Israel's renewed bombardment of Lebanon in recent weeks has once again thrown the presence of Irish peacekeepers in the region into sharp focus.
But beyond the dangers of conflict itself, officials who spoke to RTÉ say United Nations (UN) missions now face a rising threat from disinformation.
False claims, online propaganda, and orchestrated campaigns have increasingly fueled hostility, eroded trust, and, in some cases, put peacekeepers directly in harm’s way.
Experts warn that, as geopolitical tensions grow, tackling this "information war" is becoming as critical as the missions themselves.
In what was then known as The Congo in the 1960s, Irish troops were subjected to something many of their successors have since also experienced while serving on UN peacekeeping missions.
Elements on one side of the conflict said they were western imperialists, while the other side said they were enabling communist influence.
From the Middle East in the 70s, to the Balkans in the 90s, many UN missions have faced similar accusations.
Campaigns to discredit them have extended beyond criticism and propaganda – and into disinformation aimed at disrupting or discrediting their efforts.
In the wake of UN failures during the Rwandan genocide in 1994, landmark reports made recommendations in part to address the issue.
They drove a new UN emphasis in the late 90s and early 2000s on information campaigns – like radio and print media outreach – aimed at countering malicious and false information.
Yet, in more recent years, as smartphones have proliferated and geopolitical tensions have increased, the problem has reared its head again.
It is increasingly putting peacekeepers in direct danger, according to officials and experts who spoke to RTÉ.
"It's an absolutely enormous problem. I've been working for the United Nations in communications for decades, and I have never encountered a complex information environment that is so full of toxins and dangers," the UN’s Under Secretary for Global Communications, Mellisa Fleming, said during an interview with RTÉ at the United Nations in New York.
"The [information] ecosystem is really polluted, and it is dividing people and also turning people against the UN in some places," she added.
Jean-Pierre LaCroix, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations, feels similarly.
"Peacekeepers have been accused of delivering weapons to armed groups. You can imagine the kind of impact that can have on communities affected by these armed groups," he said in response to questions from RTÉ.
"We have been accused of blowing up bridges when our peacekeepers were repairing the bridges," he added.
'Persistent rumours'
There are 11 live UN peacekeeping missions. All are mandated by the UN Security Council to maintain peace in a part of the world affected by conflict.
At present, around 360 members of the Irish Defence Forces are deployed across three missions in the Middle East, with the majority operating as part of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).
Some missions are in regions where active hostilities have subsided, but political tensions remain.
Others are dealing with active militias, attacks on troops, and high levels of political violence.
While each mission confronts different sources and types of disinformation, they contend with similarities in the narratives being disseminated.
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In Lebanon, it played a role in the killing of Pte Seán Rooney, according to officials that spoke to RTÉ.
Kandice Ardiel, Deputy Chief of Strategic Communications with UNIFIL, said "persistent rumours" were circulated prior to Pte Rooney's death.
Pte Rooney was killed after the UN-marked armoured vehicle he was travelling in came under fire near the town of Al-Aqbiya in the south of Lebanon on 14 December 2022.
Another Irish soldier, Trooper Shane Kearney, 22, was badly wounded in the incident.
READ: Two years on, family of Private Seán Rooney still awaits answers
Such disinformation – stemming from Hezbollah and affiliated commentators – drove "a misapprehension that these peacekeepers, who were doing a completely innocent activity, were doing something wrong," Ms Ardiel said.
For decades, questions about UNIFIL's impartiality have proliferated in southern Lebanon.
Over recent years, rumours about the purpose of their patrols and even suggestions that members of the mission act as spies for Israel have become increasingly commonplace.
In one instance in 2022, then-Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah described the mission as an "armed foreign force operating on Lebanese soil" and a "spy for Israel".
"By accusing us of being on the side of Israel and spying for Israel, that was very dangerous because peacekeepers could have been attacked, as happened with Pte Rooney," Andrea Tenenti, Chief of Strategic Communications with UNIFIL, said.
The spike in conflict in the region since the Hamas attacks on Israel in October 2023 has also seen increased commentary about the mission from the Israeli side.
That commentary has reached a level that, Mr Tenenti says, extends beyond criticism and into disinformation.
"There has been a lot of disinformation from the Israeli side to delegitimise the role of the mission politically – to ensure that the mission is completely ineffective," Mr Tenenti said.
"We have been accused [by Israel] of not being able to find or to report on Hezbollah violations, which means weapons being present in the south [of Lebanon]. The reality is we have been reporting all of the suspicious activities on the ground," Mr Tenenti added.
"We are here to support the Lebanese army to ensure there are no weapons in the south, but we have not a disarming role. The mandate doesn’t allow us to disarm militias," Mr Tenenti said.
Widespread impact
While the UNIFIL mission has remained in situ despite the ongoing challenges, Melissa Fleming says the impact of mis- and disinformation has resulted in different outcomes in other regions where UN peacekeepers have operated in the past.
"It has resulted in peacekeepers themselves telling us that they feel it's very difficult to carry out their functions in this kind of information environment," Ms Fleming says. She noted that, in places like Mali, it may have played a role in the decision to withdraw peacekeeping forces entirely.
The United Nations mission in Mali ended in 2023, a decade after it first began operating. It failed to stabilise the country, which continues to contend with Islamist insurgents and unrest.
Initially, UN troops were welcomed by locals, with hopes that the foreign soldiers would assist reclaiming northern parts of the country captured by separatist and Islamist rebels.
However, as the Islamic State (ISIL) grew and insurgent groups became increasingly active, violence escalated and - despite the UN presence - the security situation worsened for millions of Malians.
As that happened, disinformation and misinformation became an increasingly significant issue for the mission.
Coups in 2020 and 2021 saw a new military government take power, and it welcomed the presence of the Kremlin-backed Russian mercenary group, Wagner.
Reports have since noted how Mali became inundated with disinformation campaigns linked to Russia since 2018.
One such campaign involved the spreading of anti-French and anti-UN sentiment via thousands of false and misleading messages that were published across Twitter, TikTok, Telegram, WhatsApp, and Facebook, and aimed at users in Mali.
Other reports point to a major influx of pro-Russian, anti-Western media in Africa. The New York Times reported last year that "Russian fake news" was being produced on "an industrial scale" in Mali.
While it played a role in the ending of the mission, such Wagner-linked disinformation is not limited to Mali. Analysts note similar narratives have been pushed about UN missions all across Africa.
In November, a man who worked on spreading disinformation for Wagner came out of the shadows to detail how the process works.
Ephrem Yalike-Ngonzo fled the Central African Republic with the help of a whistleblowing organisation. He told the Associated Press (AP) he did so "to expose the disinformation system which can be replicated in other countries".
He said he was first approached by a Russian man in 2019, while working as a local journalist. Over the following years he said he was pressured to manufacture a narrative of public dissent against perceived external interference in the country – specifically targeting France, the United States, and the United Nations.
Mr Yalike-Ngonzo said he was also instructed to cover up abuses committed by Wagner forces in his country. "There were a lot of hidden threats," he told AP. "They were very close to the military regime. I was scared for my life."
While media reports and organisations have attributed much of the disinformation efforts in Africa to Wagner, UN officials have publicly been less specific on where mis- and disinformation campaigns about their missions originate.
"We've made a decision on our UN Global Principles for Information Integrity, not to really focus on the disinformation actors," the UN's Under Secretary for Global Communications Melissa Fleming said.
"Disinformation actors have always existed, whether they be states, whether they be individuals, whether they be snake oil salesmen or merchants of outrage.
"The problem is that it is so much easier [now] because of these tools that are so prevalent and are used for disinformation actors to operate and to infect people's minds," she added, referring to the proliferation of smart phones and social media.
Anti-UN sentiment
Independent analysts broadly agree that there has been an uptick in the number and scale of anti-UN campaigns over the last decade.
Albert Trithart is a Research Fellow at the International Peace Institute (IPI) and has authored reports about the role of disinformation in undermining UN operations.
"Several UN peacekeeping operations have seen what are clearly orchestrated campaigns of disinformation in recent years," Mr Trithart told RTÉ.
"They usually have a broader anti-western dimension to them, but part of that includes an anti-UN dimension. That's really what's changed over the past few years compared to what we saw before that."
Mr Trithart said the consequences of these types of campaigns can be hard to quantify.
"I think it can be a bit difficult to attribute the impact specifically to disinformation versus negative perceptions of peacekeepers that might already have been there regardless, and are now being amplified or exacerbated by disinformation."
"What you can see, for example in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is there have been protests against the UN that sometimes have resulted in violence. Those are often attributed to disinformation," he added.
"There’s the idea that Congolese people are just brainwashed by disinformation and that’s why they’re angry at the [UN] mission, when, in reality, they have many deep-seated long-standing reasons for their frustration – like the mission is not adequately providing protection," Mr Trithart said.
That frustration, combined with anti-UN narratives, has contributed to the growing pressure on the UN mission in the DRC to leave the country.
Protests against the UN mission in 2022 turned violent, leading to the deaths of 36 people, including four peacekeepers. In 2023, a phased withdrawal of UN troops was announced, following a request from the government.
In recent weeks, the M23 rebel group has taken control of large parts of eastern DRC, leading to growing concerns about the worsening situation and the implications of the UN mission's impending departure, currently scheduled for the end of 2025.
'Information war’
UN officials who spoke to RTÉ accept that, as smartphones increasingly enable global access to both information and disinformation, preventing frustration from escalating into violence will become an even greater challenge for peacekeepers.
"It's clear that the information environments are making operations much more difficult and that we need an urgent upgrading of our communications to operate in such environments. It’s an information war," Melissa Fleming said.
"We need to adapt to this era. It is no longer enough to communicate through [local] journalists. We need to be aware of disinformation narratives around the issues that we are trying to make progress on, and to offer a different narrative, a narrative based on facts," she added.
To succeed, Ms Fleming says, the UN needs more collaboration from social media platforms, including X.
"We have been crying out for years, in calling on the platforms to increase their presence in countries in conflict, in countries that are unstable, [to] have people who understand the language so that they can actually monitor what's going on in their platforms and train their algorithms accordingly, because it is causing real-world harm," Ms Fleming said.
"Everyone is connected. Everyone has access to different channels of information, so these rumours spread faster than we frankly have the capacity to respond," said Kandice Ardiel, spokesperson for UNIFIL.
"Before, a rumour might take a few hours or days to get around. Now, it's instant."
