Israeli Pullout From Lebanon Bodes Ill for U.N. Peacekeeping Force

For 22 tumultuous years, through invasion, occupation and guerrilla warfare, the U.N. force in southern Lebanon has tried to keep whatever peace has existed here.

Now that task, which already has claimed the lives of 234 of the blue-bereted soldiers, is becoming still more complex and perilous as Israel ends its long occupation of the region.

“There’s no question,” Irish peacekeeper John Mooney said recently from atop an armored personnel carrier lurching down a narrow road near this village. “It’ll get worse around here before it gets better.”

That sentiment is echoed by his commanders, as well as by many Israelis and Lebanese. Already, as Israel leaves its more distant outposts in Lebanon in the first phase of the withdrawal, Iranian-funded Hezbollah guerrillas have sharply stepped up attacks on the troops and their militia allies.

The guerrillas lately have launched as many as 13 attacks a day, according to U.N. officials--about double the level of recent months.

The United Nations has welcomed the announcement that Israel will withdraw by July 7 from its self-declared “security zone” in southern Lebanon, a 9-mile-deep strip of territory along the border between the two countries.

The decision marks the Jewish state’s belated acceptance of U.N. Security Council Resolution 425, adopted soon after Israel’s 1978 invasion of Lebanon, under which the newly created U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL, was to confirm Israel’s withdrawal and restore peace to the area.

But Israel’s long-awaited departure, and the shattering of the status quo, may now usher in a period of even greater instability in southern Lebanon--and uncertainty for the U.N. force. Will the lightly armed peacekeepers finally be able to fulfill their mission? Or will they be caught in the middle of a post-withdrawal struggle that could spiral into a wider conflict involving Syria, the main power broker in Lebanon?

Such questions, which come even as hundreds of U.N. peacekeepers are held hostage in Sierra Leone, are important not just for the credibility of future peacekeeping missions, but also for the chances of restoring stability to this troubled region.

But the answers are not yet clear as all players in southern Lebanon maneuver for position in the waning weeks of Israel’s occupation.

Hezbollah, which views the Israeli pullout as a victory, has promised to hit the withdrawing troops harder than ever in the weeks to come, determined to show that, although Israel is leaving southern Lebanon, it is leaving bloodied and humiliated. The militant Islamic group, an increasingly powerful political force in Lebanon, has sent contradictory signals about whether it will lay down its arms after the withdrawal.

The South Lebanon Army, meanwhile, the militia that Israel funds and trains, is growing increasingly anxious and, in some cases, angry about the impending withdrawal. With just weeks remaining before the pullout, the SLA’s future and the fate of its 2,500 fighters remain uncertain.

The jittery militia members lately have begun to return fire on SLA positions with indiscriminate shelling and shooting that has threatened nearby villages and peacekeepers alike, according to U.N. officials.

If SLA fighters “come under attack . . . they open fire in almost every direction,” said Commandant Joe McDonagh of the Irish Battalion, a 536-man contingent of the 4,500-member U.N. force. “They hear something in the night and just open up.”

The number of recent firings at or close to U.N. positions has jumped as well--from six times in March to 33 times last month.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, whose promise to withdraw from southern Lebanon within a year figured prominently in his successful 1999 election campaign, had hoped to do so in the context of a regional peace treaty with Syria. When those talks broke down earlier this year, Barak stuck to his pledge to pull the troops out even without a deal, a far riskier proposition.

Now there are concerns that Syria, angered at being unable to regain the occupied Golan Heights as part of a comprehensive agreement with Israel, will allow Hezbollah, the rival guerrilla group Amal or various Palestinian and Lebanese groups to launch cross-border attacks against Israel. Such attacks could prompt massive retaliation by Israel.

And fearful of further angering Syria by appearing to assist Israel’s withdrawal, the Lebanese government has hinted that its army will not move south to fill any power vacuum left by the departing Israelis, despite requests that it do so. That will leave UNIFIL as the only real force in the area, more vulnerable than ever.

U.N. officials say the current peacekeeping force will need to be increased to about 7,000, the limit under its current mandate. That will include enough soldiers to patrol an expanded area, provide services to a larger portion of the population, clear minefields and destroy other munitions along the border.

After weeks of mixed signals and vague statements, Lebanon and Syria recently endorsed the enhanced role for the U.N. troops. Ironically, so did Israel, whose tank columns rolled right through the UNIFIL area when it invaded Lebanon again in 1982 and has a frequently tense relationship with the U.N. troops today.

Asked how Israel could suddenly start trusting the U.N. after regarding it with suspicion for many years, a senior government official in Jerusalem said Israel is counting on the United States and France to back up the peacekeepers. Israel and Lebanon also will rely on the U.N. to certify that the withdrawal is complete.

“Firstly, we trust ourselves,” the official said. “No one else will defend our interests. We will use all our means to defend all our citizens. But there is a role for the U.N.”

All too often, the peacekeepers, who patrol a 330-square-mile area, have found themselves caught in the middle of warring factions and armies.

As Mooney and his company set out on patrol, for example, Hezbollah mortars crashed near an SLA post on a hillside just to the south. Earlier in the day, mortar fire had killed one SLA soldier and injured another in Rashaf, a village just outside the Irish-patrolled area. Retaliatory Israeli airstrikes followed by midafternoon.

All fairly routine, U.N. officials said of the day’s violence.

Riding in a convoy of vehicles patrolling the eastern section of “IrishBatt,” Mooney, 36, kept his arm across the machine gun mounted on his white armored personnel carrier as it traveled up rugged hills, past olive groves and through streets lined with posters of Hezbollah fighters killed in attacks against Israel or its allies.

Just beginning his seventh six-month tour with UNIFIL, Mooney said he had no doubt about the shape of things to come.

“When the Israelis pull out, the [SLA] will be on its own and the Hezbollah will be right down on the Israeli border,” he said. “It’s going to be very difficult.”