The Peacekeeping mission in Lebanon
On the ‘Muddle East’ scene, the latest news is that a multinational force is being deployed in the south of Lebanon under the insignia of the United Nations and the terms of UNSC resolution 1701 [1]. The weeks leading to the launch of UNIFIL 2 – named after the UNIFIL mission of 1978 - were characterised by reservations concerning the mandate of mission, considered ambiguous, and by a diffuse misreading of the role of peacekeepers.
The mandate
As for the alleged volatility of the mission’s mandate, UNSC 1701 asks
in substance to UNIFIL 2 to provide the security conditions necessary to ensure
a transaction to normality following the July/August 2006 crisis. In details
par.11 of UN Resolution 1701 states that the mission will ‘(a) monitor
the cessation of hostilities; (b) accompany and support the Lebanese armed forces
as they deploy throughout the South [in coordination with the governments of
Lebanon and Israel], (c) extend its assistance to help ensure humanitarian access
to civilian populations and the voluntary and safe return of displaced persons,
(d) assist the Lebanese armed forces in taking steps towards the establishment
of the area between the Blue Line and the Litani river free of any armed personnel,
assets and weapons other than those of the Government of Lebanon and of UNIFIL;
(e) assist the Government of Lebanon, at its request, to secure its borders
and other entry points to prevent the entry in Lebanon without its consent of
arms or related materiel[2]. To discharge its duties, furthermore, UNIFIL is
authorised ‘to take all necessary action in areas of deployment of its
forces’ and also ‘to protect [Lebanese] civilians under imminent
threat of physical violence’. This last sentence, in particular, seems
to give wide discretion to the PKs, which will be, in principle, able to use
the force against whomever threatens the civilian population, be it black or
white. Overall, therefore, and although some ambiguities remain in the wording,
the mandate of the resolution is altogether clear: security and control of the
territory, interposition, and support to the Lebanese government in the pursuit
of disarmament[3].
About Peacekeeping
Beyond the content of the mandate, the reservations on the peacekeeping mission in Lebanon appeared to stem from a common misreading of what a peacekeeping mission actually is, and what results can be reasonably expected from it and which not. The term ‘peacekeeping’ refers to a situation in which the warring parties halt the fighting and agree on the intervention of a neutral third party acting as force of interposition[4]. The peacekeepers’ role is limited to making sure that de minimis conditions – in primis a halt to hostilities – are kept and that the situation does not go back to square one[5]. However, once the peacekeeping mission is deployed, it is up to the diplomacy, and to the parties involved in the conflict, to address the root causes of the conflict and to work out a durable settlement of it.
Past experience
Past experience tells us that, on one hand, the success or the failure of peacekeeping missions largely depends on the restraint put on politics to interfere with the fulfilment of the peacekeeping mandate; on the other hand, the attainment of a conflict’s solution is very much dependent on the ability of politics to follow up to the peacekeeping mission with appropriate political solutions. Out of 60 missions carried out since 1948 to date, recalls Prof. Rufini, Course Coordinator at the Institute for International Politics Studies in "La Sapienza" University in Rome and the Bocconi University in Milan, failures have been less than ten. Among them, in Somalia in 1993, the United States, ignoring the terms of the UNSC mandate, turned the peacekeeping intervention into a full scale conflict, becoming part of it; in Rwanda in 1994, France and United States held back the action of General Dellaire’s troops which could have prevented the genocide; in Yugoslavia in 1995, it was the veto of Russia which rendered UN troops impotent to protect with the use of force the life of civilians. Instead, when peacekeepers could work according to the guidelines of the mandate, they proved quite effective[6]. If, afterwards, hostilities broke out again, this was due to the incapacity of diplomacy and politics to work out sustainable political solutions to the crisis.
Unapplied provisions of the UN Charter
Eventually, it is worth noting that there is an entire chapter of the UN Charter which provides that the UN shall have its own army and a Military Staff Committee to command it[7]. It has never been put into practice. Instead, when an international consensus is reached about organising a mission, the Secretary General must beg for troops around the world, make them up in a puzzle, seal it and deliver it. Once the packaging is complete, the peacekeeping troops and the UN Secretary General remain subject, notwithstanding the Brahimi reform which rendered the decision making process smoother, to the vetoes of the UN Security Council’s permanent members, who can influence at will the conduct of the mission .
[1] http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs//2006/sc8808.doc.htm The resolution calls for ‘the immediate cessation by Hizbollah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations’ A consensus was reached among the permanent members of the UN Security Council to give mandate to ‘up to 15,000 United Nations peacekeepers [to] help[ing] Lebanese troops take control of the area […] between the United Nations-drawn Blue Line in southern Lebanon and the Litani River (12 miles from the Israeli border)’
[2] UNSC resolution 1701, par. 11.
[3] A map of UNIFIL deployment as of July 2006 can be found at http://www.un.org/Depts/Cartographic/map/dpko/unifil.pdf;
see also UNIFIL - UN official mandate at http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/unifil/mandate.html
[4] Peace enforcement instead entails the international community’s initiative
to forcefully bring a conflict to an end. Peace enforcement missions were launched
by the UN only two times, in Korea (1950) and in the Gulf War (1991).
[5] Welcoming the resolution ahead of the Council’s adoption Kofi Annan,
United Nations Secretary-General said he was greatly relieved that it provided
for a full and immediate cessation of all hostilities. “It is absolutely
vital that the fighting now stop”, he said, adding: “Provided it
does, I believe this resolution will make it possible to conclude a sustainable
and lasting ceasefire agreement in the days ahead. And, I hope that this could
be the beginning of a process to solve the underlying political problems in
the region through peaceful means.”
[6] The first success of the peacekeepers dates back to 1956 Suez war, when
the PKs successfully managed to keep peace between Egypt and the UK-France-Israel
alliance; the latest success is recorded in Burundi, in 2004, when the PKs succeeded
in keeping peace in one of the most politically volatile African states.
[7] See articles 43 and 47 Un Charter, http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter/
[8] http://www.un.org/peace/reports/peace_operations/
[9] For an comprehensive analysis and critics, see R.A. Falk, Reflections on
the Gulf War Experience : Force and war in the United Nations System, Juridisk
Tidskrift, 3 (1991).