Time to Re-think Peacekeeping

In light of the current situation in Lebanon, I have begun to wonder about the effectiveness of the United Nations and, more precisely, peacekeeping. Have they, in fact, made things better or worse?

The Middle East is probably one of the most watched places on the earth. The first UN peacekeeping force deployed to Israel in 1948. Its mandate was to monitor the ceasefire between Israel and the surrounding countries of Syria, Egypt, Jordan and Iraq. It is there to this day.

Another peacekeeping force was put in place in 1974 to separate Israel and Syria on the Golan Heights and another into Lebanon in 1978 to monitor the Israeli withdrawal. Both missions are ongoing.

With all the peacekeepers in an area about the size of Prince Edward Island, you would think Israel would be one of the safest places on earth yet, as we have seen, this could not be further from the truth.

One can argue, rightly so, that the intervention of peacekeeping forces put an end to those particular conflicts and, on the surface, that would be true. Unfortunately, UN intervention does not seem to put an end to the war.

And therein lies the problem.

Instead of putting an end to the war, direct hostilities are simply put on hold. Using the UN as a shield, adversaries continue to skirmish and lob rockets at each other. Some countries sponsor guerrilla groups to continue the war underground and many more people continue to die.

As we have also seen in the Balkans and Lebanon, groups who are not answerable to the UN use UN observers as human shields. In Lebanon, Hezbollah guerrillas frequently set up rocket launchers near UN observation posts using their proximity to UN personnel as protection. In Bosnia, UN safe havens were used to stage strikes against the enemy.

In fact, one could argue peacekeeping is responsible for thousands more deaths than if the UN had not intervened.

In Lebanon, all of the deaths in this current crisis are directly attributable to the UN. If peacekeepers had not intervened in years past, the war would have been finished one way or another and the current war would not have happened. Add those deaths to the thousands that have happened in the region since 1978 and you have to wonder if it was truly worth it.

In fact, the history of UN involvement in conflict is not exactly stellar. The UN has been in Cypress since 1964 with no resolution, the Kashmir region since 1949, Georgia since 1993 and the Western Sahara since 1991. Of course we know about the really spectacular failures of Bosnia, Somalia and, especially, Rwanda.

Perhaps it is time to rethink the idea of a UN brokered ceasefire. We need to look to finding solutions to the actual war not just the momentary conflict. And we need strict enforcement of these solutions.

We definitely need to fix this situation before "peacekeeping" causes more innocent deaths.