Since Hamas launched what has become the most violent war in Gaza since the Six-Day War in 1967 on October 7, there has been much talk about what happens next. Who will ensure the safety of both Palestinians and Israelis? As you know, it is difficult to predict the future with certainty. How will an “afterwards” look like? Who are the parties? Is there still a Hamas? What kind of political government is there in Gaza? What if the war ignites the rest of the region and it ends in a major war? So it is still too early to say anything about what “afterwards” will look like. Will there be blue helmets? Since its creation in 1945, the UN has been pointed to almost every time there has been a war or conflict in the world. But now it’s quiet. Hardly anyone has advocated that the UN is the solution when this much-discussed posterity arrives. This is striking. Altogether there have been 72 UN operations, eleven of which are still ongoing. For so long. But right now things are not going so well with UN peace operations. It is precarious when the UN itself is unable to make peace, and actually makes less peace now than in a long time. The Member States’ motivation to set up new operations is low. Politically, there are arguments about who will pay and where the soldiers will come from. At the UN headquarters in New York, it is claimed that poorly trained and equipped soldiers from the global south and east are exposed to a greater risk to life and health than well trained and equipped soldiers from the north and west. The statistics support the claim. It is a fact that Western states are very reluctant to participate heavily in UN peace operations. There are several reasons why we have come here. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the austerity knife has made Western armies so small that very few countries have hardly any soldiers to spare. The politicians also no longer want to send their soldiers far away on peacekeeping operations for the UN, not after Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine. The world is a different place, now. Peace work against headwinds The UN’s peace operations, of which there are fewer and fewer left, are under pressure. They stay for a very long time in conflict areas that never seem to find a way out of their misery, and the operations are getting more and more popular. Worst off are the UN’s five major operations, four of which are in African countries, and the last one is in the Middle East. Each of these is between ten and fifteen thousand soldiers and police. It may sound like a lot, but if the host country that once invited them in, now wants them out, then all the UN soldiers in the world won’t help. In the new year, the UN’s long-standing peace operation was outright thrown out by the junta in Mali, which rules the country after a coup. The junta would rather cooperate with militias such as the Russian Wagner Group. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the authorities have for several years accused the UN of not working as intended, and want the operation discontinued, or at least greatly reduced. The peace operation in the Central African Republic has been dogged by accusations of abuse of the civilian population, but also authorities that have created miserable operating conditions. In South Sudan, the UN peacekeeping operation is trying to solve a far too large mission with far too limited resources. Relations between the UN and the respective host country authorities are consistently strained. This wear and tear between recipient countries and multinational forces, which remain almost forever, is well known from other operations. NATO experienced the same in Afghanistan. Spectators to the war The last of the five major UN operations is well known to us here in Norway – UNIFIL. Between 1978 and 1998, many thousands of Norwegian women and men served here as soldiers for the UN force in Lebanon. UNIFIL is in many ways a prime example of how little a large UN operation can accomplish. The operation was given a renewed mandate and confidence following a month-long war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006. This war also began with Israeli soldiers being attacked and abducted. The UN mandate states that UNIFIL shall support the Lebanese army in establishing a presence and control in southern Lebanon. Non-state, armed militias are not allowed in the area. But Hezbollah, which the EU has classified as a terrorist organization, has never cared about that. It is just to note that UNIFIL is hardly allowed to do anything. Hezbollah, on the other hand, does exactly what they want, and the Lebanese army chooses either to turn a blind eye, or to cooperate with Hezbollah. And it is not easy for UNIFIL, which is subject to a strict regime, where all planned activity is in reality known to the Lebanese actors. This is how UNIFIL, with all its soldiers and armored material, sees nothing but what Hezbollah allows it to see, and gets to do even less than they see. Everyone in UNIFIL knows this, and all other actors in the region know this. An elephant in the room that is reluctantly talked about. Occasionally, presence in itself is a victory, even if it’s a rather meager one. But operationally, UNIFIL is at best a speed bump for those who might be heading south towards Israel, or north towards Lebanon. The claims may sound far-fetched, but since Hamas’ attack on 7 October, Hezbollah has also sent thousands of rockets at Israel. And Israel has retaliated. But in the noise from Gaza, this front has been barely mentioned. The UN is hardly the answer And UNIFIL, which sees rockets and missiles flying directly over the operational area every day, has been unable to do anything, and has hardly made a single statement itself. And no one has pointed to UNIFIL as an actor capable of stopping hostilities. When you look at the current situation with UN peace operations in general, and UNIFIL in particular, you better understand why the UN is not mentioned as a candidate for security guarantor in and around Gaza. The time horizon will be infinite, there are very few states that want to get involved, and there are even fewer that think such an operation would work. And the one who talks the least about this seems to be the UN itself. The chronicler has experience from UN operations in South Sudan, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. He led the Ministry of Defence’s UN office in the period 2021-22, when Norway sat on the UN Security Council.
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Powerless forces – Speech
