Boston Globe article on Peace Keeping in Southern Lebanon

[elsid13]

Thought this was great article.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/mid...ecries_limits/

Peace force in Lebanon decries limits
UN troops call for strength and greater authority
By Thanassis Cambanis, Globe Staff | July 28, 2006

NAQOURA, Lebanon -- A volley of outgoing Katyusha rockets zipped from the hilltop above the gate of the United Nations peacekeepers' compound here yesterday late in the afternoon.

``That's Hezbollah, firing from a position 300 meters away," Colonel Jacques Colleville said, pointing up the hill. ``Now the Israelis will retaliate."

Ear-shattering explosions soon followed as the Israelis replied by shelling the Hezbollah position. Smoke, dust, and fire rose from the hilltop.

Israel and the United States have been adamant that a robust international military force should take on the role of peacekeeper in south Lebanon when the bloody two-week-old war between Israel and the Islamist militia in southern Lebanon ends. None of the proposals yet addresses the number or origin of troops or the authority the peacekeepers would have. But any future force will have to contend with many of the same problems that crippled the existing United Nations mission, including Hezbollah's power as a popular guerrilla movement, the weakness of Lebanon's central government, and the limited mandate that has prevented peacekeepers from using force.

Colleville, who is French, said the UN troops have been largely powerless to stop Hezbollah from launching rockets right beside UN positions or to intervene when the Israeli military bombs civilians when attacking what it says are Hezbollah targets.

Asked whether UNIFIL could have helped disarm Hezbollah, Colleville laughed.

``How would I disarm them?" he said. ``With my telephone?"

United Nations forces in southern Lebanon, known by the acronym UNIFIL, have been responsible for keeping the peace in southern Lebanon since 1978. Largely ignored, they have been witnesses to frequent periods of violent conflict, climaxing with the war that has reduced much of the south to rubble in the last two weeks.

UNIFIL has been largely ineffectual, according to Colleville and his commander, General Alain Pellegrini -- powerless to rein in Hezbollah, unable to persuade the Lebanese government to establish authority in the south, and dependent on Israeli military permission to move around in the border region, even on the Lebanese side.

About 2,000 UNIFIL troops operate in Lebanon, roughly 300 of them in the seaside base at Naqoura. The UN compound stretches along the waterfront in a narrow ribbon, just past a small Mediterranean fishing harbor. It is carefully walled off from the road by concrete blast barriers.

A half-mile away, the village of Naqoura stretches up the hillside, between a ridge used by Hezbollah and a higher hill across the border in Israel.

The French and Ghanaian troops based here have barracks facing the water, next to three tennis courts and a helicopter landing pad. When the Israelis give UNIFIL permission, the blue-helmeted soldiers in white armored personnel carriers escort convoys of refugees.

Pellegrini said a future multinational force in southern Lebanon would have to have the muscle to stop belligerents, for example finding and stopping Hezbollah units like the one that started firing from in front of the UN compound in Naqoura yesterday afternoon.

``We have to be well-beefed and able to enforce some international decision," Pellegrini said. ``Heavy weapons and strong rules of engagement."

More important , the international force would need approval from Hezbollah's followers, or else it would face the same kind of punishing guerrilla resistance that hounded Israel's occupation from 1982 to 2000, UNIFIL's political affairs officer Ryszard Morczynski said. And he said it should be a UN force, not under some other command such as NATO, as one proposal calls for.

``If it's not a UN force, the population won't accept it," he said. ``The population must accept it, or at least tolerate it."

Morczynski, who is from Poland, said proposals to dispatch a ``coalition of the willing," rather than a UN force, to disarm Hezbollah and keep the peace in southern Lebanon, could touch off the kind of spiraling insurgent warfare the United States faces in Iraq -- without ever curtailing the power of Hezbollah.

He added that the goal should be to control Hezbollah, not disarm it, which he said would be all but impossible. ``If you flatten the country and make it a parking lot, then you will disarm Hezbollah," he said.

The current UN force is hamstrung by its own mandate, which allows it to use force only in self-defense, Pellegrini said. But it also foundered on the internal dynamics of Lebanon.

After Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000, Pellegrini said, the Lebanese government never established authority, even fearing to deploy the national army in Hezbollah's sphere of influence.

``Hezbollah was too independent in this region and too out of control from the Lebanese authorities," Pellegrini told several Western reporters who traveled to the UN base in Naqoura. He has commanded UNIFIL since February 2004.

After the exchange of rocket and artillery fire outside the base, Israeli jets flew overhead. The sound of air raid sirens wailing just south of the border in the Israeli city of Naharia blended in with the general alarm on the UN's seaside base.

The UN peacekeepers have had to contend with a lot of popular anger and suspicion in southern Lebanon. Over the years it has appeared powerless in the face of Israel's overwhelming force.

Israel bombed another UN post on Tuesday night, killing four international observers from another UN mission known as UNTSOR, the UN Truce Support Organization, which dates back to 1948 and will continue to operate if and when UNIFIL shuts down, observing cease-fire violations over the green line. Israel said it hit the UN observation post accidentally, although UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said it appeared intentional.

Israeli shells also have twice fallen on this seaside base just a mile north of the Israeli border.

During this new war, the UN has on occasion turned away refugees who appealed for refuge on the bases. But the UN evacuated by boat hundreds of refugees who stormed the Naqoura compound on Wednesday night.

``There is bombardment and people are starving, but the UN and the other international groups did nothing to help us. Only the International Red Cross did anything for us," Walid al-Haj said .

There's no solid blueprint for a future international force that could avoid the pitfalls faced by UNIFIL and by the French and American forces that withdrew after deadly attacks in 1983 .

UNIFIL's mandate expires at the end of this month, and Annan has proposed extending its term until a new force can arrive.

Colleville's attempt to negotiate with Israel over a refugee convoy revealed the kind of juggling he has done in two years as chief UNIFIL liaison officer. He called the Israeli military's liaison officer on a direct line to the Israeli military liaison officer and to a Lebanese Army officer who in turn passes messages to Hezbollah.

After hours of waiting, Israel didn't give clearance to a convoy of seven UN buses that had come to Naqoura to take hundreds of refugees north, leaving them stranded for another night in between Hezbollah and Israel's front lines. Meanwhile Hezbollah continued firing from positions in the town.

``What is frustrating is having no means to control what they do," Colleville said. ``We cannot make the two sides negotiate because we have nothing, nothing to give."

Farah Stockman of the Globe staff reported from Washington.

[Rohirrim]

It really is time to fold up the UN and stick it in the history books as a failed experiment.

[defenseman]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

It really is time to fold up the UN and stick it in the history books as a failed experiment.

Agreed...they are a paper tiger...dman

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Ahead of New Confirmation Hearings, UN Ambassador Bolton Blocks Measure Condemning Lethal Israeli Attack on UN

US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton has blocked a Security Council resolution condemning Israel's killing of four UN observers in Lebanon. UN commanders say that Israel ignored 10 calls to stop attacking the UN base. Meanwhile, the Senate holds confirmation hearings for Bolton today.

http://www.democracynow.org/article..../07/27/1423241

[TailgateNut]

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

Ahead of New Confirmation Hearings, UN Ambassador Bolton Blocks Measure Condemning Lethal Israeli Attack on UN

US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton has blocked a Security Council resolution condemning Israel's killing of four UN observers in Lebanon. UN commanders say that Israel ignored 10 calls to stop attacking the UN base. Meanwhile, the Senate holds confirmation hearings for Bolton today.

http://www.democracynow.org/article..../07/27/1423241

A song comes to mind: "Just a good ol' boy,......"

[fdf]

Originally Posted by defenseman

Agreed...they are a paper tiger...dman

An international force is either ineffective or a disaster in southern lebanan. UNFIL was ineffective. All it did was sit around. In fact, it has become a tactical asset for terrorists, who fire missles from near the UN positions, hoping that Israel will shoot back and kill some UN observers.

A force that actually tries to disarm Hezbollah will be a disaster. Hezbollah doesn't want to be disarmed. They want to slaughter Jews. They need guns and missles to do that. So they will fight any international force that tries to change the facts on the ground that threatens their "Kill the Jews" mission statement.

Worse, because it would be 'international', the ROE will be stacked heavily against the guys wearing the boots--the more 'international' stuff gets, the less they let the soldiers defend themselves.

And even worse, some of the members of the international force (eg France and China) will want to force to fail in its mission of disarming Hezbollah. France and China both have their own agendas in the middle east and they have nothing to do with a stable border between Lebanon and Israel; so there will be intelligence leaks and flat out misinformation that will endanger the troops (there's little doubt the French did this to the coalition forces in Bosnia).

As a result, the force will be sitting ducks for terrorists, just like our marines in the 80's. Inevitably they will become either a western occupation force taking casualties or will withdraw with their tails between their legs.

We should let the Israelis do the hard work. Southern Lebanon is a sewer that needs cleaning out. We have a friend that has a good reason to clean it out at no cost to us. Why don't we just let them? Heck, I'd even buy the rat poison.

[fdf]

Originally Posted by TailgateNut

A song comes to mind: "Just a good ol' boy,......"

You do know that the UN spin on the four observer's deaths is unraveling, don't you? Initially, the UN claimed there was no Hezbollah activity around the post and that the Israelis were just shelling the post for no reason. The UN of course, begged the Isaelis, according to the spin, to stop. That this spin makes no sense was no matter.

Then the emails from the deceased Canadian observer were released that established Hezbollah was all over the UN post for the week before the UN Observers died, firing rockets on the Israelis from right by the UN post. The Israelis were shelling that area in response to rocket attacks from Hezbollah from right by the UN post.

So yesterday, the UN started to admit that maybe Hezbollah had a lot of activity around the post and that the Israeli shelling was in response to that activity. International Law is quite clear that the existence of the UN observers does not prohibit the Israelis from shelling in response to missle attacks.

So that means that Annan was either lying about requesting that Israel stop shelling or it means the UN knew the shelling was occurring and WHY. So, for God's sake, why did they leave these four guys in harms way? One possible explanation is that the UN was looking to give Hezbollah a PR victory that would force a cease fire and save Hezbollah as a fighting force and so it left the observers there to die. Or, it could just be criminal incompetance. Whatever, their blood is on the UN commander and Kofi Annan's hands.

My conclusion is that any condemnation resolution should condem: (1) Hezbollah for using UN observers as human shields; and (2) Kofi Annan for not withdrawing the observers when the UN had to have known their guys were being used as human shields and that the Israelis were shelling anyway.

[elsid13]

I know a lot folks have been very "sarcastic" about the use of precision weapons and killing of UN monitors and civilian. But folks need to realize that the 155 Artillery Shells are smart weapons. They are area weapons and not precise at all.

So if Hezbollah was firing rockets near the UN post, and IDF replied with Artillery strikes from 155's it very like that entire area was hit, and blue on blue fire occurred.

[defenseman]

Kofi Annan is a thief and a UN peacekeeper killer it appears. Hang the Son of a b****. He needs to muster up with Hezbollah and take his own medicine..dman

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by fdf

You do know that the UN spin on the four observer's deaths is unraveling, don't you? Initially, the UN claimed there was no Hezbollah activity around the post and that the Israelis were just shelling the post for no reason. The UN of course, begged the Isaelis, according to the spin, to stop. That this spin makes no sense was no matter.

Is this what Rehab Rush is saying?

[Spider]

I just think it is funny , these same people that Bash the un , havent seen our track record ....

[Spider]

The rest of these guys I understand , but Dman should know better ......

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by §Pide®

I just think it is funny , these same people that Bash the un , havent seen our track record ....

And the same people who argue that the UN is irrelevant have no reservations about citing the authority of the UN and its resolutions when it's convenient, i.e., when they are trying to defend Operation Iraqi Handjob.

[Spider]

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

And the same people who argue that the UN is irrelevant have no reservations about citing the authority of the UN and its resolutions when it's convenient, i.e., when they are trying to defend Operation Iraqi Handjob.

you remeber that also .......

[elsid13]

While I don't think the UN is irrelevant. It peace keeping operations need to be reexamined and mostly likely strengthening. If world wants to continue to use peace keepers, it needs to establish a permanent paramilitary force capable of protecting itself, local populations and enforcing basic police work were it is deployed vs the ad hoc nature of what we are doing now.

No I not calling US to lay down it arms and submit to UN W*GS.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by TailgateNut

A song comes to mind: "Just a good ol' boy,......"

Yep.