UNIFIL, the UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, released a
TikTok video to show what a typical day looks like for one of its soldiers.
The answer is...outside marching down the Blue Line, not much.
Of course, this is not entirely fair. Their
regular reports to the UN show that UNIFIL does do lots of things, mostly to support the Lebanese Armed Forces, although they do nothing to help disarm Hezbollah. Every report includes a paragraph like this:
No progress was achieved with regard to the disarmament of armed groups.
Hizbullah continued to acknowledge publicly that it maintained military capabilities.
The maintenance of arms outside the control of the State by Hizbullah and other
groups in violation of resolution 1701 (2006) continued to restrict the State’s ability
to exercise full sovereignty and authority over its territory.
One thing I didn't know is that the Trump administration made some efforts to turn UNIFIL into a more useful organization. The
Congressional Research Service notes:
U.S. Administrations have disagreed over the mission and
size of UNIFIL. Some U.S. officials have described
UNIFIL as a stabilizing presence in southern Lebanon,
stating that Hezbollah strikes across the Blue Line have
significantly decreased since UNSCR 1701 (2006)
increased UNIFIL’s troop ceiling from 2,000 to 15,000. A
former U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon has noted that
“UNIFIL’s value in constraining Hezbollah comes down to
its size. Through sheer numbers, it essentially saturates the
south. Even if it can evade UNIFIL scrutiny at times, as the
tunnels show, Hezbollah does not have the almost complete
freedom of movement in the south that it enjoyed under
‘old’UNIFIL.”
In contrast, the Trump Administration asserted that UNIFIL
“patrols and checkpoints are of plainly limited use when
offending parties can simply hide weapons and tunnel
entrances on so-called ‘private property.’” The United
States and Israel accused Hezbollah of hiding weapons in
violation of UNSCR 1701, and pushed for the addition of
language to UNIFIL’s mandate that would allow UNIFIL to
access and search private property for illicit Hezbollah
weapons. Trump Administration officials criticized the
government of Lebanon for not facilitating UNIFIL access
to key sites, such as the Lebanese origin points of
Hezbollah underground tunnels that cross into Israel.
In response to U.S. pressure, additional provisions were
added to annual resolutions reauthorizing UNIFIL’s
mandate. In 2017, U.S. officials successfully advocated for
language requiring UNIFIL to notify the Security Council
whenever it encountered roadblocks or other obstacles;
these incidents are now noted in regular U.N. Secretary General reports on the implementation of UNSCR 1701. In
2019, the Security Council approved U.S.-proposed
language calling for the Secretary-General to assess the
effectiveness of UNIFIL; the resulting report highlighted
several structural weaknesses. In August 2020 the Security
Council voted to reauthorize UNIFIL but also reduced
UNIFIL’s maximum force strength from 15,000 to 13,000
troops. Then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Kelly
Craft stated, “The reduction of the ceiling from 15,000
troops to 13,000 is an important step toward right-sizing a
mission that has for years been over-resourced given the
limits on its freedom of movement and access.”
Hezbollah, meanwhile, boasts of over 100,000 missiles, many of them high-precision, and UNIFIL cannot or will not do anything about those.
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Friday, July 21, 2023
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