rank Irish officer at the centre of a conflict.
The former BBC correspondent Martin Bell has written the forward for it. It will be interesting to see what he says.
Bell wrote a book back in the 90s - ‘In Harm’s Way’ - and described their first meeting.
‘I did not so much meet him as harangue him (Doyle), even as he was trying to check into the hotel, with a breathless account of the ethnic cleansing and a demand that he have it stopped.’
According to Bell, Doyle was ‘a bit taken aback by this outburst from a total stranger, and pointed out that he had just arrived, but he would certainly do what he could.’
He took it up with the Bosnian leadership the next day, including some of the detail that Bell had given him, ‘ and was met by the usual tactic of brazen denial. In the Balkans, as Misha Glenny memorably pointed out, the only truth is a lie.’
And Bell goes on, ‘ Colm was not new to Sarajevo. In the Winter before the war began, when the Muslims were preparing for independence and the Serbs for war, he led the small team of European Community monitors who were trying to keep the peace between them.
‘A man of inexhaustible patience and energy, he was recruited after the outbreak of war by Lord Carrington to be his eyes and ears on the ground and to broker local ceasefires wherever possible. It was an impossible task for these agreements were broken almost as soon as they were reached, and at one of the signing ceremonies at the airport, everyone had to take cover under the table on which the ceasefire had been signed.’
‘Both sides were set on a collision course at a terrible cost to their people, and the war had taken on such a momentum that the most
A MAN OF INEXHAUSTIBLE PATIENCE AND ENERGY, HE WAS RECRUITED AFTER THE OUTBREAK OF WAR BY LORD CARRINGTON TO BE HIS EYES AND EARS ON THE GROUND AND TO BROKER LOCAL CEASEFIRES WHEREVER POSSIBLE. IT WAS AN IMPOSSIBLE TASK.
gifted of mediators would have been powerless to prevent it. But that did not mean that they should stop trying, or that we as journalists stood neutrally between those who wished to intensify the conflict and those who wished to end it.
‘ There were two chief peacemakers in the field and both became friends and allies. One was Colm Doyle for the European Community, and the other was Lew MacKenzie for the United Nations.’ the BBC man wrote.
Due to his work in the Balkans war, the UN appointed Col Doyle chief of staff of the UN Military Division in New York from 2004 to 2006.
20 years and more after the conflict, Colm Doyle ended the story of the Bosnian war and perhaps answered Martin Bell’s appeal that day when they met in a Sarajevo hotel.
He testified at the trials of the men behind the mass murders, the genocide and the horror, at The Hague, Serb general Ratko Mladic, who was tried for his role in the slaughter of more than 8,000 men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995, as well as Radovan Karadzic and President Slobodan Milosevic.
‘It was never ending since the war,’ Colm states. ‘I knew I’d be asked to give evidence and I told the trials of what I saw as a witness.
‘ The question people ask is if the war could have been avoided but there were groups that were determined that there was going to be a war, how it was handled was the question.’
To this day he still gets recognised, his peacekeeing role in those torrid days likely to always be with him.
‘I was lucky enough to have that recognition and sometimes it came with a burden because a lot was expected of you.’
He still harbours a great interest in international affairs and appears on national media from time to time when the need arises.