El Gaviero

Michael Dwyer, the Irishman killed in Santa Cruz earlier this month–and who appears to be guilty of conspiring (at the least) to kill a Bolivia’s president–has been portrayed in the foreign press as a misguided young man who fell under the spell of Hungarian-Bolivian-Croatian head henchman (and all-around nasty war junkie and alleged murderer) Eduardo Rózsa Flores. Earlier reports regarding Dwyer had mistakenly placed him as a player in the Balkans conflict in the 90s–an impossibility, as Dwyer was only 24 when he died. But there could still be links between Dwyer and Croatia, as he was an employee of Integrated Risk Management, an Irish security firm (which lists Shell Oil as a client). Perhaps I’m grasping at straws, but according to Stormfront, the white-supremist website, there were quite a few Irish volunteers in the Balkan conflict, some with stories that are eerily similar to Dwyer’s. (Dwyer told his friend and family that he was going to Bolivia for a security “training course.”)

In a tradition that goes back hundreds of years to the “Wild Geese” and beyond and like many hundreds of thousands of Irish men before who fought and died on many Foreign battle fields “for freedoms sake”. Irish men heard the distant drum of battle and took up arms for a free Croatia. As with other Nationalities the figures for Irish men who took part in the war is not known but a number of casualties appeared in the Newspapers. One young man injured in battle told his parents he was going to work in Euro Disney in Paris; he rang them from his Hospital bed to tell them he was in Croatia.

Another headline read, “Croatia fighter loses legs”. Paul Ahern (23) from County Cork lost both legs in a landmine explosion fighting in Bosnia. His father said “He was just sorry for the Croatian people and what they were going through”.

Irish Newspapers carried reports of a 22 year old Dubliner, Ivan Farina, He lost an eye in another landmine explosion while on an operation with HOS in Croatian occupied Bosnia. He spent several weeks in a coma in Hospital before his family evacuated him to Dublin.
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Shane McCormic from Athlone in County Westmeath was a former French Foreign Legionnaire, who became involved in the war through a Croatian friend who was also a Legionnaire. Shane fought with HOS and offered fierce resistance to the Serbian invasion of Eastern Croatia in the winter of 1991 and 1992. He was enthusiastic about his work which involved killing Chetniks. He gave an interview while sitting in a Zagreb restaurant, looking out at the rain. He was quoted as saying “Great weather for fighting, when its raining like this you get a bunch of Chatniks huddled in a bunker, you lob in a grenade and bang, all out in one go”.

These men are not the only Irish men who became involved in the carnage of war in the former Yugoslavia. Remember all Foreign Volunteers Irish or otherwise who fought and died for the Freedom of Croatia.

I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch of the imagination to think that some of these Irish Balkan warriers came back home and worked in security, perhaps with Integrated Risk Management, where Dwyer might have come into contact with them, and, eventually, was passed on to Flores for his Bolivian operation. But this is just speculation at this point.