It Could Happen Here - The Future of Peacekeeping In Africa

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

James talks to Kevin McDonald about the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the history and future of peacekeeping there. Buy Kevin's book: https://www.mayobooks.ie/A-Life-Less-Ordinary-Kevin-McDonaldSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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But everything starts to fall apart when people start disappearing. Karen, where have you brought us? Cancellation Island, where a second chance might just be your last. Listen to Cancellation Island on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get Hey everyone and welcome to the podcast. It's James today and I'm joined again by Kevin McDonald. Kevin is a retired officer from the Irish Defense Forces with some special forces and peacekeeping experience. Welcome to the show, Kevin. Kevin MacDonald Thanks very much for having me. And just as a sort of disclaimer at the very start, any views or opinions that I expressed are the opinions of a retired senior officer from the

Irish Defence Forces. Can't be construed as being in any way the views of the Irish Defence Forces, nor indeed that of the United Nations. So I just wanted to put that out there before we get into it. Yeah, not a UN or Irish defense forces spokesperson. Not that we've had many of those, I suppose, on our show. Kevin, we're here today to talk a little bit about the situation in Congo and perhaps more specifically like how the peacekeeping mission there has evolved and changed and sort of morphed over the years.

So maybe just to begin with, I can give an idea that like this city of Goma, which is the capital of North Kivu province has recently been captured by M23 rebels would explain who they are for people who aren't familiar in a minute. It's a city of about a million people. I believe they're saying around 3000 people have been killed in this operation, which is, I mean, it's a massive death toll. In a short space of time. It's very short space of time. Yeah. And some of the other stuff I've heard, like at one point there was a prison within the city, which there was a jailbreak and they think a hundred of the

women who were incarcerated there were sexually assaulted and in some cases burned alive after the jailbreak happened. Thousands of Congolese military and police have surrendered. A contingent of, I believe, Romanian private military contractors were captured. Yes, captured, surrendered, either way they went into Rwanda. I think about 300 of them, which is a significant amount of mercenaries. Yeah.

Yeah. Especially when you're talking about Romania, which is not a vast country. Yeah. Understandably, a lot of things are happening in the U S and people may have missed it and like, I think people in the U S just due to the nature of news being quite naval gazing here may not be as familiar with the conflict in Congo. Like if they know about it, it's from Warren's Yvonne songs or maybe from a couple of films. Laios, guns and money.

Yeah. What's the other one? Roland the Thompson gunner. That's the- Yeah, Roland the headless Thompson gunner. That's it. That's the one. Yeah. So let's talk then about the various United Nations peacekeeping missions in Congo. They've been there since the 1960s, is it? On and off. Yeah. So the first mission in the Congo was UNOC in 1960. And a lot of people would say that that was the first UN mission. But as I think we discussed the last time, the first UN mission was full scale war in 1950 in Korea. And that mission is still in existence, the UNC, the United Nations command. But I suppose speaking about the Congo specifically, so in 1960, there

was 17 newly independent states of which 14 were from Africa, agreed to a call from the UN to establish this mission in the Congo. And Ireland answered the call as well. So we deployed, it was the first time that we deployed with the UN. And we had a battalion there from 1960 to, I think, 1964, or whenever the initial deployment ended. And it was, um, it was a fairly tough, intense introduction to peacekeeping. In early 1960, there was an engagement between an Irish platoon and, uh, a large group of Beluba tribesmen, and there was nine Irish soldiers killed and 26 Belubas

killed, and that was the first time that Ireland kind of had to deal with that kind of death overseas. Yeah. So it was, it was pretty traumatic. And then in 1961, you've probably seen the film, the siege of Jadidville. Yeah. But it recalls the true story of an Irish company under Kamala Pat Quindlin. His company was 158 roughly strong.

And they were attacked while they were at mass on a Sunday morning by a group of between three and four thousand Katanganese well-armed soldiers backed up by French and Belgian and South African mercenaries. They also had an attack helicopter and they had an attack jet. I think you had some of the old Rhodesians in there as well at that time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, anything for a fight. But the Irish held out for, I think, over a week and they didn't give up when they ran out of water.

They didn't give up when they ran out of food. It was when they had no bullets left. They negotiated a surrender. Thanks to the skill of the officers and NCOs and men, that won't fatality on the Irish side. Yeah. Unfortunately, when they came home because they had surrendered, they were treated like pariahs for years.

It was, it was seen like a state on the nation. Now if God forbid they had 50% casualties that have been treated like heroes. Yeah. And it's only in recent years that they're getting the recognition that they should have got back in 1961. That's really interesting. I didn't know they'd be treated that way. It's quite sad to hear.

Yeah, yeah. It's a strange one. And a lot of the people that were, we'll say, shunning these officers and NCOs and men, it's happened to serve overseas. And like if the UN, they tried once to resupply them with ammunition from the year, but it wasn't successful. So if the UN had fully supported that company, they would have held out even longer. But I suppose that's the way things go. So that's the first mission to the Congo. And I could be corrected. I think 64 or 65, it might've sort of started to draw down. Then in 1999,

after it was the first or the second war, the UN established MONUC, M-O-N-U-C. And that lasted from 1999 until 2010 when it was renamed and re-changed into Minusco. And the difference between the two is that Minusco is what we call an integrated mission. And the three pillars of an integrated mission are the restoration of the rule of law, the protection of civilians and the provision for long term recovery and democratic governance. So it's combining, we'll say, the force of a military presence, but also does special advisors on justice and policing on governance, all that sort of stuff, which you wouldn't have an emission like Unifil, which we discussed the last time.

Yeah. Which is the earlier form of peacekeeping. So Minusco was supposed to have left the country in 2024, but they were given a, I think a one year extension. And unfortunately, with the M23 Rebel advance, the mission is relocating most of its staff, evacuating others. The difference between the two terms is very specific. You relocate within a country and you evacuate out of a country.

Oh, OK. And I also note that the some of the hybrid African Union peacekeeping operations, there was, I think, 13 South Africans killed in the initial stages of the of the onslaught towards towards Goma. So that's kind of where we are with the, I think at the, at its height, within 21, 22, there was probably a strength of 20,000. But if you think the DRC is the second largest country in Africa, it's vast. Yeah.

And the 11th largest country in the world, the size of just phenomenal. So you can imagine what the Congo and its entire, no more than Sudan, but what the Congo and its entirety was back in the world. The size is just phenomenal. So you can imagine what the Congo and its entire, no more than Sudan, but what the Congo and its entirety was back in the day. Yeah. Absolutely huge. Yeah. It's vast.

It encompasses different climate zones, different ethnic groups as we're seeing. Right. 200 main ethnic groups. Yeah. Yeah. It's, um, it's a fascinating place. It's a place I've wanted to go for a long time. I spent some time on the Congo Rwanda border a few years ago.

I'm not so far from Goma actually, like riding my bike around. And it's a very interesting place in terms of what Rwanda is a very interesting place in terms of its relation to its neighbors. I think people will probably struggle to conceptualize. I actually saw somebody had posted on Twitter, somebody who talks about Syria mostly like how on earth is Rwanda invading Congo? And they had like a picture, you know, the land mass of Rwanda, Rwanda is one of the

smaller countries in Africa and Congo is obviously a vast country. Are you comfortable explaining a little bit of like the Rwandan involvement? It's complicated and it goes back to the genocide back in 94. And the two Kivu's, North and South Kivu, which is on the border with Rwanda, there's a large amount of ethnic Tutsis, Congolese Tutsis there. I think Rwanda has always projected force into the two Kivos and Katanga because literally that's where the money is. Of course Rwanda would say they don't but they are actively supporting M23 and have. And most of the M23, certainly the leadership would be ethnic Congolese Tutsis.

So ostensibly I think the raise on death for Romanda's involvement was to protect the ethnic Tutsis from Hutus that had escaped from the genocide. So it's complicated but if you kind of park those complications and think of the money trail, it kind of leads to the two Kivos because 70% of the world's cobalt, I think, is kind of located between the two Kivos. And then you've gold diamonds, all the other sort of rich minerals. Yeah. Incredible wealth in Congo. Yeah. But I was reading that the,

the estimate deposits in Eastern Congo is something like 23 trillion. Like it's, it's off the wall stuff. Yeah. So it's no wonder it's become the background that it has essentially since 1960, because in 1960, after getting independence, the Kivu and Katanga wanted to secede back by Belgium. And that's kind of what, what, what kicked off a lot of the conflict in 1960. And the reverberations from that are still, are still kind of being felt and being exploited because everyone wants to get a piece of the action, like all the surrounding countries. So I see, I think it was yesterday that the planning a meeting.

I think it's this week or this weekend to try and resolve the conflict. And this time they're going to try and include entry 23 in the, in the meeting rather than ex-Google. I don't think they have a choice. I mean, they're heading down to book of those. So yeah, I mean, it's 23 have said that they're going for sort of the whole country now that they're not, you know, it's not, it's not a regional or like, you know, ethnic movement so much as a, and that they will, M23 would say that they're not like per se ethnic separatists,

right? Like I think they would claim that they're like a liberation of Congo force. I mean, and then you've Burundi supporting the Congolese government. Uh, you know, there's all kinds of, as you say, like regional and international actors. Because of the wealth in Congo and like as Congo emerged from the DRC emerged from its colonial past, right, it's always been destabilized by these actors, both regional and international, who wanted a piece of that mineral wealth. And then they've created and sustained these differences, which have become, I think there's

some evidence to suggest that like, certainly the ethnic differences have become more pronounced and more like intransigent, I suppose, or like, you know, it's become more difficult for those ethnic groups to coexist over time due to decades of conflict, right? And then killing. And it's a very difficult situation and it leaves people like the civilians living in Goma today in a terrible situation. I think this is the fifth time that people have attacked Goma. I think the last time was about 2012, was it? The last time M23 took Goma.

Yeah, and that's when the, which we'll probably discuss later, the Force Intervention Brigade retook Goma in 2013 in a relatively short space of time, compared to how long it took to fall. They regained it fairly quickly. Yeah. So I think we break for adverts now. I'd like to come back and discuss the Force Intervention Brigade because I think it's something that people ought to understand when we talk about peacekeeping. I'm gonna give in more personal stories with you guys. And I know a lot of people are gonna attack me. Why are you gonna go visit your dad? Your mom wouldn't be okay with it. I'm gonna tell you guys right now, I know my mother.

And I know my mom had a very forgiving heart. That is my story on plastic surgery. This is my truth. I think the last time I cried like that was when I lost my mom. Like that, like yelling. I was like, no. I was like, oh, and I thought, what did I do wrong? And as always, you'll get my exclusive take on topics like love,

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when you're behind the wheel. Distracted driving is what's really scary and even deadly. Eyes forward, don't drive distracted. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. ["The Force Intervention Brigade"] And we're back. Okay, so yeah, you mentioned the Force Intervention Brigade, which is something a bit unique within peacekeeping.

And there's a lot of like, when people talk about peacekeeping, they'll be like, oh, why aren't they fighting? Why aren't they like, going and stopping the things? And I understand why people ask that. So can you explain a little bit about what the FIB was and what it did? The concept of the force intervention brigade was, I think, to my knowledge, is the first UN mission that developed that concept. And they actually changed the mandate to include an offensive capability for UN troops, as opposed to defensive or separation of war and factions. This was full on war fighting. Yeah.

And what they had figured out because, because the DRC is so big, but the footprint, even with 20,000 troops, the footprint on the ground was not sufficient to, we'll say, as I said, one of the three pillars of an integrated mission is protection of civilians. And they were finding that very difficult. So they, they decided to use a concept of protection by projection rather than protection by presence. So not alone did they have the force intervention brigade, they had the joint protection teams and also an idea of a rapidly deployable battalion. So the idea was that the force intervention brigade would say do the heavy lifting.

And then when hotspots had flare up, they could use either the rapidly deployed battalions or the joint protection teams. So the idea was that rather than having static positions trying to protect people, they would go where the action was. That was the idea. Okay. And in fairness, the FIB had artillery, mortars, snipers, attack helicopters, UAVs, special forces. They retook gum in, I don't

know the exact timeframe, but I think it was less than a month. One of the problems, and I think we touched on it the last time we spoke, and I think this was a specific problem to the, how the FIB didn't really keep going the way it should have is that two of the main TCCs were Tanzanian South Africa and they would have had slightly different agendas in terms of who they should and they shouldn't attack based on their government's position. Sorry, TCC is a true country of countries. Excuse me. I should have said that.

Yeah, it's a sea of acronyms here. I've tried to avoid all the cong, these faction acronyms, but yeah, yeah, explain that a bit because when people think of the UN or peacekeepers or troop contributing countries, the only time it comes on the news in sort of the global North is when people from say Northern Europe or North America are part of these UN peacekeeping missions. So they think of people, British troops, American, Canadian, what have you, in their blue helmets, right? But the vast bulk of TCCs don't come from Northern Europe, right?

They're in Africa, the majority of TCCs are other African countries. I think I'm right saying it's a majority. Yeah. Like here in South Sudan, most of the big battalions are Rwanda, Nepal, Mongolia, China, generally speaking, in my experience in the Central African Republic and here, a lot of the battalions come from Africa, which is fair enough. I mean, it's their continent.

And they should have a stake in trying to foster peace and develop peace and help countries in less or more dire situations than they themselves perhaps are. So I understand your point about different countries being aware of what the UN does based on, I take for instance everyone in Ireland knows about the UN and they know about the Irish and Lebanon and in Syria and in Africa. I'm sure in the United Kingdom because you've got a very small UN footprint. Cyprus has been one and there's a few you guys here. Generally people in the UK, I'm sure you'll be able to enlighten me on this, wouldn't

have the exact same intimate knowledge or even interest in the UN. Because basically they don't have a big footprint, deployable footprint. Yeah, yeah. And it's the same with the United States. I think it's not something that people think about for the most part. And so like, there's this question of like, why doesn't the UN, certainly, I think when people saw what happened recently in Lebanon, they were like, why are these peacekeepers, you know, where you had these peacekeepers and you, we spoke about this in our last episode,

right? Being shelled, being shot at, you know, the people were asking why they weren't out there fighting. And there are a lot of reasons for that. One being that's not what they're there to do. But yeah, when we had this force intervention brigade in Congo, they did some good things, right? They were able to retake Goma. And for the people who lived in Goma, I'm sure that was very important, like that meaningfully improved their lives. But like, it also comes with these complications that you've addressed. Each of those troop contributing countries, you need everyone to be committed to the same mission, I suppose. If your government is giving your armed forces

one mission that differs slightly from that which whoever's in command of the force inter-gantry brigade has, then we get friction, right? Or it's not as efficient as it could be. Yeah. I think I'm sure I mentioned this when we last spoke. It's one thing developing a robust mandate, but if the TCCs don't have the skills, the experience, the training, the equipment or the will to enforce the robust nature of that mandate, well, then the mandate isn't really worth anything, you know, so it's, it's kind of like, yes, the FIB was extremely effective for a while until it

wasn't now, whether that was a lack of will on the TCCs or on New York or mission leadership. I have no idea, but it was a great idea and it worked and then didn't work. Yeah. Plus the fact that the DOC wanted the mission to downsize and eventually leave, that added to the, well, should we really invest in something when we're going to pull out? Because the country doesn't want us here anymore, which is, again, it's a fair point. Yeah, right. No one wants foreign troops in their country, right?

You know, walking around, especially, you know, engaging their own citizens. But I mean, it's interesting. I was watching a speaks, the current president of the DRC, Felix Tsichisakedi, I've tried my best to pronounce that correctly. It's not, I have disrespected. He was saying that the international community is bordering on complicit in M23's advance because of the failure to do anything about it in the speech he gave this week.

And it was interesting because it had previously been, like you said, for under very understandable reasons, especially in the DRC, which has this long and horrible history of colonialism, like the terrible things done in the DRC, which has this long and horrible history of colonialism. Like the terrible things done in the Belgian Congo. We've covered, there's a lot on bastards. You know, the show that we do, people can listen to that if they want to. But like now he's asking for more help, which is also understandable because, you know, his military is 125,000 or so, like, and a large number of that. It's not very combat effective forces maybe.

And they've just been overrun in Gormor, in a big city, a city of a million people. So like, where do you think we go from here? What's like, we're at a very unique time in world history, in which the United States is doing some things with its foreign policy. I mean, I don't know, I won't really mince words about it, I think it's terrible. But if we talk about USAID, right, I was speaking to people on the Thai-Burmese border last week who were telling me that USAID has turned off life support machines as part of its drawdown

and that people obviously directly died as a result of that there. So the US is not necessarily averse to having terrible consequences to its, uh, whatever it's trying to do right now, which I don't really have a good word for. So like, where do we go from here with, with the US becoming more isolationist? Well, let's discuss for a few minutes the alternatives to UN peacekeeping. Yep. And there's a lot of them here in Africa. So you have the South African development community, SADC, the East African community.

There was an African Union stroke UN hybrid mission in Darfur, UNAMID, which is closing. There was an AU mission in Somalia. There is the Lake Chad base and multinational task force. There's the group of five for the Sahel. Then you had EU for, which was an EU force in Chad and in Mali and subsequently became Minur Kat in Chad and Minusma and Mali. Then you have the UTM mission in Mali, which I was part of at one stage, uh, and another one in Somalia.

And of course we have our mercenaries, you know, and when it emerged that there was over 300 of them allowed into Rwanda, I was reading the report that they were getting something like three and a half thousand dollars a month, whereas the DRC soldiers were getting maybe $300 a month. Yeah. You know, these guys were brought in to protect the mines because again, it goes back to money. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're protecting resources, not people. That's a different thing.

So what are those, like those African led peacekeeping missions look like, like you talked about these various like international and regional groups. I think it's, it's certainly worth a try because the UN hasn't the ability nor indeed the money I presume to keep doing these large big missions. I've once said the three largest missions were Minusco, which were discussing Minuska in the central African Republic and Minusma, which was in Mali. Mali is gone. DRC is on the drawdown. Central African Republic is still there. But I've noticed, I spent four years there and obviously I have a keen interest in the place, but there has been a big increase in anti-French, it's a Francophone country.

Yeah. Anti-French and, and linked with a kind of an anti-UN sentiment. No, the special advisor to the president is from Russia. Wagner, you had a big part to play when I was there. There were key players. Yeah. Most likely they're interlinked. Yeah. I mean, and they've done some things which are horrific in terms of, we've covered that

as well with our friend Derma on the show. I did want to talk about this because the US is talking about withdrawing it's sort of what we call like soft power assets, right? Around the world. And I saw like, I forget who it was saying like, oh, let the chips fall where they may. It's very obvious where the chips will fall in this part of the world. Right. Like when I was in Rwanda, every fancy road in Rwanda, they call them Chinese roads because they go from the mines to the airport. Yeah.

Belt and braces. Yep. It's as naked a resource extraction project as you'll see. Right. Now China also does the soft power thing. They'll build hospitals and these, you know, I forget where the quote comes from, but like every time you, the U S comes, we get a lecture and every time China comes, we get a hospital.

This will reorient the way these countries specifically in Africa associate with the world, right? With the, with the U S draw down and the United Nations not capable or willing of sort of doing these massive peacekeeping missions. And I think for very understandable reasons groups like the EU, you know, it's best not to have large deployment to European armed forces in Africa for reasons that are probably quite obvious. So like, yeah, we were likely to see, I mean, hasn't Wagner rebranded itself as the Africa

Corps now? Yeah, I'm not sure who's who's running it now, but I'm sure the strings are being more closely pulled by, by Putin as opposed to having very loose control when pre-caution was there. Yeah, yeah. It was giving him like a standoff capability. This is just a PMC, nothing to do with me. But I would imagine after his drive to Moscow and the subsequent demise, I'm sure that whoever

is running the Africa core is much more tightly controlled by the criminal. I would imagine. Yeah. It's like a British East India company kind of model, like a sort of proxy colonialism, but very tight, like you say, it's just almost just like a different badge on the same thing there. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Chikis, and I'm back with a brand new season of your favorite podcast, Chikis and Chill.

I'll be sharing even more personal stories with you guys. And I know a lot of people are gonna attack me, why are you gonna go visit your dad, your mom wouldn't be okay with it. I'm gonna tell you guys right now, I know my mother and I know my mom had a very forgiving heart. That is my story on plastic surgery. This is my truth. I think the last time I cried like that was when I lost my mom. Like that, like yelling. I was like, no.

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Listen to Cancellation Island on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, host of the podcast, The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told. Join me every week as I tell some of the most enthralling true crime stories about women who are not just victims, but heroes or villains, or often somewhere in between. Listen to The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Snakes, zombies, public speaking, the list of fears is endless. But the real danger is in your hand when you're behind the wheel. Distracted driving is what's really scary and even deadly. Eyes forward, don't drive distracted. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. I think this is one of the things that won't get talked about in the next four years, because the US media will talk about the US a lot again. I mean, they always do. But I think people should be concerned about this, about the future for multinational peacekeeping in Africa. And more importantly, I guess the future for, or interlinked with that, the future for human rights in Africa and more importantly, I guess, the future for interlinked with the future for human rights in Africa. What do you see as like meaningful ways that people can advocate for a future for Africa, which is not just another set of countries extracting resources and

leaving very little for the people there, which is something that has happened. You know, I'm a British person. This has happened by British people for a very long time and other European people for a very long time. But like, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't try and stop it happening in the future. That's a difficult one to answer because ideally African problems should, in my opinion, be solved by African nations. Yeah. And that's the reason that the African Union and all these other ones that I mentioned,

I think are an attempt to do that. And certainly Europe and the US shouldn't be dictating how Africans govern themselves. They should be assisting in good governance, good policing, good judiciary. But it kind of goes back to money again, because there's so much of a vested interest. Yeah. Like I heard a figure that M23 would get me $800,000 a month from some of the mines in in Kivu's. Yeah, I can believe so.

We'll get that kind of money floating around. A lot of people maybe don't want to sort things out. And it may suit to leave the mayhem there and use all these artisanal miners who are getting paid a couple of cents a day. And Rwanda has just got a big contract with the EU in terms of diamonds. Yeah, I mean, that is the thing, right? We can tell where this stuff comes from. Like there is a means to try and limit the amount of these resources which can leave conflict zones in a way which benefits belligerent parties. It's where the markets for those

resources are willing to do it, right? Yeah. And everyone has a stake in the pie, whether it's the overseer of the mine, whether it's the company that owns the mine, whether it's the people that move the product from Kivu into some neighboring country, and then ultimately the people that buy it commercially in Western Europe or around the rest of the world. Yeah, yeah. And it's, you know, people think of diamonds a lot, and I think people, there's been a kind of movement to purchase diamonds, which are ethically sourced or to just not use diamonds to sort of move away from them as like a store of value. But, uh, it's also the parts in your mobile phone, isn't it?

It's not, you know, it's not just like fancy engagement rings. This is it. Yeah. Are you willing to pay double the price for more ethical mining methods. Most people probably earn. Yeah, that's the thing, right? And especially when it's out of sight, out of mind for most people. Even compared to, you know, obviously genocide of Palestinian people or the, you know, when we think about these other atrocities, right? Like those have not remained out of sight, out of mind, because they're

visible on people's social media, because, you know, people in Palestine have phones and they can film. And like, that's, I think, meaningfully changed the way, like, I wouldn't have thought American people would, would care about Palestinian people I moved here in 2008, and you wouldn't have found much interest in Palestine. You wouldn't have expected them to promote ethnic cleansing or Gaza. Yeah, no, you wouldn't have expected that either. But the movement like to support Palestinian people at this from the

grassroots and then also the government doing the exact opposite, you know, it's come from the bottom up. It hasn't come from like government advocacy. We don't see that as much with, with certainly this part of Africa, right? Like, and it's, uh, I suppose it's a contour as far as like people in Congo maybe aren't able to access those global networks of like social media and maybe to share their stories, you know, and I think it's also a consequence of us in the media not reporting at all.

You know, like I've for years tried to sell stories about Africa to American publications and at best they'll want a story about like the people who are starting like social enterprise, European or North American people starting like social enterprises or like sort of beneficial companies. And I understand this have a role, but like, you're not going to persuade me that there isn't a single African person of interest to you and that like it's someone who came from North America, that it's the only relevant story to tell in Africa.

And like, I've had this falling out with so many editors over the years that like, no, I don't want to tell that story. I want to tell the story about people from Congo in Congo, about people from Rwanda in Rwanda. I live in a town towards the west coast of Ireland and there's a guy from there. What I'll do is I'll send you a link. Yeah. But he's passionate about getting free education in Africa between online courses and online libraries.

Obviously, the more education you get, the better chance you have of having a better life. So yeah, I did go some stuff and I'll send it on to you and then you can figure out whether it would be an interesting topic or whatever. But I just literally as we were talking, I was thinking of how one guy is trying to change conditions for younger people in Africa and trying to give it to them for free. That's it. Yeah. That's the key is just like people doing it. One of the things that people did, which I thought was really great as an example,

as a model is from October, about October the 10th of 2023, I suppose, people weren't going to school or university in Gaza. And very quickly, there weren't any universities in Gaza because they all got bombed, right? The colleagues of mine in academic departments started putting on seminars and lectures that Palestinian people, be they displaced or still in Gaza, but with access to internet, you know, still displaced but internally displaced, could attend and continue with their educations. And I thought that was a really great, like solidarity based way to facilitate access to something that people have had taken away from them through no fault of their own by state aggression.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, there's a model for that. I mean, colonialism has done many terrible things, but it's given us a common language with a lot of our African friends. You know, you speak French and English, you can do quite well. So like, yeah, there are things available and I wish people would, I don't think people should stop caring about Palestine. Of course they don't, but I do wish they would care more about people in Africa too, because

like, they don't deserve this any more than anyone else. I was born in 1960 when the first mission went to the Congo. Yeah. And it's been going on like I'm 64. It's been around 64 years. Yeah. So no more than the problem with the Palestinians. I think some people, unless you have a specific interest in it or feel passionate about it,

a lot of people just, I think, tune out and to go to the next pronouncement from the White House, you know, it's like clickbait. So I think it's a sad fact, but it's a factor, I think. Yeah. Yeah, it's a shame. And like, you know, if there's one thing I'd like to do with my career, I'd like to spend more time in that part of the world and do more reporting. And, uh, it, I think we could do a lot with, uh, as a media with, uh, just

explaining how life is for everyday people. Cause people think about Congo in terms of, yeah, the, the M 23 and the Congolese government and the Hutu militias and this and that, but the vast majority of people are just trying to get on with their day. They want a better future for their children. And the fact that your mobile phone is cheap is maybe making their children's future worse. And that's something that we need to reckon with. And e-cars.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is the thing people don't talk about electric cars. It's always where does all that stuff come? And then even here in America, right, where the US is trying to mine lithium on reservations where, you know, the land, the little land that's left indigenous people to have sovereignty on is where it's now trying to do this very invasive form of mining. Kevin, you've written a book, so would you like to,

as we wind down here, do you want to explain a little bit about your book so that people are interested in your life and your time as a peacekeeper and an archaeologist? Okay, so what started off as a lockdown project when COVID hit back in the day, I decided I would write an account of my weird and wonderful life for my, just for my family. And once you start writing, as you're no doubt aware, you start remembering. And suddenly I was at something like a hundred thousand words and I thought, right, there might be a book in this. And I know obviously I'm opinionated about my own book naturally, but it's not

just a book about some random military guy waffling on about his, his military career, I have a separate career in mountaineering and a kind of a nearly separate career in mountaineering and a kind of a nearly separate career in archaeology. So it's, it's a mixture of soldiering, mountaineering and archaeology. As someone said it to me, it's a bit like Chris Bonington meets Bear Grylls meets Indiana Jones, which is kind of a weird and wonderful way to do it. So the title of the book is a lifeless ordinary, which this was a recruiting slogan in the 1990s for the, for the Irish defense forces.

Oh, I didn't know that. And I think, I think I'll send you the link. Yeah. Yeah. If not, I'll do it. Yeah. Immediately. So all your viewers can, can order the book.

You can only get it online at the, at the publishers. It's not on Amazon, unfortunately. Yeah. Well, I don't know. Maybe, maybe for the best, given the, the way tech people are playing the US economy. You can get it online, you can get it sent to the United States if you're interested. Thank you so much for your time, Kevin, your insights today. I know we really appreciate it.

Is there anywhere else if people want to follow you online aside from the book? The book's probably the best way to get in contact. I'm on LinkedIn and the normal stuff. Just Google Kevin MacDonald and I should, I should come up. I was resisting for years and years and eventually I Googled Kevin MacDonald. And I was surprised at the amount of Kevin MacDonald there is, a famous American actor, I think, called Kevin MacDonald. Yeah, yeah.

But just as a small parting shot, when I was in Mali, I was researching the archaeology of Mali and the world expert on Malayan archaeology is a professor. Naturally, Kevin Mac Donald. So I sent him an email and I said, by the way, I'm also an archaeologist and my name is Kevin McDonald and, and he goes, my words, I'll be in Bangui or in Bamako in two weeks time, let's meet up. So the two Kevin MacDonalds, two archaeologists met up in Bamako to discuss archaeology. So that's nice when these things kept together.

Another one of my weird and wonderful stories. Yeah. Well, thanks so much for joining us today, Kevin. It's always nice to hear from you. You're more than Yeah, yeah. Well, thanks so much for joining us today, Kevin. It's always nice to hear from you. You're more than welcome, James. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions.

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