By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 25, 2007
I.J. Rikhye, 86, a major general in the Indian army who served as military adviser to United Nations secretaries-general Dag Hammarskjold and U Thant in the 1960s, died May 21 at the University of Virginia Hospital in Charlottesville, near his home. He had respiratory failure.
From 1970 to 1990, he was president of the International Peace Academy, a New York-based organization that promotes the settlement of armed conflicts by training negotiators, diplomats and military personnel in peacekeeping.
Gen. Rikhye (pronounced Rickey) had a distinguished 38-year career in the Indian army. He served with the famed Bengal Lancers during World War II and, starting in the late 1950s, was assigned to U.N. peacekeeping units. He was credited with combining great resolve as a coordinator with physical courage.
Brian E. Urquhart, a former U.N. undersecretary-general, described Gen. Rikhye as "a very good soldier, which most people in the secretariat were not," because they lacked basic knowledge of military procedure.
"He was a very good person to deal with the military in other countries providing the troops," Urquhart said.
Two of Gen. Rikhye's defining roles came in the 1960s, first in the newly independent Congo, where he oversaw a mixed-race peacekeeping force of about 20,000 soldiers, and then in the Gaza Strip.
Gen. Rikhye had served with the United Nations in Gaza after the Suez Canal crisis in the late 1950s and returned in 1966 as the last commander of the U.N. Emergency Force. Egypt, under leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, had withdrawn its consent for the U.N. presence.
Thant then told Gen. Rikhye to end the mission, sending his order in May 1967. Before Gen. Rikhye could complete the task, the Six-Day War was underway in early June. Israeli artillery shelled the U.N. headquarters, killing several Indian peacekeepers. Gen. Rikhye scrambled to reestablish his command in relative safety near the beach in Gaza.
The withdrawal from the Israeli-Egyptian frontier portended a change in peacekeeping, Gen. Rikhye once said. He resigned the next year and became involved, at Thant's urging, with the new International Peace Academy.
Gen. Rikhye became its founding president. He used the job to advocate a peacekeeping curriculum at military academies around the world and to prepare politicians and diplomats for roles in conflict resolution.
He wrote several books about his experiences in peacekeeping, noting in some a skepticism about the United Nations' success rate in persistent conflicts beyond its ability to contain some violence and allow negotiations to continue. At the time of the Gaza withdrawal, he had predicted the start of a "major Middle East war, and I think we'll be sorting it out 50 years from now."
Indar Jit Rikhye was the son of a former medical officer in the British Indian army. He was born July 30, 1920, in Lahore, India (now a city in Pakistan).
He graduated from the Indian Military Academy in 1939 and joined the 6th Duke of Connaught's Own Lancers, known as the Bengal Lancers. During World War II, he advanced rapidly and, by 24, had command of an armored squadron in the Middle East and Italy.
After India gained independence from England, he held various cavalry and armored commands and was on the front lines during the first conflict over the disputed Kashmir territory.
One young lieutenant under his command in 1946 was Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, future president of Pakistan. In his memoir, "Trumpets and Tumults," Gen. Rikhye wrote that he had been impressed with Zia and reversed an earlier recommendation that he not receive a commission in the regular army.
When they next met, in 1982, Gen. Rikhye wrote that he found it ironic and deeply troubling that Zia "had acquired notoriety as a ruthless ruler and military dictator and I had become a peacekeeper."
Promoted to colonel in 1957, Gen. Rikhye led the Indian contingent of the U.N. Emergency Force in Gaza shortly after the Suez Canal crisis. He later was chief of staff of the entire mission and briefly was acting commander before being dispatched to Congo.
After Hammarskjold was killed in a plane crash in 1961, Gen. Rikhye reported to his successor, Thant. He acted as Thant's special adviser during the Cuban missile crisis and oversaw a U.N. mission to Indonesia after the Dutch withdrew from the colony. He also was an observer in the Dominican Republic during a revolt there in 1965.
He once told the reference guide Contemporary Authors: "I am motivated by Gandhi's philosophy for nonviolent social change, Nehru's doctrine of Panch Sheel (non-alignment) and Hammarskjold's advocacy of the role of international organizations in promoting peaceful settlement of disputes and strengthening international systems for the maintenance of peace and security."
By many accounts, Gen. Rikhye was a genial man by military standards and could be generous with the media. Journalist Philip Knightley said that Gen. Rikhye once provided in the midst of the Six-Day War "a military-style briefing but a Punjabi-style breakfast with many eggs and piles of toast." He also was a former chairman of a United Nations symphony.
His marriage to Usha Erry Rikhye ended in divorce.
Survivors include his wife of 33 years, Cynthia de Haan Rikhye of Charlottesville; two sons from the first marriage, Ravi Rikhye of Takoma Park and Bhalinder Rikhye of Manhattan, N.Y.; two brothers; a sister; four grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter.