Keeping the peace: stories of Australian peacekeepers - Specialist troops
- Specialist Troops
- Police and other civilians
Specialist troops
Medical
Australia first sent a medical team to a peacekeeping operation in the Congo, in the 1960s. Medical personnel from all three services are typical of the skilled Australians who take part in peacekeeping operations.
In 1994 the United Nations was unable to prevent an outbreak of genocidal violence in Rwanda that left half a million dead. Australia's contribution to a subsequent United Nations operation centred on a medical support company to treat sick and injured peacekeepers and, if resources allowed, members of the local community.
The Australians treated patients with malaria, meningitis, typhoid, dysentery, tuberculosis, worms, malnutrition, and AIDS. Others had been injured by landmines, bombs or bullets. Old war wounds, left untreated, had become infected. In a country recovering from searing violence, the Australians were exposed to many horrific sights.
De-miners
In the 1980s a prolonged war between the Soviet-backed communist government of Afghanistan and Mujahideen resistance fighters left a million Afghans dead, over five million refugees in Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan, and a land laced with unmarked minefields.
From 1989 Australia joined eight other countries in contributing military de-mining personnel to a United Nations program to train returning Afghan refugees in mine awareness and mine clearance. After the Gulf War, the other participants withdrew until only Australia was left. But in 1993, amid concerns over their safety, the Australians too were pulled out. Millions of mines remain today in Afghanistan.
A Kurdish child is treated by a member of the Australian medical team working the Gir-i-Pit region north of the city of Dahuk, as part of the multinational humanitarian relief effort, Operation Habitat.
