The Syrian darkness had teeth.

The Night Fiji's Peacekeepers Held the Line at Checkpoint 52

When 45 Soldiers Refused to Surrender Their Weapons to al-Nusra

Forty-five Fijian peacekeepers endured a 72-hour siege by al-Nusra fighters rather than surrender their weapons.

The Syrian darkness had teeth. At 0200 hours on October 10, 2014, mortar rounds began walking toward the UN observation post on the Golan Heights, each explosion closer than the last. Inside Checkpoint 52, forty-five Fijian peacekeepers of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) checked their ammunition and said quiet prayers.

For two weeks, al-Nusra Front fighters had been tightening their grip on the demilitarized zone separating Syria from Israeli-occupied territory. They had already captured Filipino peacekeepers at another position, parading the humiliated soldiers before cameras. Now they wanted the Fijians' weapons—and the propaganda victory that would come with another surrender.

Major Mosese Tikoitoga's orders crackled through the radio from UNDOF headquarters: hold position. No surrender. The Fijians, many of them veterans of previous peacekeeping missions in Iraq and Lebanon, understood what this meant. They were outnumbered, outgunned, and surrounded by fighters hardened in Syria's brutal civil war.

What al-Nusra didn't understand was Fijian military culture. These were soldiers from a nation of 900,000 people that had contributed more peacekeepers pe…

💡 Fiji has lost more peacekeepers in UN operations than any other Pacific nation, yet continues to deploy soldiers at a rate that makes it one of the world's largest per-capita contributors to UN missions.