Caught in the Crossfire: UNIFIL Shoots Back

“That’s why it’s there, to be a punching bag.” -Timur Goksel, former political chief of UNIFIL, the UN’s peacekeeping mission in South Lebanon.

It has been a brutal few weeks for the people of UNIFIL. Ever since the July 14th explosion of a secret Hezbollah arms cache, some ten miles from the Israeli border, UNIFIL has become the target, directly or indirectly, of attacks from just about everyone with an interest in the region. Israel, who has long complained that the force was compromised by its relations with Hezbollah, now voiced frustration that its commander, Major General Claudio Graziano, met with Hezbollah officials in the wake of the explosion. Hezbollah alleged that UNIFIL’s investigation was violating its own rules of engagement The British Foreign Office Minister visited the South and expressed concern that Hezbollah was rearming itself unabated, as did various Americans, with the American Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, Alejandro Wolff suggesting that Hezbollah had been “removing evidence” from the scene, and implying (or at least I’m told this was part of the message) that if this were true, it must have happened under the noses of a contingent of French UNIFIL troops. (Not all the attacks were merely verbal, either: a few days after the explosion, a team of UNIFIL members sent in to investigate were pummeled with stones by villagers in a Hezbollah-controlled town; 14 investigators were hurt, one – a paramedic who took a rock to the face — seriously.)

UNIFIL is normally disinclined to engage in rhetorical battles over its mission, but, in conversations with a handful of UN and diplomatic defenders of the force, I encountered a general sense that UNIFIL feels like the critics have lately gone too far. (Timur Goksel is one of the most outspoken of the bunch. In private, UN officials will warn you about Goksel – he’s not privy to all the information he once was – but, in the same breath, give thanks for his ability to speak frankly on their behalf.)

“UNIFIL is very often a scapegoat,” Milos Strugar, UNIFIL’s current political chief told me bluntly, when we met last week. “We have been criticized many times over the past three years. If you cannot earn praise from both sides – which has happened, by the way – then at least if they are both criticizing you at the same time, you must be doing something right.”

The context for all of this, of course, is UNIFIL’s pending re-authorization by the UN Security Council. The force’s mandate, Resolution 1701 — which currently specifies that UNIFIL “assist” and “support” the Lebanese army’s efforts to secure the South, and permits it to maintain checkpoints to search for illicit weapons, but not to conduct house to house searches, or act unilaterally — has to be re-approved by the end of August.

The big question for the moment is whether Israel or the United States will demand that UNIFIL’s rules of engagement be expanded. Israel has been threatening to do this for some time, and the Americans implied, less convincingly, that they are taking it under consideration. This would presumably allow for more aggressive efforts by joint forces to seek out and seize unlawful Hezbollah weapons; it would also, presumably, bring UNIFIL peacekeepers into direct conflict with Hezbollah and, ultimately, make its mission virtually impossible. (“What are the UN troops going to do,” Goksel said of a hypothetical expanded mandate. “Use force to implement this?”)

There has been a rash of articles recently about Israeli concerns of a Hezbollah weapons build-up, and some of them have linked this allegation to a sense that UNIFIL was failing on the job. But Strugar told me that this was an unfair way to measure UNIFIL’s success. “The fact is that since 2006 until now you don’t have a single civilian casualty, except from mine clearing. You didn’t have exchanges of fire between Lebanon and Israel except for one incident [from early 2008]. There has been no exchanges of fire between the Lebanese Army and Hezbollah, there are no Hezbollah military bases. The blue line is generally respected. There are tripartite meetings on a regular basis. There is an exchange of information in real time. And there are twelve thousand troops on the ground, so everybody has a vested interest in the region. Now there have been some ground violations, like the Lebanese civilians who crossed over, and there have been Israeli airspace violations. But to clear this area of weapons is a long term mission. How do you prove a negative? I can tell you today that there are no weapons in the South, but tomorrow, there might be some.” (Strugar did say that the explosion of the arms cache last month was a “serious, gross violation” of 1701.)

The thinking within UNIFIL, as I was told by several people, is that the mission’s mandate will be re-authorized without any alterations to the rules of engagement. One UNIFIL official claimed that as of two weeks ago, Israeli officials had already privately begun to drop their demands for enhanced operations. This official also pointed out that, all protestations aside, Israel actually has little real incentive to see the force rendered obsolete, and that Israeli officials had initially praised Resolution 1701 as a positive outcome from the 2006 war. Another UN official said that in private discussions the Israelis have made it clear that they understand and support UNIFIL’s mission. (The real danger, I’m told, comes next year, when UN officials expect the Italian, French, and Spanish contingents to begin reevaluating their roles in UNIFIL, perhaps looking to reduce their troop commitments.)

Meanwhile, perhaps the most sensible remark on UNIFIL’s mandate – a fact not unnoticed by UN officials in Beirut – came from the American Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, who told a House committee at the end of July, that, although the US wishes UNIFIL could do more, “on balance the role that UNIFIL is playing adds value rather than the opposite.”

“Now is the opportunity to change things if they want to,” Milos Strugar said. “We’ll see what they decide. I think it will be probably extended without change.”

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