SURVIVING THE
UNITED NATIONS
Robert Bruce Adolph
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GENRE: NonFiction
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BLURB:
This
is the astonishing true story of a US Army Special Forces soldier who became a
warrior for peace. In his humanitarian and peacekeeping missions for the United
Nations he dealt with child-soldiers, blood diamonds, a double hostage-taking,
an invasion by brutal guerrillas, an emergency aerial evacuation, a desperate
hostage recovery mission, tribal gunfights, refugee camp violence, suicide
bombings, and institutional corruption. His UN career brought him face to face
with the best and worst of human nature and he shares it all here.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excerpt:
The unarmed
variety of peacekeeping is a different sort of military mission. UN member
states provide officers to serve as military observers. The most common term is
UNMO, short for UN Military Observer. The general mission statement is to
“observe and report.” UNMOs observe the status of the peace and write reports
for the gratification of the UN Security Council that establishes the mandate
under which the mission operates. Essentially, unarmed UNMOs are placed on the
ground between former belligerents. Their lives are then held hostage to the
peace process. Although little-reported, it is not uncommon for military
observers to die in the performance of their duties. I found this type of
peacekeeping service, in the abstract, to be an honorable endeavor. The
reality, though, was sometimes something else entirely. As a matter of
historical import, approximately three thousand eight hundred peacekeepers have
died in the performance of their duties around the globe.
Another type of
peacekeeping involves the use of armed battalions. I had seen this permutation
in 1990 while serving with UN Observer Group-Lebanon in the form of the UN
Interim Forces in Lebanon, and two years later with the UN Transitional
Authority in Cambodia. My future mission would combine elements of both UNMOs
and armed battalions.
The key
assumption on the part of the UN Security Council when establishing a
peacekeeping mission is that there is a genuine peace to keep. That assumption
proved false in several countries.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Robert
Bruce Adolph is a retired UN Chief Security Advisor & US Army Special
Forces Lieutenant Colonel. He holds
master’s degrees in both International Affairs (Middle East Studies) from
American University’s School of International Service and National Security
Studies and Strategy from the US Army’s Command and General Staff College.
Adolph
served nearly 26-years in multiple Special Forces, Counterterrorism,
Psychological Operations, Civil Affairs, Foreign Area Officer, and Military
Intelligence command and staff assignments in the US and overseas. He also
volunteered to serve on UN peacekeeping missions in Egypt, Israel, Cambodia,
Iraq and Kuwait.
After
he retired from active military service in 1997, he began a second career as a
senior UN Security Advisor. Among his positions he served as the Chief of the
Middle East and North Africa in the UN Department of Safety and Security.
Website:
https://robertbruceadolph.com/
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-bruce-adolph-904597a/
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/robert.adolph
Topic: Pros and cons of writing in your genre
Writing nonfiction is a very different challenge from being
a fiction writer. In both cases you have to be a story teller, make characters
three dimensional and know what to leave in and what to leave out. But when
writing nonfiction there are definite advantages:
1. You
deal with facts and analysis.
2. Opinions matter, but only if supported.
3. Real life, presented well, can be far more frightening
than fiction.
4. Real people have real emotions.
5. The truth may set you free...
- ...But
on the other hand, it might also get you sued in a court of law. That's
one of the negatives. Others include:
2. As much as you might want to use real names,
sometimes, just telling the story will suffice. Not so when writing
fiction.
3. Real people make real mistakes in real time. Do not expect warmth from those
you might choose to place under the magnifying glass.
4. It is time-consuming, but it is prudent to acquire
confirmation from multiple sources that what you believe happened, actually
happened. If you seek truth, ensure that you can gather the facts and witnesses
to validate what you write. Once it is on the published page, true or not, you
must own it.
Despite those challenges, I find illuminating real events
and their consequences to be very rewarding.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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