Impartial Soldier (R.I.I.A. S.) - Hardcover

The Impartial Soldier

Hardcover. Zustand: Good. Zustand des Schutzumschlags: No Dust Jacket present. Presumed First Edition, First printing. xii. 210, [2] pages. Footnotes. Maps. Select Bibliography. Index. Ink notation on fep. Some wear and soiling on the covers. Corrigendum slip between paged 56 and 57. Foreword by K. G. Younger, the Director of Chatham House. Brigadier Michael Neale Harbottle, OBE (7 February 1917 - 30 April 1997) was a senior British Army officer who was chief of staff of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus from 1966 to 1968, a peace campaigner and amateur cricketer. He served in Italy during the Second World War as a company commander. He was wounded and in 1944 received a Mention in Despatches. Harbottle commanded the 1st Green Jackets (43rd and 52nd) at Knook Camp, near Warminster, Wiltshire, from 1959 to 1962 and was garrison commander in Aden from 1962 to 1964. He commanded 129 Infantry Brigade, TA, at Oxford, from 1964 to 1966. Harbottle was chief of staff of the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus from 1966 to 1968. After two years in the post, the UN Secretary General U Thant requested that Harbottle remain as chief of staff of the UN Force in Cyprus; however, the Ministry of Defence declined to support his continuation in the role. He retired from the army in 1968. He became chief security officer for a British-owned mining subsidiary of the Consolidated African Selection Trust in Sierra Leone. He wrote a book in 1976 titled The Knaves of Diamonds in which he provided his account of events in Sierra Leone during his time there. Derived from a Cyprus Review article found on-line: Brigadier Michael Harbottle was the author of one of the seminal books on UNFICYP's involvement in the Cyprus problem in the 1960s and an anecdotal work on peacekeeping in general, died recently. The book that survives him, although published in 1970 by Oxford University Press, still has much to teach academics and practitioners and contains insights on UN peacekeeping in general, despite its apparent focus on the military and peacekeeping aspects of the Cyprus problem. The book provides an insight into the genesis and development of what is today, a vital part of our armory against conflict. When the book was written, peacekeeping was a relatively new and untested ". method of containing, and settling conflicts between states in the age of worldwide interdependence." Today peacekeeping is much maligned and misunderstood but no less valuable. Harbottle was Chief of Staff during the 1960s, at a time when UNFICYP was attempting to dampen down conflict across the entire island in order to prevent the conflict in Cyprus from spreading to Greece and Turkey and potentially destabilizing NATO at the height of the Cold War. Harbottle was well aware and highly critical of the practical involvement of Greece and Turkey on the island although The Impartial Soldier concentrates on the inter-communal aspects of the Cyprus problem and communicates the despair that the author felt at neighbor fighting neighbor. Harbottle's involvement in Cyprus during the 1960s led to his subsequent collaboration with General lndar Jit Rikhye, then military advisor to U Thant, the UN Secretary General. This relationship pioneered a significant understanding of the significance of UN peacekeeping in the context of world peace. In the opening words of the book, Harbottle denied that he was the impartial soldier of the title. But whatever his personal stand on the Cyprus problem, in effect, during the period with UNFICYP he acted as if he was one of the soldiers of" . . . any nation who dons the light blue beret of the United Nations and serves anywhere in the world where trouble threatens and peace has to be maintained or restored." Harbottle, present on the island during the EOKA campaign, was ever mindful of the battle of words which was waged between the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot sides, and was careful to point out in the opening pages of the book that if his work appeared more critical of Turkish Cypriot positions, this was merely because they were a minority and were theref. Artikel-Nr. 84873

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