The UN has announced that France will be leading the UN peacekeeping force that will sit in between the Hezbollah crazies and the Israeli Army crazies along the Lebanese border as brokered by the UN ceasefire deal. Of course, France wants everyone else in the world to pony up some troops to help out.
The force is supposed to be 15,000 soldiers, but today France has 2,000 pairs of boots on the sand from the current UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force In Lebanon) crew: These are the folks the Israeli Army likes to shoot at, when they’re not shooting at Hezbollah. France is going to be the command and provide an additional 3,500 soldiers. When asked if Canada wanted to add some more soldiers to the UN Lebanon job, our Chief of Defence Staff said that Canada “…no longer had personnel with enough Aeroplan Airmiles to get to Beirut. Or gear, or guns, or uniforms. Thanks for asking, but we’d prefer to be shot at in Afghanistan as the hashish is better there.”
France running a peacekeeping force in Lebanon is going to be fascinating as long as the international community can keep from laughing out loud and spitting their coffee across the table. France has a long tradition as a merchant of missiles, guns, aircraft, bullets and bombs to Hezbollah, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Egypt and Jordan. Italy, also an international arms dealer of significant repute, has pledged up to 3,000 troops to help out. To put a fine point on it, imagine having your secret stash of very old, very expensive, very tasty, single-malt Scotch, guarded by a full-time professional alcoholic who just happens to have a hankering for whisky and a parched throat.
There is a long tradition of tiny little countries being involved in UN peacekeeping and the line is forming over near that palm tree. Indonesia and “several other countries” are interested in participating. The “several other” probably includes Chad, Malaysia, Liberia, Yemen, Tuvalu, Kenya and Uganda. The UN pays the participating government for each soldier, occasionally provides food that might be edible and blue helmets for the uniforms, but not much more. Most of the tiny countries don’t and can’t send transport for their troops: They have to thumb rides off the UN or whoever is running the show. The UN has a fleet of antiquated trucks and lightly armored vehicles that the smaller countries might be able to borrow, assuming the soldiers have the ability to drive, or fix or fuel the vehicles, which usually is also impossible.
In Somalia, one country who had ‘peacekeepers’ helping out, didn’t want to take their armored military vehicles out of the fortifications to rescue some American soldiers, for fear the vehicles would be shot at by the Somali militias. In the early 90’s, another country’s peacekeeping contribution all but starved to death when Rwanda imploded because their country couldn’t afford to send them food, fuel or even airlift them out of Rwanda. They camped out in the Canadian compound and sat around all day waiting for meals and hiding from the bad guys with guns.
I’m not suggesting the UN peacekeeping contributions of the smaller countries are useless, but it comes close to it. France had better be willing to train, house, feed, arm, fuel, transport, support and when needed, provide medical care for these little groups. With any luck the arms dealers who will be parachuted in by France, will have some spare time to train the other participants in how to operate a proper arms sales organization in a war zone.
RoadDave 