Mission impossible in
Lebanon By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
The United Nations faces a perilous road
ahead as it tries to muster sufficient forces to
dispatch to Lebanon to turn the fragile ceasefire
into a lasting peace. This is a dangerous mission
rife with potential setbacks both for both Middle
East peace as well as the UN itself, which lacks
the right resources and even the right mandate for
its would-be peacekeepers in south Lebanon.
Already, contrasting interpretations
regarding the scope of action by the now-enhanced
UNIFIL (UN Interim Force in Lebanon) can be heard
aplenty. Thus, whereas President George W Bush
stated on Tuesday that "UNIFIL would be used to
seal off the Syrian border", the head of the UN's
Peacekeeping Office, Jean-Marie Guehenno, has
explicitly rebuffed Bush by insisting that per
the
provisions of UN Resolution 1701, sealing those
borders "is not something that the UN can do".
As for the more contentious issue of
Hezbollah's disarmament, UN Secretary General Kofi
Annan bluntly told an Israeli audience, in an
interview with Israeli television on Tuesday, that
this was not UNIFIL's mandate, thus raising the
ire of many Israeli politicians who have rushed to
criticize him as being biased against Israel.
Yet in fairness to Annan, Resolution 1701
is invoked under Chapter VI rather than Chapter
VII, which means the more "robust" UNIFIL force -
of up to 15,000 troops, although a more realistic
figure in the near term is about 4,000 - will
continue to act as they have been since they first
set foot in Lebanon in 1978, not as "peace
enforcers" but rather as traditional peacekeepers.
Thus unless there is a Security Council
revision of the underlying modus operandi
for the new UNIFIL, requiring a subsequent
resolution as implicitly called for by UNIFIL's
head of operation, Major-General Alain Pellegrini,
it is fairly certain that the Israeli expectation
of UNIFIL somehow forcing Hezbollah to lay down
its arms will not materialize.
UNIFIL's
role, old and new In a word, UNIFIL is
today overloaded with new and additional
responsibilities while, as mentioned, underloaded
with the proper legal mandate. The Security
Council has thus set it up for inflated and
unrealistic expectations, and perhaps even another
UN debacle down the road.
Yet somehow -
and this goes to the heart of a certain cognitive
dissonance respecting the Security Council -
UNIFIL has been implicitly if not explicitly asked
to achieve more than what it is authorized to do.
To elaborate, UNIFIL is still expected to
fulfill its original mandate of Resolution 425
(1978), ie, to "confirm the withdrawal of Israeli
forces from southern Lebanon; restore
international peace and security; and assist the
government of Lebanon in ensuring the return of
its effective authority in the area".
After receiving punishing blows by Israel,
which added to its previous verbal abuse of UNIFIL
workers as "useless pensioners" by striking a
UNIFIL observation post and killing four, the
interim force is now poised to play a more
effective role by a combination of enhanced force
deployment and expanded responsibilities. Above
all, it will assist the Lebanese armed forces to
take control of the south and to "ensure that its
area of operations is not utilized for hostile
activities of any kind" and to "resist attempts by
forceful means" to prevent it from discharging its
mandate.
Per Resolution 1701, Annan has
been mandated to take all the "necessary measures"
to make sure that this time UNIFIL can implement
the resolution's rather compounded wish list.
Annan's deputy, Mark Molloch Brown, had advised
the Security Council to opt for a more
"sequential" approach through two or more
resolutions. This was sound advice ignored partly
as a result of the United States' dislike of
Brown's occasional criticisms of US policy and
partly due to the urgency of the crisis. This
culminated in a resolution with many gray areas,
such as with respect to the precise role UNIFIL is
to play in south Lebanon.
As Pellegrini
bluntly put it, his UNIFIL is not yet enabled to
"take strong measures" to enforce Resolution 1701.
For the moment, UNIFIL's more modest role, ie,
monitoring the ceasefire, is proceeding rather
smoothly. One only hopes that this translates into
better Israel-UNIFIL relations in the weeks and
months to come.
Israel in Lebanon:
Temporary or long-term? After insisting
that Israeli armed forces would depart from
Lebanon "within 10 days", the Israeli leadership
is now revising itself, with various political and
military spokesmen postponing the due date to
several weeks and even months.
So don't
expect a full withdrawal any time soon. The Israel
Defense Forces deputy chief of general staff,
Major-General Moshe Kalinsky, has been quoted in
the press as stating unequivocally that the IDF
would "maintain several outposts in Lebanon, even
after the IDF withdraws from the area".
Supposedly, this is partly in reaction to
Hezbollah's announcement that its fighters would
neither disarm nor move to the north of the Litani
River. "Any such withdrawal means the evacuation
of south Lebanon," a senior Hezbollah official,
Hassan Faflollah, told the press. Averting a
political crisis at a time when Hezbollah has
amassed great new political capital as a result of
the 33-day war, the Lebanese government has
reportedly reached an agreement with Hezbollah
whereby the latter will keep its arms.
Should Israel linger in Lebanon, the stage
will be set for more conflict, potentially getting
UNIFIL caught in the middle. Bruised and
humiliated by its military failure to defeat the
Hezbollah, Israel has tough choices to make in the
near future. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni
meets UN officials in New York this week to hammer
out the details of Israel's withdrawal, in
parallel with the deployment of UNIFIL forces
alongside Lebanese troops. The chances are that
Israel may seek a "reversal of fortunes" by
perpetuating its stay in Lebanon, based on
intrinsic military and political calculations.
A crucial issue here is how soon the
international community can muster the additional
forces for UNIFIL, currently at 2,000, called for
by Resolution 1701.
UN's challenge of
mobilizing forces On Thursday, important
decisions were to be made at the UN headquarters
in New York by would-be troop contributors, led by
France. The United States has already announced
that it will not contribute, and this, together
with the paltry US$50 million aid to Lebanon
announced by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,
hardly positions the US in a better seat to deal
with this crisis.
But of course the United
States' pro-Israel biases in effect preclude any
direct peacekeeping role in Lebanon for the
foreseeable future, yet another sign of what is
wrong with Washington's Middle East policy.
By escalating the rhetoric against
"Islamic fascism" and insisting that Lebanon is
another front in the "war on terror", President
George W Bush has actually lessened his country's
capability as a peace mediator. A more prudent
approach would have been to step back from such
caricatures of complex realities and to send
signals indicating the United States' willingness
to engage in dialogue with both Iran and Syria, as
well as Hezbollah, which is an integral part of
the Lebanese political landscape.
This
aside, if the United States' direct contribution
to the post-ceasefire peacekeeping is going to be
minimal, it cannot at the same time expect to play
a leading role in shaping policy there.
Time is of the essence, however, and all
sides agree that the fragile ceasefire cannot wait
for weeks or months before UNIFIL's new muscular
presence is established on the ground in Lebanon.
Reportedly, the UN is busy speeding up the
deployment process by bypassing the usual
procedures.
Yet what seems prudent in the
short run may come to haunt the United Nations,
given the fact that the deployment of a large UN
force is only one aspect of a complex peace
strategy that requires a parallel diplomatic
track, particularly with respect to national
dialogue in Lebanon. A small misstep, and UNIFIL
and Hezbollah may find themselves on a collision
course. In this case, one must expect a sad
repetition of anti-UN acts witnessed in Iraq and
(to a lesser extent) Afghanistan, where the
(mis)perception of the UN as a Western pawn runs
rampant.
Clearly, the UN can ill-afford to
take any actions that could jeopardize its role
and image in the Arab and Muslim worlds, which is
why it is all the more important that UNIFIL
include troops from Muslim countries, such as
Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as other
members of the Organization of Islamic Conference
(OIC). Concerning the latter, its representatives
have reportedly traveled to Beirut to discuss a
meaningful input by the OIC in the peace process.
One of the main challenges of UNIFIL's new
mission in Lebanon is undoubtedly to maintain the
principle of neutrality, which may be imperiled if
Lebanese Shi'ites are disquieted by any
over-presence of Sunni forces in UNIFIL's ranks.
Even Turkey's contribution is somewhat
problematic in light of Turkey's strategic
alliance with Israel. An ideal force structure
should, then, come from the European Union and,
even more so, non-Muslim developing nations that
are members of the Non-Aligned Movement.
Another challenge is due to the fact that
typically the countries contributing to the UN
peacekeeping force handle military planning and,
in this case, a consensus on UNIFIL's top agenda
may not be easily forthcoming. A stumbling block
here is the French government's singular emphasis
on the need to disarm Hezbollah. Either the French
tone down their expectations, or their impending
leading role in peacekeeping in Lebanon will
translate into untimely fissures and tensions,
thereby inviting disaster.
In conclusion,
Resolution 1701's plate is too full, and any
expectation of simultaneous implementation of all
its demands is bound to fizzle. This is because of
the resolution's prioritization of the release of
Israeli prisoners of war over Lebanese detainees
in Israel, and reserving the right to retaliate by
Israel without giving a similar right to Lebanon.
Following a "modest goal" by UNIFIL, as
stated by Guehenno, has its own risk. For one
thing, it could lead to an Israeli refusal to
depart from Lebanon. Rather, what is needed is a
focused UN strategy that operates on political and
military tracks simultaneously, creating a timely
buffer between Israel and Hezbollah forces first
and foremost.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi,
PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New
Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview
Press) and co-author of "Negotiating Iran's
Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs,
Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa
Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear
potential latent", Harvard International Review,
and is author of Iran's Nuclear
Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.
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