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FOR THE LEADER of Irish troops in Lebanon, Israeli drone strikes and dynamic war fighting made his ninth peacekeeping deployment his most challenging yet.
The last time The Journal met Lieutenant Colonel Shane Rockett was in Camp Shamrock in the hills of Lebanon as an Israeli drone buzzed overhead. Before that we met him in the Glen of Imaal as his troops prepared to deploy.
Today he returned to Dublin Airport with the last group of his troops from the 125th Infantry Battalion as they completed their peacekeeping mission in Lebanon. They have now been replaced by a new battalion of Irish soldiers.
The Tipperary man led the troops on what he said was the most dynamic and active trip of his career since he joined the Irish Defence Forces in 1994.
As the soldiers he led embraced loved ones in the arrival hall of Terminal One he spoke about his feelings about being back on Irish soil. He speaks of the “kinetic” atmosphere on the ground in Lebanon – a slang term soldiers use to describe a situation where they are under fire or there is a largescale bombardment.
“I’m very relieved. My main priority as a commander is to make sure we get everyone back home safe and sound, and we’ve done that.
“It was probably the most kinetic tour of duty I’ve been on in my career. And I’ve had nine tours of duty today. One of those was my first tour back in 1995 and 1996 during Grapes of Wrath, which was another Israeli operation in Lebanon, which was, at the time, a bad situation, but this trip was 10 times worse,” he said.
Operation Grapes of Wrath was a 17 day invasion of Lebanon by Israel as they targeted Hezbollah – it was designed to stop missiles being launched into Israel from south Lebanon.
Just days before Rockett and his team handed over their mission to the 126th Infantry Battalion, Israeli troops fired on a UN post in Sector East and attempted to intimidate an Irish patrol with a targeting or range finder laser from a weapons system.
“This is part of military operations abroad. Laser activity on military operations is not something new to us.
“We’ve been monitoring it for the time that we’ve been out there. There was no threat to Irish troops at that time. We report these things as a matter of course – it’s occurring daily out there, and it’s something that we deal with,” he added.
Rockett had revealed in an interview during The Journal’s visit to south Lebanon in March that troops were dealing with a bad reaction from the local population. It emerged that disinformation from multiple sides, but particularly from Hezbollah and Israeli sources, was causing the issue.
“You have one side, like the Israeli side saying that the UNIFIL troops are hiding or protecting Hezbollah out there, which is not the case at all.
“Then you’ve Hezbollah saying that we’re spying on behalf of Israel. That is also not the case. The UN and UNIFIL are neutral. The Irish Defence Forces are neutral out there and we don’t take sides,” he added.
Rockett spoke about how his troops operated in Lebanon as they established operations as the ceasefire took hold.
“I think the Irish have a unique way of deploying as peacekeepers overseas. We bring a calmness to a situation, and the locals certainly appreciated that for the six months that we were there.
“We were able to establish our operations and work closely with the Lebanese Armed Forces to make sure that we were able to add to the safe and secure environment in the area of operations,” he added.
Rockett said the operations were complicated by the amount of random shelling and bombings by Israel and the activities of Hezbollah.
“It’s tense and unpredictable there and every day something is happening.
“The ceasefire is fragile, but we have to have faith in the ceasefire. We have to have faith in what comes after, which is hopefully a peaceful process where the people of Lebanon can get back to doing their normal business,” he added.
One of the peacekeepers arriving back through Dublin Airport today was Company Sergeant John Rooney who is the uncle of Private Seán Rooney who was murdered in a Hezbollah controlled area while deployed in Lebanon in December 2022.
Today, as he was surrounded by his family, John said: “I wanted to go over there and make my family proud and I wanted to make him [Seán] proud.
“Seán always looked up to me and I know he is looking down and he is proud of me and I am proud of him.”
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