Assessing the Success of Un Peacekeeping Operations in the Middle East

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ASSESSING THE SUCCESS OF UN PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST

A thesis submitted to the Kent State University Honors College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Departmental Honors

by Reuben Francis April, 2020

Thesis written by Reuben Francis

Approved by

______, Advisor

______, Chair, Department of Political Science

Accepted by

______, Dean, Honors College

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES…..………………………………………………………………..……………..…….iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS…………………………………………………………….……………….…...v

CHAPTERS

I. INTRODUCTION……………………………………………….….…………….………1

II. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND………………………………..…………………..…….6

III. PEACEKEEPING TODAY………………………………………..……….……………17

IV. LITERATURE REVIEW……………………………………..…………………….……18

V. DEFINING SUCCESS……………………………………..……………….……………21

VI. 1) UNTSO…………………………………………………………………..……………28

VII. 2) UNEF I………………………………………………………………..….……………32

VIII. 3) UNOGIL………………………………………………………...…………….,...……35

IX. 4) UNYOM…………………………………………………...…………………….……43

X. 5) UNEF II ………………………………………………………………………….……47

XI. 6) UNDOF ………………………………………………………………………….……52

XII. 7) UNIFIL ……………………………………….………………………………….……55

XIII. 8) UNIIMOG ……………………………………………………………………….……67

XIV. 9) UNIKOM……………………………………………………..………………….……71

XV. 10) UNSMIS …………………………………………………….………………….……77

XVI. RESULTS & IMPLICATIONS …………………………………..……..………….……81

XVII. CONCLUSION…………….. …………………………………………………..….……92

BIBLIOGRAPHY …………………………………………..……………………………………..……...96

iii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. ………………………………………………………………………………………….29

Figure 2. …..…………………………………………………………..………………………….83

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This thesis would not have been possible without the support of those around me. First and foremost, I would like to acknowledge my thesis advisor, Dr. Gabriella Paar-Jakli, whose guidance has been crucial towards the development, initiation and execution of this project. I would also like to thank my secondary advisor, Dr. Timothy Scarnecchia, for assisting me with the challenging task of addressing two academic disciplines in one thesis. Additionally, I would like to thank Dr.

Richard Robyn and Dr. Don-John Dugas for putting in the time and effort to participate on my

Oral Defense Committee. Finally, I would like to thank my thesis coordinator, Lori Michael, for supporting me throughout the whole process. Thank you all for helping me turn my vague ideas into a truly meaningful project that I can be proud of.

v 1

Introduction

The United Nations means different things to different people. To some, it is the champion of cooperation and diplomacy, critical to maintaining international peace. To others, it is a weak and ineffective organization, doomed to fail like its predecessor, the

League of Nations. This thesis will examine the accuracy of these characterizations as well as assess the successfulness of the United Nations. Although the Charter of the

United Nations states four main goals for the organization, for the purpose of this project,

“successfulness” will be determined by the UN’s ability to adhere to the first of these principal criteria: to maintain peace and security. The UN has attempted to achieve this goal all over the globe, having launched throughout its existence a variety of initiatives in

Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. The abundance of information regarding such initiatives makes it challenging to conduct an in-depth examination of them in an effort to assess the UN’s level of success. Given this reality, limiting this examination to a single region is more realistic. Consequently, this project will look at

UN efforts in the Middle East, a region that has become a hotbed for conflicts in the modern era and has drawn significant attention from throughout the globe. By considering UN peacekeeping initiatives in the Middle East as a case study we can address the following research question: “How successful has the United Nations been at maintaining peace and security in the Middle East?”

The research design of this thesis makes use of the comparative case study method, which makes an in-depth examination of multiple cases that share a common

focus and involves finding similarities, differences and patterns.1 A comparative case study is employed for such an examination because this allows for a thorough analysis over a long period of time that can help us understand how the specific context of an operation can influence its potential for success. One method of determining how successful the United Nations has been towards maintaining peace and security in the

Middle East is by assessing the organization’s peacekeeping operations in the region.

Such a scope provides ten UN peacekeeping operations for this paper to consider. In chronological order, they are: UNTSO, UNEF I, UNOGIL, UNYOM, UNEF II, UNDOF,

UNIFIL, UNIIMOG, UNIKOM and UNSMIS. Three of these operations (UNTSO,

UNDOF, UNIFIL) are currently ongoing while the other seven have already been concluded. By conducting a comprehensive analysis of these Middle Eastern UN peacekeeping operations and the conflicts each responded to, we can gain a better understanding of the general capabilities of UN peacekeeping operations.

Although this paper takes a critical look at peacekeeping, it is nonetheless important to keep in mind that UN peacekeepers, also known as the Blue Helmets, have one of the hardest jobs in world since they “operate in places rife with ruthless militias, abusive armies, corrupt officials, and shabby infrastructure” and are given “precious few resources with which to accomplish their ambitious mandates.”2 With an annual budget that equals only 0.5% of global military spending, they are expected to resolve conflicts that break out throughout the world.3 However, even if we acknowledge that UN

1 Delwyn Goodwrick, Comparative Case Studies, (Florence: UNICEF Office of Research, 2014), 1. 2 Séverine Autesserre, “The Crisis of Peacekeeping: Why the UN can’t end wars,” Foreign Affairs 98, no. 1 (2019). 3 Chandrima Das, “7 key facts about UN peacekeeping,” United Nations Foundation, February 27, 2018.

peacekeepers have a truly challenging task on their hands, that does not mean that we should overlook all of their shortcomings. The UN Department of Peacekeeping

Operations’ (DPKO) own officials have stated that “we need to be harsh in our judgements” so that the Blue Helmets aren’t simply “turning up and spending some money and not achieving anything.” 4 A critical assessment of their operations in the

Middle East can only serve to improve their performance in the region. However, analyzing the operations and judging their level of success will be more effective if we also consider other factors that are deemed necessary for success. Such success factors can be determined directly from this thesis’s analysis, but we can also benefit from examining what scholars and UN officials have asserted such factors should be and comparing their recommendations with our results. By doing so, we can present suggestions for how peacekeepers can replicate their past accomplishments to achieve a greater success rate for their peacekeeping operations. From saving human lives to sustaining peace and security, the implications for this greater success rate are truly tremendous and plentiful.

To support the arguments presented, this paper will make use of a range of vital primary and secondary sources. Key findings will be supported by evidence in the form of reports, resolutions, telegrams, letters, treaties and other primary documents as preserved in collections such as the UN’s digital library, the U.S. State Department’s documentary record, and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ archives. The use of these primary sources, coming directly from the individuals responsible for facilitating

4 Duane Bratt, “Assessing the success of UN peacekeeping operations,” International Peacekeeping 3, no .4 (1996): 78.

peacekeeping operations, is critical for understanding the true impact of UN peacekeeping initiatives upon the Middle East. Influential secondary sources, notably

Paul Diehl’s International Peacekeeping and Duane Bratt’s “Assessing the Success of

UN Peacekeeping Operations from 1945 to 1996,” will also receive due consideration.

Such studied helped provide a foundation for this paper’s research by conducting some of the first scholarly inquiries on the success rate of UN peacekeeping initiatives.

To accomplish this analysis, this paper will begin by considering the general historical background of the United Nations and its peacekeeping endeavors, so that we may better comprehend the context within which our analysis takes place. This will be followed by a section devoted to the crucial task of defining the criteria that this thesis will make use of to determine a peace operation’s level of success. This defining success section will also consider the proposals put forth by other scholars, while the following literature review section will analyze the peacekeeping-related research of these scholars, as well as the UN itself, in greater detail. This will finally be followed by a thorough analysis of each of the ten UN peacekeeping missions that have operated in the Middle

East and the conflicts that they responded to. The extent to which they satisfy our predetermined parameters of success, as well as their overall level of achievement, will be determined towards the end of their respective sections. The final section shall present the results of this comparative case study and consider its implications. Through such an analysis, we can identify the factors that seem to contribute towards a peace operation’s level of success. An awareness of these factors can lead to the successful completion of

peacekeeping operations and help the UN achieve greater success at tackling its challenging yet crucial goal of maintaining peace and security.

Historical Background

The United Nations is an intergovernmental organization that was formed following the conclusion of the World War II and tasked with maintaining international peace so that the horrors that transpired during the world’s deadliest conflict may never occur again. The term “United Nations” was first used by President Franklin D.

Roosevelt in the 1942 New Year’s Day treaty between the Allied Big Four - the United

States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the Republic of China - as an official designation for the Allies of World War II.5 This treaty, which would come to be known as the Declaration of the United Nations, was signed by twenty-two other signatories the next day, calling for Allied unity in facing the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis.6 Following the victory of the Allies, this declaration would go on to serve as the basis of the United

Nations we know today.

This union was not the world’s first attempt at forming an international institution responsible for maintaining peace and security. That distinction goes to the League of

Nations, which was founded at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference that ended World War I.

Similar to the founding of the UN, the League came into being once an unprecedented global conflict devastated many of the world’s nations, which now wanted to ensure that such horrors would not be repeated.7 This was a goal that the League failed to achieve as

5 “Declaration of the United Nations,” January 1, 1942, History of the United Nations, UN Digital Library. 6 Ibid. 7 Tomuschat Christian, The United Nations at Age Fifty: A Legal Perspective, (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 1995), 77.

it proved incapable of preventing aggression by the Axis powers in the 1930s, such as the

Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1933 or the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. It eventually collapsed once another unprecedented global conflict broke out in 1939 following the Nazi invasion of Poland.8

Despite the League’s failure, the victors of World War II decided that maintaining such a forum for the world’s nations to discuss international concerns was crucial towards ensuring post-war peace. And so, the United Nations was formed to replace the

League of Nations with its founders hoping “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind.”9 The

Charter of the United Nations, the organization’s foundational treaty which was opened for signature on 26 June 1945, stated four main purposes for the union: to keep peace throughout the world, to cultivate friendly relations between nations, to achieve global cooperation in addressing international problems while promoting respect for fundamental humans rights and freedoms, and to serve as a platform for harmonizing the actions of the world’s countries to achieve the goals they have in common.10

Within this newly formed United Nations system, six principal organs were established: the General Assembly, which serves as a deliberative assembly of all UN member states; the Security Council, a powerful organ which handles international security concerns; the Economic and Social Council, which handles global economic and

8 Charles Howard Ellis, The Origin, Structure & Working of the League of Nations, (Clark: Lawbook Exchange Ltd, 2003), 169. 9 United Nations, Charter of the United Nations, 1945, UNTS XVI. 10 Ibid.

social affairs; the International Court of Justice, which serves as a court for international law; the UN Secretariat, the administrative organ of the UN; and the now-defunct

Trusteeship Council, which used to administer UN trust territories before the last of them gained independence in 1994.11 The most authoritative of these organs is the Security

Council. The great powers that were victorious in World War II – the United States, the

Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France and China – hold permanent seats on the

Security Council and have the power to veto any substantive resolution.12 In addition to the five permanent members, ten temporary member states are elected onto the council to serve two-year terms.13 With its mandate of ensuring international peace and security, it is the Security Council that possesses the power to establish peacekeeping operations.14

Peacekeeping, although not explicitly addressed in the UN Charter, has become a critical tool employed by the United Nations to combat the scourge of war. Although there is some disagreement over the exact definition of peacekeeping, such operations generally involve soldiers in non-traditional roles receiving orders from international organizations instead of national governments.15 The term is often improperly used to refer to any international effort with an operational component that promotes the termination of armed conflict. In actuality, peacekeeping is one among various peace operations undertaken by the United Nations to maintain international peace and security,

11 Ibid; Linda Fasulo, An Insider’s Guide to the UN, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 3-8. 12 United Nations, Charter of the United Nations. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Paul Diehl, Peace Operations, (Cambridge: Polity, 2008), 1.

with other activities, such as conflict prevention, peacemaking, peace enforcement and peacebuilding, all playing a critical role.16

Although the focus of this thesis is on peacekeeping, it is nonetheless important to understand how peacekeeping differs from and relates to the rest of the UN’s peace operations. First, there is conflict prevention, where the UN intervenes before a conflict breaks out and uses diplomatic measures to keep tensions and disputes from escalating into violence.17 Second, there is peacemaking, which is when the UN gets involved once a conflict breaks out and uses diplomatic actions to bring hostile parties to a negotiated agreement.18 Third, there is peace enforcement, which requires explicit authorization from the Security Council, that involves using “coercive measures, including the use of military force”19 in situations which the Security Council considers a threat to world peace. Finally, peacebuilding is a process which generally occurs once a conflict has already come to a conclusion and consists of efforts to lay the foundations of a sustainable peace so as to reduce the risk of a relapse into conflict.20

Peacekeeping, generally considered to be the UN’s most prominent operational approach,21 consists of efforts to support the implementation of a ceasefire or peace agreement once fighting has halted. Over the years, peacekeeping operations have

16 Paul Diehl, Daniel Druckman and James Wall, “International Peacekeeping and Conflict Resolution,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 42, no .1 (1998): 38; “Terminology,” United Nations Peacekeeping, peacekeeping.un.org/en/terminology. 17 “United Nations Peacekeeping Operations Principles and Guidelines (‘The Capstone Doctrine’),” January 18, 2008, United Nations and the Rule of Law, UN Digital Library, 17. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid, 18. 20 Ibid. 21 Paul Diehl, International Peacekeeping, (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1993), 2.

evolved from predominantly military operations intended to observe ceasefires, to complex military, police, and civilian operations that help initiate the long-term peacebuilding process. Nevertheless, some characteristics of UN peacekeeping remain nearly unchanged. For example, peacekeepers in completed as well as ongoing operations have generally attempted to create buffer zones between hostile parties so as to prevent dangerous encounters that might escalate tensions and jeopardize the ceasefire.22 Lacking offensive objectives and constrained to use force only in self-defense, their military capabilities are strictly limited.23 Another distinctive characteristic of the Blue Helmets is that they must receive permission from the targeted state to enter their territory, and that once they have become involved in an operation, they must maintain neutrality and make certain not to overtly favor any one side in the conflict.24

Although the UN’s efforts to maintain peace and security consist of peacekeeping and the other supposedly separate and distinct peace operations, it is important to note that there is a significant amount of overlap, and peace operations “are rarely limited to one type of activity.”25 As Figure 1 illustrates, the boundaries between these different peace operations are becoming increasingly blurred.26 Today’s multidimensional peacekeeping operations often play a role in peacemaking and early peacebuilding efforts27 by attempting to facilitate political resolutions, protecting civilians, assisting in

22 Diehl, International Peacekeeping, 6. 23 Ibid, 8. 24 Jack Garvey, “United Nations Peacekeeping and Host State Consent,” American Journal of Law 64, no. 1 (1970): 241-269; John Holmes, “The Political and Philosophical Aspects of UN Security,” International Journal 19, no. 3 (1964): 292-307. 25 “Capstone Doctrine,” UN Digital Library, 18. 26 Ibid. 27 United Nations Peacekeeping, “Terminology.”

disarmament and demobilization, supporting the organization of elections and defending human rights.28

Figure 1 - Overlap Between Peace Operations

These multidimensional peacekeeping missions are a far cry from the peace operations initiated in the UN’s early days. As previously mentioned, peacekeeping and the other UN peace operations are not explicitly addressed within the organization’s founding charter. Nonetheless, the formal practice of such peacekeeping operations began in 1948, just a couple of years after the organization’s establishment. The first of these peacekeeping operations, the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), was launched in 1948 to address the growing divisions in the former British Mandate of

28 “What is Peacekeeping,” United Nations Peacekeeping, peacekeeping.un.org/en/what-is-peacekeeping.

Palestine between the newly formed state of Israel on one side, and the Palestinian Arabs along with the neighboring Arab states on the other.29 UNTSO consisted of unarmed military observers that were first directed to supervise a truce being negotiated by

Swedish diplomat Count Folke Bernadotte and then remained to supervise a ceasefire ordered by the Security Council.30 Just as tensions between Israel and Palestine have remained alive to this date, so has the UNTSO mission that continues to monitor the situation and also provides observers for other conflicts in the region.31

The UN’s second peacekeeping operation was quite similar. UN military observers were deployed to Kashmir in 1949 to supervise a ceasefire between India and

Pakistan as part of the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan

(UNMOGIP), another operation that remains active to date due to the remaining underlying tensions between the two countries.32 It was in the UN’s third peacekeeping operation that the peacekeeping process began to adapt as it included the formation of the first armed United Nations peacekeeping force. Deployed into Egypt in 1956 as a response to the Suez Crisis, this taskforce known as the United Nations Emergency Force

(UNEF) oversaw not only the withdrawal of Israeli, British and French troops from

Egyptian territory, but also the creation of a buffer zone between Israeli and Egyptian forces to ensure the continuance of the ceasefire.33 The intervention promoted the resolution of the Suez Crisis and the canal was fully reopened to shipping by April 1957.

29 “UNTSO,” United Nations Peacekeeping, peacekeeping.un.org/en/mission/untso. 30 S.C. Res. 50, May 29, 1948. 31 United Nations Peacekeeping, “UNTSO.” 32 Diehl, Peace Operations, 42. 33 Diehl, Peace Operations, 43.

These initial operations represent what we now call traditional peacekeeping in which the operations were “limited to maintaining ceasefires and stabilizing situations on the ground.”34 Peacekeepers strictly abided by the three main principles of peacekeeping operations: consent of the parties, impartiality, and the non-use of force except in self- defense and defense of the mandate.35 Furthermore, the Cold War context in which these missions occurred further limited the capability of the peacekeepers. During this ideological struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union, the two great superpowers did not fight each other directly but instead engaged in regional conflicts by supporting opposing sides in proxy wars throughout the globe. Because both superpowers had permanent seats and the veto power in the Security Council, it became difficult to implement peacekeeping operations in conflicts related to the expansion or containment of left-wing revolutionary movements.36 Some conflicts were considered separate enough from the international ideological struggle to achieve consensus for intervention within the Security Council, such as the crisis that arose in the Congo following its independence from Belgium, which saw the intervention of the UN’s first peacekeeping mission with a significant military force: the United Nations Operation in the Congo

(ONUC).37 Nonetheless, the majority of conflicts during this era were believed to be too deeply entrenched in the global struggle and the Security Council hesitated to intervene.38

34 “Capstone Doctrine,” UN Digital Library, 20. 35 Paul Diehl, “Peacekeeping Operations and the Quest for Peace,” Political Science Quarterly 103, no. 3 (1988): 485- 507. 36 Joachim Koops, The Oxford Handbook of United Nations Peacekeeping Operations, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 37 Georges Abi-Saab, The United Nations Operation in the Congo 1960–1964, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978). 38 Diehl, Peace Operations, 48.

With the end of the Cold War, rivalries that once paralyzed the Security Council abated and the council began to present a more united front.39 The end of this gridlock led to a substantial increase in the number of UN peacekeeping missions. Between 1989 and

1994, the United Nations authorized 20 new operations and raised the number of peacekeepers from 11,000 to 75,000.40 Furthermore, the UN operations began to evolve from the traditional peacekeeping missions that mostly consisted of military personnel in an observational capacity to complex multidimensional missions. These new operations aimed to go even further in the defense of peace and security by attempting to lay the foundations for a sustainable peace in the target region. Peacekeepers began to monitor human rights, support disarmament, reintegrate former combatants, and promote fair elections. Furthermore, military personnel began to be paired with police and civilian personnel that assisted in the various economic, social, legal, humanitarian, or electoral concerns that need to be addressed when initiating a long-term peace process.41 These changes were spurred on not only by the shifting dynamics of the world’s balance of power, but also by the shifting nature of conflict itself. While a significant number of inter-state conflicts appeared during the early years of UN peacekeeping, intra-state conflicts and civil wars had now become increasingly dominant.42

The multidimensional operations that took place following end of the Cold War were initially quite fruitful. For example, the UN Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG)

39 Virginia Fortna, Does Peacekeeping Work?, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 1. 40 Scott Malcomson, “African Peacebuilding,” Carnegie, July 25, 2016. 41 Paul Diehl and Daniel Druckman, Evaluating Peace Operations, (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2010): 29. 42 C.S.R. Murphy, “United Nations Peacekeeping in Intrastate Conflicts: Emerging Trends,” International Studies 38, no. 3 (2001).

in Namibia,43 the UN Observer Mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL),44 and the UN

Operation in Mozambique (ONUMOZ)45 were all widely considered to be peacekeeping successes. However, these early successes raised expectations for peacekeeping “beyond its capacity to deliver”46 and peacekeepers began to get involved in situations where the fighting had not yet died down. The UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in the former

Yugoslavia, the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), and the UN Operation in Somalia II (UNOSOM II) saw peacekeepers engage in regions where there was no peace to keep. These high-profile operations, in which peacekeepers lacking resources and political support failed to stop high civilian casualties or promote peace between warring parties, did great damage to the reputation of UN peacekeeping.47 The genocides that took place despite the presence of peacekeepers in the region were especially alarming to the international community.48 Additionally, reports of rape and other forms of sexual abuse being perpetrated by peacekeepers further tarnished the reputation of the

United Nations.49

These significant setbacks caused the Security Council to initiate a process of self-reflection to prevent such failures from occurring again and to limit the number of new peacekeeping operations. 50 In 2000, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan convened

43 L.M. Howard, “UN Peace Implementation in Namibia: The Causes of Success,” International Peacekeeping 9, no. 1 (2002): 99. 44 “In El Salvador, U.N. Had a Success Story,” The New York Times, June 29, 1995. 45 Dennis Jett, “Preserving Peace in Mozambique,” Foreign Affairs, December 14, 2016. 46 “Our History,” United Nations Peacekeeping, peacekeeping.un.org/en/our-history. 47 Lise Howard, UN Peacekeeping in Civil Wars, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012): 21. 48 Joel Gunter, “Ratko Mladic, the Butcher of Bosnia,” BBC News, November 22, 2017; “Rwanda genocide: 100 days of slaughter,” BBC News, April 4, 2019. 49 Kate Brannen, “The unchanging reality of the UN sex abuse scandal,” Just Security, July 24, 2018. 50 Kofi Annan, “Letter to the President of the Security Council,” December 16, 1999, History of the United Nations, UN Digital Library.

the Panel on the United Nations Peace Operations to conduct a comprehensive review of

UN peace operations and recommend improvements. Their review, known as the Brahimi

Report after the Chair of the Panel, Lakhdar Brahimi, suggested increased political commitment from member states, the establishment of clear, credible and achievable mandates, increased financial support, and a greater focus on gathering intelligence.51

Additional initiatives, such as the 2008 Capstone Doctrine, 2009 New Horizon process and the 2018 Action for Peacekeeping project, have expanded on the Brahimi Report as part of an examining process that the UN vows to continue.

51 “Report of the Panel on United Nations Peacekeeping (‘The Brahimi Report),” August 17, 2000, United Nations and the Rule of Law, UN Digital Library, 54.

Peacekeeping Today

As of January 31st, 2020, the UN has initiated 71 peacekeeping operations since

1948, 13 of which are currently active.52 Current operations are active in, the Central

African Republican, Cyprus, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Israel, Kosovo,

Lebanon, Mali, Pakistan, Sudan, Syria, Western Sahara.53 There are currently 95,423 UN peacekeepers coming from 121 countries currently serving in these ongoing peacekeeping operations.54 The troops that make up the UN peacekeepers come from

“diverse cultural backgrounds and from an ever-growing number of Member States.”55

The countries that contribute the most towards these operations are Ethiopia (6,639),

Bangladesh (6,413), Rwanda (6,292), Nepal (5,658), India (5,404), and Pakistan

(3,113).56 The large number of troops coming from African nations signals a shift in responsibility of UN peacekeeping operations towards regional leaders. South Asian countries also contribute significantly, in part because the UN pays reimbursement rates that are higher than the salaries paid to South Asian troops.

52 “Data,” United Nations Peacekeeping, peacekeeping.un.org/en/data. 53 United Nations Peacekeeping, “Data.” 54 Ibid. 55 “Our Peacekeepers,” United Nations Peacekeeping, peacekeeping.un.org/en/our-peacekeepers. 56 Ibid.

Literature Review

The desire to assess the success of UN peace operations is not new. On the contrary, much has been written about the unsuccessfulness and uselessness of specific

UN peacekeeping operations or even the entire UN peacekeeping process. In many cases, such assessments come from the United Nations itself. For example, after the UN failures in Srebrenica and Rwanda, the organization launched a self-assessing panel to ascertain

“the shortcomings of the existing system and to make frank, specific and realistic recommendations for change.”57 The report produced by this panel, commonly referred to as the Brahimi report in reference to the panel’s chairman, arguably denoted a turning point in the history of UN peacekeeping. Other relevant UN documents, such as the

Agenda for Peace and the Capstone Doctrine, followed suit and added on to this initiative to improve the results of UN peacekeeping operations.58

Beyond the UN’s self-assessments, many scholars have also contributed to the topic of UN peacekeeping. One of the first substantial studies on the topic can be seen in

Paul Diehl’s International Peacekeeping, which provides an “overview of the central issues surrounding the development, operations, and effectiveness” of peacekeeping operations.59 Especially important for our assessment of success is Diehl’s examination of six prominent peacekeeping operations for the purpose of determining two primary

57 “Brahimi Report,” UN Digital Library, 1. 58 “An Agenda for Peace,” June 17, 1992, United Nations and the Rule of Law, UN Digital Library. 59 Diehl, International Peacekeeping, 1.

standards for indicating success: the limitation of armed conflict and the facilitation of conflict resolution.60 Although this early work has since been either criticized or critiqued,61 it remains important due to its foundational role in the study of peacekeeping operations. Furthermore, Diehl later expanded upon his earlier work with Peace

Operations in 2008 and Evaluating Peace Operations in 2010, suggesting three core goals shared by all peacekeeping missions: violence abatement, conflict containment and conflict settlement.62

Another important contribution came from Duane Bratt’s influential 1996 journal article “Assessing the success of UN peacekeeping operations from 1945 to 1996.” In it,

Bratt specifically considered the question of success and also developed a set of criteria to assess it. His parameters of mandate performance, facilitation of conflict resolution, conflict containment and limitation of casualties and their method of application on the peacekeeping operations conducted before 1996 greatly influenced and provided the framework for the study undertaken in this paper.63

Darya Pushkina’s 2006 assessment in her “A Recipe for Success?” found four similar criteria: limitation of violent conflict in the host state, reduction of human suffering, prevention of the spread of conflict beyond the object state’s borders and the facilitation of conflict resolution.64 Pushkina also considers the question of success

60 Ibid, 34. 61 David Segal, “International Peacekeeping (Book Review),” Armed Forces & Society 21, no. 1 (1994): 307-310. 62 Diehl, Peace Operations, 29 63 Bratt, “Assessing the success of UN peacekeeping operations,” 78. 64 Darya Pushkina, “A Recipe for Success? Ingredients of a successful peacekeeping mission,” International Peacekeeping 13, no. 2 (2006): 145.

determinants, that is, the factors that lead the UN to greater success in some internal conflicts as opposed to other, further expanding one’s understanding of successful peacekeeping operations.

Finally, Virginia Fortna’s 2008 Does Peacekeeping Work? considers recent events by conducting a systemic analysis of civil wars that have taken place since the end of the Cold War. Furthermore, by looking at both peacekeeping and non-peacekeeping cases, she adds another layer of comparison to the question of what works and what doesn’t.

Defining Success

Scholars have given a great deal of attention to the factors thought to produce successful peacekeeping operations, but studies of the criteria used to assess success are comparatively rare.65 However, to truly understand whether a peacekeeping mission has been triumphant or not, it is crucial to first develop an understanding about what constitutes a success or a failure. Making such an assessment is not as easy as one might think because there is so much to consider when choosing standards for success. One might think, as some scholars do, that determining success would be a simple issue of considering whether the operation’s mandate has been fulfilled. 66 However, there are some complications with taking this approach. First, the mandates given to peacekeeping operations are often quite vague and leave much room for debate on the scope and detail of the mission.67 Second, such a line of thinking ends up ignoring the shared purposes that peacekeeping operations have in common regardless of mandate.68 We can use these core goals stemming from the shared purposes to construct standards for success that can be examined in all operations.69

Determining the core goals that one considers to be an indicator of success can be quite subjective. For example, whether one considers the preservation of human lives or

65 Diehl, Evaluating Peace Operations, 1. 66 Randy Janzen, “Determinants of Success in UN Peacekeeping Operations,” International Journal on World Peace 30, no. 4 (2013): 88. 67 Diehl, International Peacekeeping, 33. 68 Ibid. 69 Diehl, Evaluating Peace Operations, 29.

the reinstatement of government authority to be the primary goal of a peacekeeping operation significantly changes the way they perceive the mission’s outcomes. Even if preferences are determined, it can be difficult to assess whether the prescribed goals have been achieved or not. For example, if we consider the preservation of human lives to be of paramount importance, then is a mission a failure if even a single life is lost in the conflict? Some might say that such a threshold is unrealistic, but then at how many lives do we draw the line? Some would want us to consider the lives that have been saved, that is to say, the lives that might have been lost had the UN not intervened, but since this is not what actually happened, it is not easy to consider the casualties undertaken in this alternate reality. Furthermore, determining success is made even more challenging when we realize that different stakeholders define success in different ways. There are various different stakeholders in peacekeeping, such as the international community, the states contributing personnel, the main belligerents in the conflict or the local population, and each of them might consider different standards of success.70 For example, the international community might consider a mission that halted the spread of an intrastate conflict to be a success, but the local population of the state that remains in conflict might view things very differently.

Such considerations inform the development of a set of success indicators.

Despite the difficulties associated with such a development, it is important to form a systematic definition of success to understand peacekeeping, evaluate operations and propose successful policies for the future. We can also look at previously published

70 Diehl, Evaluating Peace Operations, 12.

definitions of success to aid with this development. As previously mentioned, studies on the criteria used to assess success are hard to find, but they are not entirely non-existent.

In particular, Paul Diehl has written substantially about peace operations and the criteria used to evaluate them. In his 1993 International Peacekeeping, Diehl determined two primary standards for indicating success: the limitation of armed conflict and the facilitation of conflict resolution.71 In his review of Diehl’s book, Robert Johansen suggested additional criteria: the effect on the local population and the degree of violence in comparison to non-intervention.72 Three years later, Duane Bratt built upon Diehl’s work to suggest four success indicators: mandate performance, facilitation of conflict resolution, conflict containment and limitation of casualties.73 Darya Pushkina’s 2006 assessment found four similar criteria: limitation of violent conflict in the host state, reduction of human suffering, prevention of the spread of conflict beyond the object state’s borders and the facilitation of conflict resolution.74 Finally, Diehl’s 2010 book entitled Evaluating Peace Operations expands upon his previous work and takes into consideration subsequent scholarship to suggest three core goals shared by all peacekeeping missions: violence abatement, conflict containment and conflict settlement.75

Considering relevant literature on this topic, this study will examine the successfulness of peacekeeping operations by assessing their effectiveness at achieving

71 Ibid, 34. 72 Robert Johansen, "U. N. Peacekeeping: How Should We Measure Success?," Mershon International Studies Review 38, no. 2 (1994): 310. 73 Bratt, “Assessing the success of UN peacekeeping operations,” 78. 74 Pushkina, “A Recipe for Success,” 145. 75 Diehl, Evaluating Peace Operations, 29.

their mandate, at facilitating conflict resolution, at containing conflicts, and at limiting the number of casualties. With this decision, some potential indicators have been dismissed while some have been modified. Johansen’s “effect on local population” indicator and Pushkina’s “reduction of human suffering” indicator could both offer useful insight, but there are so many variables that could be used to determine these measures that it becomes conceptually challenging to make use of them. Johansen’s second indicator, which measures the degree of violence in comparison to non-intervention, is also challenging to calculate since it involves predicting the results of an unchosen option. Furthermore, indicators that consider the limitation of armed violence have been modified to Bratt’s measure of limitation of casualties so as to create a more encompassing assessment that also considers civilian losses.76

#1) The first indicator looks at whether the peacekeeping operation managed to successfully complete its stated mandate. This can be a relatively straightforward indicator to measure, which is why it has been the predominant tool for assessing operational success in the past.77 However, as previously mentioned, there are certain problems with considering this parameter. According to a UN Department of

Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) official, missions are sometimes assigned “a completely unrealistic mandate that was cooked up to satisfy the Security Council member’s domestic political interests” even if “nobody on the council in their wildest dreams thought the mandate would be implemented.”78 Despite the unfeasible mandate,

76 Bratt, “Assessing the success of UN peacekeeping operations,” 66. 77 Diehl, International Peacekeeping, 33. 78 Bratt, “Assessing the success of UN peacekeeping operations,” 67.

the DPKO representative added that “there is still the possibility of having a useful and constructive international presence” in the region.79 It seems important not to overlook this constructive presence when considering success, especially if the mandate was unachievable to begin with. Nevertheless, since it embodies the decree of the Security

Council, the mandate cannot be entirely ignored.80

#2) The second parameter of success, one about which all the aforementioned scholars agree, is whether the mission was able to facilitate a resolution to the conflict.

One could say that this is the most important parameter, because if the conflict is resolved, the other three parameters would most likely be addressed as well. The Security

Council has a history of determining whether or not an operation is continued by examining the level of progress made towards conflict resolution.81 There are certain disadvantages to using this indicator, such as the fact that it sometimes assesses factors outside of the peacekeepers’ purview. Although peacekeepers can promote conflict resolution, whether peace is achieved or not is ultimately up to the belligerents.

Furthermore, there is the question of how long a peacekeeping force is supposed to be held responsible for the conclusion of the conflict. For example, although the UN’s first and more-restrained venture into Lebanon, UNOGIL, successfully accomplished its mandate and helped facilitate the conclusion of the Lebanon Crisis of 1958, the UN would be back in Lebanon in 1978 to deal with the Israeli-Lebanese conflict as part of

UNIFIL. Should the resumption of conflict in Lebanon two decades after the conclusion

79 Ibid. 80 Anthony Lake, “Peacekeeping: Defining Success,” Peace Colloquy 1, no.1 (2002): 9. 81 S.C. Res. 858, August 24, 1993.

of UNOGIL be enough to disregard all of UNOGIL’s successes? Because our limited geographical scope provides us with an opportunity to conduct an in-depth analysis of each UN peacekeeping operation in the Middle East, we can make such determinations on a case-by-case basis. In spite of these complications, while other factors might mitigate the conflict, facilitating its resolution is a certain way to bring peace to the region, and as such, it is a suitable way to assess the success of an operation.

#3) A third indicator of a successful operation is conflict containment. We can determine whether or not an operation was successful in this regard by examining its effectiveness at preventing the entry of global powers or neighboring states into the conflict. Because one of the primary motives for launching a peace operation is to prevent the conflict from escalating, it seems appropriate to assess whether or not the operation was able to contain it geographically.

#4) Finally, we can judge the successfulness of an operation by considering its effectiveness at limiting casualties. This can be determined by comparing the number of casualties in the conflict before the deployment of the operation to the number of casualties after. If the presence of the peacekeepers leads to a significant reduction in the number of casualties, then their mission can be considered successful. There can be some challenges with using this indicator as well. For example, although UNITAF claimed to have succeeded in limiting casualties and improving the humanitarian situation in

Somalia in the mission’s third year, Médecins sans Frontières states that this was because

“the famine had reached a peak in [the year before] and the most vulnerable had already

died.”82 Furthermore, UNEF was quite successful at limiting casualties and keeping the

Egyptians and Israelis apart during the Suez Crisis, but it was unable to prevent the breakout of the 1967 Six Day War between the two rivals because it did little to address the root causes of the conflict,.83 Therefore, although the limitation of casualties remains an important parameter to assess success, the aforementioned concerns highlight why this indicator must hold secondary status in comparison to the resolution of the conflict.

Now that we have determined how this thesis will assess peacekeeping successes, it is important to note that some scholars find certain peacekeeping operations to be more complex than absolute successes or failures.84 To address this concern, Bratt created three levels of operational success to be applied against a set of four criteria. Operations that fulfill all four criteria would be considered successful, operations that fulfill most of these criteria would be considered moderately successful, and operations that achieve none of these criteria or have limited success in them would be considered failures.85 This thesis will make use of Bratt’s levels of operational success to better distinguish the peacekeeping operations being examined.

82 Jean Francois, Life, Death and Aid: The Médecins Sans Frontières Report on World Crisis, (New York: Routledge, 1993), 104. 83 G.A. A/6730, Report of the Secretary-General on the withdrawal of the United Nations Emergency Force, June 26, 1967. 84 Janzen, “Determinants of Success in UN Peacekeeping Operations,” 89. 85 Duane Bratt, “Explaining peacekeeping performance: The UN in internal conflicts,” International Peacekeeping 4, no. 3 (1997): 68.

1) UNTSO (1948-present)

As mentioned previously, the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization

(UNTSO), launched in 1948, was the United Nations’ first peacekeeping operation that was initiated to address the rising tensions in the former British Mandate of Palestine between the newly formed state of Israel on one side, and the Palestinian Arabs along with the neighboring Arab states on the other. Although the United Nations’ General

Assembly had come up with a plan for the partition of Palestine that would have created an Arab Palestinian state, a Jewish Israeli state and an international city of Jerusalem, the plan was rejected by the Palestinian Arabs as well as the neighboring Arab states and only partly accepted by the Jewish Agency of Palestine.86

In this tense atmosphere, the United Kingdom relinquished its control over the

Palestinian mandate in May of 1948, leading to the proclamation of the State of Israel and its subsequent invasion by its neighboring Arab states. Unarmed military observers were sent in to supervise a truce between the opposing sides being negotiated by Count Folke

Bernadotte, the United Nations Security Council Mediator for Palestine. This truce did not last long due to continuing violence, with Bernadotte being “brutally assassinated by

Jewish assailants… in the new city of Jerusalem.”87 Following the assassination, Acting

Mediator Ralph Bunche took over the responsibility of supervising talks between the

86 Walid Khalid, "Revisiting the UNGA Partition Resolution," Journal of Palestine Studies 27, no. 1 (1997): 9. 87 Consulate General at Jerusalem to the Secretary of State, telegram, September 17, 1948, Historical Documents: Foreign Relations of the United States, Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State.

opposing sides, eventually leading to the General Armistice Agreements (GAAs) of 1949 between Israel and its Arab neighbors, particularly Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

The previously deployed UN military observers were tasked with administering the following ceasefire ordered by the UN Security Council.

After the GAAs, the UN Security Council decided that the job of the mediator had been completed but believed that the UNTSO might still have a role to play in light of the lingering tensions that remained in the region. As such, the organization continued its existence, spreading out its activities across Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria and playing a role in the peacekeeping process that followed the continuation of Arab-Israeli hostilities during the wars of 1956, 1967 and 1973. Although the changing circumstances presented by these continuing conflicts altered the functions of the military observers, they remained in the afflicted region and serve as intermediaries between hostile parties so as to contain isolated incidents and prevent them from escalating into serious confrontations. UNTSO military observers today remain unarmed and carry out their assignments by observing and reporting on ceasefire violations and other relevant incidents in the region. UNTSO also provides personnel to different peacekeeping missions in the area, such as the Observer Group Lebanon (OGL) that assists UNIFIL in

Southern Lebanon; the Observer Group Golan (OGG) that supports UNDOF in the Golan

Heights; and the Observer Group Egypt (OGE) based in the Sinai Peninsula.88

88 United Nations Peacekeeping, “UNTSO.”

Despite this wide-reaching impact that the UNTSO has had upon tension in the

Middle East, it is difficult to assess the operation as successful, especially based on the parameters decided for this paper. In regard to the first parameter of mandate completion, the operation failed its officially stated objective to enforce the ceasefire that came out of the GAAs of 1949. This is evident not only by the frequent violations of the ceasefire agreement by both sides,89 but also by the fact that the UNTSO would be unable to prevent the outbreak of three additional wars between Arab states and Israel, namely the

Suez Crisis of 1956, the Six-Day War of 1967, and the Yom Kippur War of 1973. One should keep in mind that the UNTSO was faced with a daunting assignment, with this very first UN peacekeeping operation being tasked with solving what has been referred to as the world’s “most intractable conflict.”90 Nonetheless, the fact remains that the operation was unable to achieve its overly ambitious mandate and tensions in the Middle

East remained high. Furthermore, the continuing conflict and increasing number of casualties signifies a failure on the UNTSO’s part in regard to the predetermined second and third parameters of success concerning conflict resolution and the limitation of casualties. Finally, the fourth parameter of conflict containment was also not achieved by the UNTSO due to its inability to prevent foreign interventions in the Middle East91 nor the opening of new fronts in the Arab-Israeli conflict.92 As such, the UNTSO failed to

89 “Israel’s position on its frontiers,” statement, June 15, 1949, Israel’s Foreign Policy: Historical Documents, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 90 Gershon Shafir, A Half Century of Occupation: Israel, Palestine and the World’s Most Intractable Conflict, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017). 91 Ralph Dietl, "Suez 1956: A European Intervention?," Journal of Contemporary History 43, no. 2 (2008): 260. 92 Georges Corm, "Thoughts on the Roots of the Arab-Israeli Conflict," Journal of Palestine Studies 21, no. 3 (1992): 79.

achieve all four parameters of success, and therefore, as per our predetermined levels of operational success, it must be classified as a failure.

2) UNEF I (1956-1967)

The next UN peacekeeping operation to be deployed into the region was a response to the Suez Crisis of 1956. The crisis began when Egyptian President Gamal

Abdel Nasser decided to nationalize the Suez Canal, which had been under Anglo-French control despite being located on Egyptian territory. The United Kingdom and France, hoping to reestablish their economically advantageous position in Egypt, formed an alliance with Israel to jointly invade Egyptian territory and recapture the canal. Despite being defeated by the Anglo-French-Israeli alliance, Egyptian forces blocked the canal to all shipping before retreating, leaving it useless for the victors. Furthermore, international condemnation as well as strong pressure from the United States, the Soviet Union and the

United Nations forced the British, French and Israelis into withdrawing from Egyptian land, leading to an overall political victory for Nasser’s Egypt.93

The first United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF I) was established by the

United Nations General Assembly to secure a conclusion to this Suez Crisis. Following an agreement between the UN Secretary-General and the Egyptian government, Nasser gave his consent to the placement of the multinational UNEF force on Egyptian territory.94 As previously mentioned, this peacekeeping operation, which was still only the third peacekeeping operation initiated by the United Nations, was extremely

93 David Tal, The 1956 War, (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2001), 203. 94 Stuart Malawer, “The Withdrawal of UNEF and a New Notion of Consent,” Cornell International Law Journal 4, no. 1 (1970): 33.

influential upon the development of the UN peacekeeping process due to its inclusion of the first armed United Nations peacekeeping force. This armed task force, ordered to fire only “in self-defense and even then, with the utmost restraint,”95 created a buffer zone between Israeli and Egyptian forces so as to ensure the continuance of the ceasefire.96

As decided by the UN General Assembly, the mandate of UNEF I was to enter

Egyptian territory once a ceasefire had been established so as to ensure the “withdrawal of non-Egyptian forces” from the Suez Canal.97 This mandate was to be achieved by the

UNEF force in four distinct phases: first, they were to “facilitate the withdrawal of the

Anglo-French forces” from the Suez Canal;98 second, they were to oversee the “phased withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Sinai;”99 third, they were to assume control of “the

Gaza Strip and the Sharm el Sheikh area from Israeli forces;” and finally, they were to establish a line “between Israeli and Egyptian forces along the Egyptian side of the

Armistice Demarcation Line in Gaza” for the purposes of observation. All four phases of this mandate were successfully achieved by the peacekeeping forces, as the United

Kingdom, France and Israel were in fact pressured into withdrawing from Egyptian territory and the Suez Canal is even today owned and maintained by the Suez Canal

Authority of Egypt.100

95 Olivera Simic, Regulation of Sexual Conduct in UN Peacekeeping Operations, (New York: Springer, 2012), 16. 96 Diehl, Peace Operations, 43. 97 “UNEF I: Background,” United Nations Peacekeeping, peacekeeping.un.org/en/mission/past/unef1backgr2.html 98 Kenneth Dombroski, Peacekeeping in the Middle East as an International Regime, (New York: Routledge, 2006), 53. 99 Ibid. 100 Charles Selak, “The Suez Canal Base Agreement of 1954,” American Journal of International Law 49, no. 4 (1955): 487.

In regard to conflict resolution however, UNEF I was much less successful. The

Suez Crisis was just one manifestation of the larger and much more complicated Arab-

Israeli conflict. Because the root causes behind the intensification of this conflict were not addressed, UNEF I would not be enough to prevent the outbreak of the Six-Day War in 1967. At Nasser’s insistence, UNEF forces were withdrawn from Egypt, terminating the buffer zone that had existed between Egyptian and Israeli forces. Although the UNEF force’s mandate was more to observe rather than to keep the two foes separated, the fact remains that their forced withdrawal left the door open for war to break out yet again in the region.

Despite UNEF’s failure at resolving tensions between Israel and Egypt, there are more successes to be found when we take a look at the third and fourth parameters of success. As other scholars have already noted, the halting of “the joint offensive by

Israeli, French and British troops, illustrates how peacekeepers can limit casualties by preventing armed conflict.”101 Furthermore, the allied withdrawal also signified a geographic limitation of the conflict rather than an expansion, satisfying the parameter of conflict containment. In consideration of all these factors, it is fair to judge that UNEF I, due to its failure at resolving the conflict but success at achieving its mandate, limiting casualties, and containing the conflict, can be classified as moderately successful.

101 Michael Pugh, The UN, Peace and Force, (New York: Routledge, 1997), 70.

3) UNOGIL (1958)

The third UN peacekeeping mission to be deployed into the Middle East was the

United Nations Observation Group in Lebanon (UNOGIL). Initiated in 1958 through the

UN Security Council’s Resolution 128, this observation group was a response to that year’s Lebanon Crisis.102 During this crisis, Lebanon was threatened by a potential civil war between the country’s Christian and Muslim inhabitants. Tensions between these two religious groups were reflective of tensions that had arisen between the pro-Western and

Christian President of Lebanon, Camille Chamoun, and Egyptian President Gamal Nasser after Chamoun decided not to break off relations with the Western countries that invaded

Egypt during the Suez Crisis.103 Nasser was also concerned about Chamoun’s increasing closeness to the countries that comprised the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), also known as the Baghdad Pact. The Baghdad Pact was formed in 1955 by Iran, Iraq,

Pakistan, Turkey and the United Kingdom, and received significant assistance from the

United States despite it not being an official member state. Believing this pro-Western pact to be threat to the kind of Arab nationalism he wanted to propagate, Nasser united

Egypt and Syria into the United Arab Republic (UAR) as a response.104

102 S.C. Res. 128, June 11, 1958. 103 David Lesch, "Prelude to the 1958 American Intervention in Lebanon," Mediterranean Quarterly 7, no. 3 (1996): 87–108. 104 Salim Yaqub, Containing Arab Nationalism: The Eisenhower Doctrine and the Middle East, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004).

Lebanese Muslims, including Sunni Prime Minister Rashid Karami, supported calls for Lebanon to join this newly created United Arab Republic, but Chamoun and most Lebanese Christians preferred to keep the country aligned with the Western powers of the Cold War.105 Following Chamoun’s announcement of his intention to amend the

Lebanese constitution so as to enable him to stay in power for a second term, armed rebellions broke out in the predominantly Muslim areas around Tripoli, Beirut and the border with Syria.106

With the tense situation in Lebanon beginning to resemble the onset of a civil war, the government of Lebanon requested a meeting of the UN Security Council so as to consider its complaint “in respect of a situation arising from the intervention of the

United Arab Republic in the internal affairs of Lebanon, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security.”107 In particular, the Lebanese government claimed that the UAR was encouraging the armed rebellions breaking out in Lebanon by conducting a propaganda campaign as well as by supplying subversive elements with military armaments.108 After hearing from the delegations of both Lebanon and the United Arab Republic, the UN Security Council passed Resolution

128 in response to the crisis and established the UNOGIL.

105 Ibid. 106 “UNOGIL: Background,” United Nations Peacekeeping, peacekeeping.un.org/sites/default/files/past/unogilbackgr.html 107 “Complaint by Lebanon in respect of a situation arising from the intervention of the United Arab Republic in the internal affairs of Lebanon,” June 11, 1958, History of the United Nations, UN Digital Library. 108 Ibid.

UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld stressed that this would be a group composed of military observers, some of whom would be drawn upon from the UNTSO, in stark contrast to the UNEF police force that had made up the preceding UN peacekeeping operation in the Middle East. UNOGIL was not intended to mediate, arbitrate or forcefully intervene in any way, but rather to strictly observe and ascertain whether or not illegal shipments of armaments were making their way across the

Lebanese border.109 On July 1st, 1958, UNOGIL submitted its first report to the Security

Council, alleging that it found “no substantiated or conclusive evidence of major infiltration.”110 Lebanese representatives criticized such findings as “inconclusive, misleading [and] unwarranted.”111 Lebanese concerns were not entirely unjustified considering that, as mentioned in the first UNOGIL report to the Security Council, the observer group’s members faced “difficulties in gaining access to the eastern and northern frontiers held by opposition forces who resisted a UN presence.”112 UNOGIL later gained access to all sections of the Lebanese frontier, leading to far more thorough reports and observations, but before this could take place, events occurring outside of

Lebanese territory would end up complicating the crisis even further.

On July 14th, 1958, a coup d’état in Iraq overthrew the Hashemite monarchy and established the Iraqi Republic led by Brigadier General Abd al-Karim Qasim. The

American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) incorrectly assumed that Qasim’s coup was

109 Ibid. 110 United Nations Peacekeeping, “UNOGIL: Background.” 111 Walter Dorn, Air Power in UN Operations: Wings for Peace, (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 137. 112 Ibid.

part of a “Moscow-inspired, Nasser-led takeover threatening the Middle East.”113 The governments of Lebanon and Jordan had similar concerns, with Chamoun requesting military intervention from the United States so as to preserve his regime, and his

Jordanian counterparts making a similar request of the United Kingdom.114 The UN

Security Council would be informed by the Americans and the British that the forces of the Western powers “were not to engage in hostilities… but only to assist Lebanon [and

Jordan] with [their] efforts to stabilize the situation.”115 Unable to deter this intervention,

Hammarskjöld accepted it and continued prioritizing his focus on expanding and better- equipping UNOGIL.116

With the overall situation seemingly deteriorating as opposed to improving, the

UN Security Council conveyed an emergency special session of the General Assembly.

But during the time it took for this special session to be concluded, significant events yet again altered the course of the Lebanese Crisis. Crucially, the moderate Christian general

Fuad Chehab was elected as the new President of Lebanon, effectively eliminating the controversial proposition surrounding a second term for Chamoun. Furthermore, despite

Chehab’s Christian origins, he was widely trusted by Muslims for his impartiality, which led to a gradual cessation of hostilities in the rebellious regions of Lebanon.117

Additionally, the Eisenhower administration finally came to realize that “Iraq’s coup had not in fact been part of a Soviet-Egyptian takeover plan,” a discovery that was followed

113 Peter Heller, The United Nations Under Dag Hammarskjold, 1953-1961, (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 53. 114 Lawrence Tal, "Britain and the Jordan Crisis of 1958," Middle Eastern Studies 31, no. 1 (1995): 39. 115 Heller, The United Nations Under Dag Hammarskjold, 53. 116 Ibid, 54. 117 Stéphane Malsagne, Fouad Chéhab, 1902-1973: Une figure oubliée de l'histoire libanaise, (Paris: Karthala, 2011).

by American and British recognition of Qasim’s regime in Iraq.118 Moreover, UNOGIL, which by now had gained greater access to Lebanese territory and had reestablished its image, continued its observations only to determine that “no cases of infiltration had been detected” and that if any such infiltration was taking place, “its extent must be regarded as insignificant.”119

These factors led the United States to withdraw its forces from Lebanon, and the

British would decide to pull out their armed forces from Jordan. Following the British and American withdrawals, UNOGIL, with its task completed, would also be terminated, with its personnel withdrawn by December 1958. This decision would be reinforced by a letter from the new Foreign Minister of Lebanon to the President of the UN Security

Council informing him of the “renewed diplomatic relations between Lebanon and the

United Arab Republic” as well as requesting the “deletion of the Lebanese complaint from the Security Council agenda.”120

Having successfully observed the Lebanese border with the UAR to create its reports for the UN Security Council, UNOGIL can be considered to have effectively completed its mandate, satisfying the first of our parameters of success. Because its mission was primarily observational, UNOGIL benefits from having a more feasible and realistic mandate. This would be in stark contrast to the United Nations Interim Force in

Lebanon (UNIFIL), the UN’s second peacekeeping operation in the region, and its

118 Heller, The United Nations Under Dag Hammarskjold, 55. 119 United Nations Peacekeeping, “UNOGIL: Background.” 120 Gerald Curtis, "The United Nations Observation Group in Lebanon," International Organization 18, no. 4 (1964): 761.

challenging mandate of reestablishing a regime that had already collapsed.121 A comparison of UNOGIL and UNIFIL in terms of mandate completion highlights the previously-mentioned concerns regarding unattainable mandates.

As for the second parameter of success, conflict resolution, it can be challenging to pronounce a verdict. As mentioned previously in the “Defining Success” section through the example of UNOGIL and UNIFIL, there is still some debate surrounding the question of how long a peacekeeping force is supposed to be held responsible for the conclusion of the conflict. Although UNOGIL successfully accomplished its mandate and helped facilitate the conclusion of the Lebanon Crisis of 1958, the UN would be back in

Lebanon in 1978 to deal with the Israeli-Lebanese conflict as part of UNIFIL. Should the resumption of conflict in Lebanon two decades after the conclusion of UNOGIL be enough to disregard all of UNOGIL’s successes? Rather than determining a set amount of time after which a UN peacekeeping mission should no longer bear responsibility for what occurs in their targeted region, it seems more useful to address such complications on a case-by-case basis. In the previous case of UNEF I, in which conflict had also broken out again in the targeted region around two decades after the mission’s termination, the UN’s return to the region as part of UNEF II signaled UNEF I’s failure at resolving conflict between Egypt and Israel. It is important to note here that, for the sake of comparison, such a conclusion completely overlooks the Six Day War of 1967, which is obviously a greater and more immediate signal of UNEF I’s failure. However, unlike the interconnected case of UNEF I and UNEF II, although UNOGIL and UNIFIL

121 Bratt, “Assessing the success of UN peacekeeping operations,” 67.

take place in the same region, they do not represent multiple attempts at dealing with the same underlying conflict. UNOGIL was concerned with tensions between Lebanon and the UAR, even noting that the conflict between Lebanon and Israel was “not involved in the present case.”122 On the other hand, facilitating the withdrawal of Israeli Defense

Forces from Lebanon was the primary instigation behind UNIFIL’s formation. Egypt and

Syria, the two states that had formed the United Arab Republic from 1958 to 1961, had no direct connection with UNIFIL’s initial mandate. As such, it can be determined that

UNOGIL, by helping to resolve tensions between Lebanon and the UAR, was a success as per our parameter of conflict resolution.

As for the third parameter, UNOGIL indisputably limited the number of casualties caused by the crisis. Despite its limited initial reach, UNOGIL’s mere presence in

Lebanon helped curtail the violence by discouraging any infiltration on the Lebanese-

Syrian border that might have been taking place. After all, global opinion plays a crucial role in the post-World War II international world order, and the UAR, after publicly denying accusations of infiltration, could not very well risk the impartial UNOGIL forces discovering otherwise and revealing so to the rest of the world. Although there are differing claims regarding the amount of infiltration that occurred after UNOGIL’s deployment, it “does seem clear that the Group at least served to make infiltration more clandestine and consequently small in both quantity and type of arms.”123 Therefore,

UNOGIL, by reducing the quantity of arms coming into the region as well as by

122 United Nations Peacekeeping, “UNOGIL: Background.” 123 Curtis, "The United Nations Observation Group in Lebanon," 762.

restraining the number of infiltrations that could potentially lead to violent clashes between infiltrators and government forces, helped limit the crisis’ casualties.

Although UNOGIL found success in mandate completion, conflict resolution and limiting casualties, it was not as successful at containing the scope of the conflict. This is most clearly demonstrated by the United States’ unilateral intervention into Lebanon that

“greatly minimized” the contributions made by UNOGIL.124 Perhaps it is unfair to place all the blame for this intervention upon UNOGIL. After all, if a permanent member of the

Security Council decides to get unilaterally involved in a state where the UN already has a peacekeeping operation, then the responsibility for limiting the actions of that permanent member should theoretically fall upon the Security Council. UNOGIL by itself, in spite of Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld’s personal reservations regarding

American involvement, did not have enough power or influence to dissuade the superpower from intervening unilaterally. Although this American military intervention was of a limited scale, especially compared to other such American initiatives, the fact remains that UNOGIL was unable to prevent the expansion of the crisis that occurred as a result of a new, powerful belligerent entering the conflict. As such, due to succeeding at the first three parameter but failing at conflict containment, UNOGIL can be classified as moderately successful.

124 Ibid.

4) UNYOM (1963-1964)

The UN’s fourth peacekeeping venture into the Middle East was the United

Nations Yemen Observation Mission (UNYOM). Established in June of 1963 by the UN

Security Council’s resolution 179, UNYOM was tasked with monitoring Egypt and Saudi

Arabia’s involvement in the North Yemen Civil War. This civil war in North Yemen, which lasted from 1962 to 1970, pit the royalist supporters of the Mutawakkilite

Kingdom of Yemen against the republican supporters of the Yemen Arab Republic. The war began a week after the death of Mutawakkilite Iman Ahmed bin Yahya when

Colonel Abdullah al-Sallal, who had been the commander of the royal guard, led a coup d’état against Yahya’s son and successor Iman Muhammad Al-Badr, shelling the residence of this newly crowned monarch. However, Al-Badr managed to escape to the

Saudi Arabian border and gathered the support of northern Shia tribesmen so as to regain control of North Yemen, initiating a full-scale civil war in the country.125

From the very beginning, this conflict attracted significant international attention.

Saudi Arabia and Jordan, seeking to preserve their own monarchical regimes, provided significant support to the royalist forces.126 On the other hand, the United Arab Republic, which remained Egypt’s official designation at this time in spite of Syria’s secession from the UAR following the 1961 Syrian coup d’état, provided the pro-Nasser republican

125 Kenneth Pollack, Arabs at War: Military Effectiveness, 1948–1991, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 53. 126 Michael Brecher, and Jonathan Wilkenfel, A Study of Crisis, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 324.

forces with both military supplies and Egyptian troops.127 The Soviet Union would also support the republican forces by providing them with warplanes and other military arms.128 The UAR’s support for the republicans would motivate another of its enemies,

Israel, to provide support to the loyalists.129 The situation was further complicated by the fact that the Yemen Arab Republic claimed that all of Yemen, including the British- controlled Federation and Protectorate of South Arabia, rightfully belonged to it, which incited the United Kingdom to clandestinely support the royalists with financial and military assistance.130

With various foreign powers intervening with the conflict in Yemen, the royalists and republicans began accusing each other of being nothing more than puppets of Saudi

Arabi and the UAR respectively. At the suggestion of King Hussein of Jordan, UN

Secretary-General U Thant started considering the formation of a UN observational force to ascertain the level of foreign interference taking place in Yemen.131 Thant and Ralph

Bunche, who had become UN Under-Secretary for Special Political Affairs, managed to convince Saudi Arabia and the UAR to disengage from the conflict. As part of this disengagement pact, the Saudis agreed to terminate all military aid going to the royalists and disallow them the use of Saudi Arabian territory. This would occur concurrently with the withdrawal of Egyptian troops from Yemen. Soon after this agreement came into being, the aforementioned resolution 179 was passed by the UN Security Council,

127 Stanley Sandler, Ground Warfare: The International Encyclopedia, (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2002), 977. 128 Ibid. 129 Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, The Israeli Connection: Who Israel Arms and Why, (New York: Pantheon, 1997), 17. 130 Ibid. 131 “UNYOM: Background,” United Nations Peacekeeping, peacekeeping.un.org/mission/past/unyombackgr.html

officially creating UNYOM to assist with and supervise the Saudi and Egyptian disengagement.

UNYOM’s task proved quite challenging, especially in light of the fact that the

“function and authority of UNYOM… [was] considerably more limited than in the case of other United Nations observation missions.”132 After all, unlike with most UN observation missions, there was no ceasefire agreement in place for the operation to oversee. Additionally, in spite of all of its attempts, UNYOM would be unable to actually facilitate Saudi and Egyptian disengagement from Yemen. In his first report, the

Secretary-General would note that in spite of each side’s willingness to cooperate with

UNYOM, they remained hesitant about completing their own side of the agreement before the other side did so.133 With neither side willing to be the first to compromise, both Saudi Arabia and the UAR would remain significantly involved in the Yemeni crisis for the remainder of UNYOM’s existence.134 Even after UNYOM would have to be terminated due to financial reasons in 1964, Saudi and Egyptian interference in the North

Yemen Civil War would continue.135 Furthermore, even its strictly observational mandate proved difficult to fulfill becuase most traffic could only be observed by day even though, for reasons relating to desert climate, it is typical for travelers in the region to move by night.136 As such, due to its inability to facilitate foreign disengagement from

132 Ibid. 133 Ibid. 134 Brecher, and Wilkenfel, A Study of Crisis, 324. 135 Ibid. 136 United Nations Peacekeeping, “UNYOM: Background.”

Yemen and its difficulties with observing and reporting on the situation, it can be concluded that UNYOM failed to achieve its mandate.

UNYOM was similarly unsuccessful in regard to our other three parameters of success. With foreign interference in the North Yemen Civil War continuing even after

UNYOM’s deployment and the war itself continuing for years after UNYOM’s termination, it is clear that UNYOM was unable to resolve the conflict. With the civil war continuing without hindrance, UNYOM can be said to have failed at limiting the number of casualties as well. Lastly, UNYOM was not able to prevent the expansion of the crisis either. Because the observational mission was dispatched at the Saudi Arabian-Yemeni border only and not at the border between Yemen and the British-controlled Federation of South Arabia, it was unable to deter the British from clandestinely supplying the royalist forces.137 Other than material assistance, the United Kingdom would also provide the royalists with “foreign experts to train and direct their forces,” further expanding the scope of the conflict. Therefore, due to its inability at satisfying all four of our parameters of success, UNYOM can be classified as a failure.

137 Clive Jones, Britain and the Yemen Civil War, 1962-1965: Ministers, Mercenaries and Mandarins, (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2004).

5) UNEF II (1973-1979)

The outbreak of yet another war between Egypt and Israel in 1973 led to the establishment of a second United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF II) to supervise the post-war ceasefire. The 1973 Arab-Israeli War is also known as the Yom Kippur War since it began after a joint surprise attack on Israeli positions by a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria on Yom Kippur, which is the holiest day in Judaism. Some of the

Arab states that contributed troops to this invasion force included Jordan, Iraq, Saudi

Arabia, Libya, Tunisia, Kuwait, Algeria, Pakistan and Morocco.138 Even Cuba139 and

North Korea140 sent troops to fight against the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Additionally, both the United States and the Soviet Union initiated substantial resupply initiatives so as to support Israel and the Arab coalition respectively, bringing the two superpowers to the brink of a nuclear confrontation.141

The invasion began on October 6th with Egyptian forces attacking Israeli positions in the Suez Canal and Sinai Peninsula region, and Syrian forces attacking the IDF in the

Golan Heights. Despite initial success, the Arab coalition was eventually pushed back by successful Israeli counteroffensives, pushing deep into Syrian territory in the north, and trapping the Egyptian Third Army and the city of Suez in the south. Although the UN

138 P.R. Kumaraswamy, Revisiting the Yom Kippur War, (New York: Routledge, 2000), 60. 139 Louis Perez, Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 377. 140 Saad el-Shazly, The Crossing of the Suez, (Washington D.C.: American Mideast Research, 1986), 83. 141 William Quandt, Peace Process: American Diplomacy and the Arab–Israeli Conflict Since 1967, (Berkeley: University of California Press, (2005), 104.

Security Council met multiple times to try and contain the conflict, it was unable to reach a decision due to the opposing positions of the two superpowers and the war continued. It took until October 25th for the non-aligned members of the Security Council, namely

Guinea, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Panama, Peru, Sudan and Yugoslavia, and the

Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim to work out a resolution calling for the establishment of UNEF II.142 Their proposal, which eventually became the Security Council’s resolution 340, called for an immediate ceasefire between the two sides and a return to the “positions occupied by them at 1650 hours GMT on 22 October 1973.”143

So as to ensure that the UNEF II taskforce arrived in the area of conflict as soon as possible, the Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim decided to move Austrian, Finnish and

Swedish serving with the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) immediately to Egypt. These units arrived on October 26th and were later joined by an

Irish company, and together these four contingents helped defuse a highly volatile situation.144 With the aforementioned emergency measures enacted, troops from Canada,

Ghana, Indonesia, Nepal, Panama, Peru, Poland and Senegal soon arrived to fill up the taskforce to its authorized level.

In its initial phase, UNEF II’s primary objective was to stop the fighting and to prevent both Egyptian and Israeli troops from advancing towards each other. This was achieved by placing peacekeepers between Egyptian and Israeli front lines and by setting

142 United Nations Peacekeeping, “UNYOM: Background.” 143 S.C. Res. 340, October 25, 1973. 144 United Nations Peacekeeping, “UNYOM: Background.”

up observation posts, checkpoints and patrols. Such activities proved successful towards stabilizing the situation, with the ceasefire being observed for the most part. Although there were a small number of incidents, they were quickly resolved by the UNEF II taskforce.145 The ongoing peace discussions between Egypt and Israel were tense and volatile, sometimes proving fruitful and leading to concessions, yet at other times proving difficult and leading to a halt in negotiations.146 However, even in the periods when negotiation was broken off, the presence of the UNEF II troops ensured the sustenance of peace.147

Eventually, United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger initiated his own mediation effort and negotiated separately with the Egyptians and the Israelis in a process that became known as “shuttle diplomacy.”148 Kissinger proved successful at procuring a disengagement agreement, one that would be implemented by UNEF II. This disengagement occured in phases, with Israeli forces departing from a designated area, followed by UNEF II troops moving in, followed by a transfer of the area from UNEF II to the Egyptians.149 By 1975, with disengagement continuing, the situation in the region became more and more stable. As a result, the total strength of UNEF II was continuously decreased, although it continued playing its crucial role in the peacekeeping process.

145 Ibid. 146 Scott Sagan, "Lessons of the Yom Kippur Alert," Foreign Policy, no. 36 (1979): 177. 147 Ibid. 148 George Lenczowski, American Presidents and the Middle East, (Durham: Duke University Press, 1990), 131. 149 Ibid.

UNEF II forces remained in the region and continued implementing their buffer zones until the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty was signed in 1979. Signed under the auspices of President Jimmy Carter’s administration and in the aftermath of the 1978 Camp David

Accords, this historic agreement made Egypt the first Arab state to officially recognize

Israel, ended the state of war that had existed between Egypt and Israel since 1948, returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt and led to a normalization of relations.150 Although

Egypt, Israel and the United States intended for UNEF II forces to help facilitate this final disengagement, there was strong opposition to the treaty from the Palestine Liberation

Organization (PLO) and neighboring Arab states who accused Egypt of betrayal.151 These states encouraged their ally, the Soviet Union, to oppose any further extension to UNEF

II, and so, its mandate lapsed on 24th July, 1979. UNEF II troops had no choice but to withdraw soon afterwards.

Despite what could be perceived as a hurried withdrawal, UNEF II created an environment that was vastly more stable than the one it first encountered in 1973. Having successfully kept tensions from escalating into further conflict while the negotiations continued, UNEF II can be considered to have achieved its mandate of ensuring the ceasefire’s continuance. The actions taken by UNEF II towards that regard also had the effect of limiting the number of casualties and containing the scope of the conflict, satisfying two other parameters of a successful peacekeeping operation. Finally, UNEF

150 William Quandt, "Camp David and Peacemaking in the Middle East," Political Science Quarterly 101, no. 3 (1986): 377. 151 Kenneth Stein, Heroic Diplomacy: Sadat, Kissinger, Carter, Begin, and the Quest for Arab–Israeli Peace, (New York: Routledge, 2002), 254.

II, with the support of other actors, played a crucial role in resolving conflict between

Egypt and Israel. Although the two countries had been ardent foes since 1948, the agreements signed at the end of this conflict ushered in forty years of peace that is still ongoing today, with many believing that “Egyptian-Israeli relations are today at their highest level in history.”152 Therefore, by effectively satisfying all four of our parameters of success, UNEF II becomes the first of the Middle-Eastern UN peacekeeping operations that we have studied that can be classified as a complete success.

In spite of its successes, it must be acknowledged that UNEF II also benefited greatly from the context within which it operated. In contrast to many of the other confrontations that this paper analyzes, the Cold War powers were already intertwined with and had vested interests in this conflict before the UN peacekeepers even got involved. Additionally, although UNEF II deserves credit for keeping the peace while negotiations were taking place, it was the United States that was responsible for initiating the Camp David Accords that brought long-term peace between Egypt and Israel. If this context that UNEF II was operating in happened to be less favorable to its goals, it is unlikely that it would have achieved the level of success that it did.

152 Zena Tahhan, “Egypt-Israel relations ‘at highest level’ in history,” Al Jazeera, September 20, 2017.

6) UNDOF (1974-present)

Even though UNEF II was put in place to deal with tensions between Egypt and

Israel following the Yom Kippur War, it is important to remember that Egypt was not the only Arab country that engaged Israel during the war. Egypt’s former UAR partner Syria was the other major Arab belligerent in the war, which launched its own invasion through the Golan Heights. As previously mentioned, this attack was eventually repelled by the

Israelis, who launched their own counter-offensive deep into Syria. Syrian President

Hafez al-Assad prepared his coalition forces for a major counter-offensive to expel the

IDF from Syrian territory, but Assad began to hesitate when, the day before the offensive was set to begin, the UN Security Council imposed its first ceasefire in light of the changing situation between Israel and Egypt. Although the ceasefire did not bind the

Syrian forces, Assad could not ignore its implications. Some on the Syrian General Staff believed that the “continuation of the war would legitimize Israel’s efforts to destroy the

Egyptian Third Army” and if that happened, “Egypt would not come to Syria’s assistance when Israel turned its full might northward.”153

As a result of these implications, Assad decided to cancel the offensive and accept the ceasefire. However, in spite of the ceasefire, artillery exchanges, aerial engagements and significant skirmishes between the Israelis and the Syrians continued.154 It took

153 Abraham Rabinovich, The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East, (New York: Schocken Books, 2004), 464. 154 Jonathan Bailey, Field Artillery and Firepower, (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2004), 398.

Henry Kissinger’s aforementioned shuttle diplomacy to finally work out a military disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria on May 31st, 1974. This agreement created a buffer zone between the two opposing armies and called for the formation of a

United Nation observation force to supervise the implementation of the disengagement agreement.155 The UN Security Council adopted Resolution 350 on the very same day so as to authorize this observational force which was known as the United Nations

Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF).156 Soon after the authorization of UNDOF,

Peruvian interim commander General Briceno arrived in Damascus and assumed command of a contingent of UNTSO observers who were now being transferred over to

UNDOF. Together with other incoming peacekeepers, these observers would be deployed between Israeli and Syrian front lines so as to facilitate their disengagement.

Even though the seemingly unending deployment of UNEF II peacekeepers would come to a conclusion in 1979 after the unexpected diplomatic consequences of the

Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt, no such miraculous agreement would be worked out between Israel and Syria. Even today, the two countries are officially at war, as they have been ever since the state of Israel was established in 1948. Even though there has not been a large-scale Israeli-Syrian confrontation since the Yom Kippur War, the two militaries would continue to clash against each other in Lebanon during the

Lebanese Civil War and the 1982 Lebanon War. Furthermore, Syria still does not recognize the state of Israel and there are no official diplomatic relations between the two

155 “Report of the Secretary-General concerning the Agreement on Disengagement between Israeli and Syrian Forces,” May 30, 1974, History of the United Nations, UN Digital Library. 156 S.C. Res. 350, May 31, 1974.

countries. More recently, the ongoing Syrian Civil War and Israeli involvement in it has further complicated the situation.157 In light of this perpetually tense atmosphere and the lack of serious peace agreements, UNDOF has remained in the area to maintain the ceasefire between Israeli and Syrian forces. UNDOF has continued to do this in spite of the ceasefire violations taking place during the Syrian Civil War.158

This lengthy presence of UNDOF in the region suggests that it has not been very effective at satisfying our success parameter of conflict resolution. Yet, in spite of this failure, UNDOF has mostly achieved its mandate of keeping Israeli and Syrian forces separated. Even though violent conflicts in Lebanon and Syria eventually had a destabilizing effect on the region, UNDOF’s role in keeping the Israelis and Syrians separated prevented the conflicts from expanding into something much worse, satisfying two other success parameters of conflict containment and limiting casualties. Therefore, having failed at permanently resolving the Israeli-Syrian conflict but having succeeded at achieving its mandate, limiting casualties and containing the conflict, UNDOF can be deemed to be a moderate success.

157 Bethan McKernan, “Israel ‘giving secret aid to Syrian rebels’ report says,” The Independent, June 19, 2017. 158 “UNDOF,” United Nations Peacekeeping, peacekeeping.un.org/en/mission/undof.

7) UNIFIL (1978-present)

The next peacekeeping operation to be initiated in the Middle East was the aforementioned United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) which was established in 1978, initially so as to facilitate an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory. Ever since the conclusion of the last UN operation in Lebanon, UNOGIL, the country had been experiencing a period of relative calm and prosperity, only for it all to be shattered by the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975. The civil war had its roots in the Black September conflict of 1970 between the Kingdom of Jordan and the

PLO. The Jordanian Armed Forces achieved a military victory, driving Palestinian militants out of Jordan and into southern Lebanon. This militant relocation inflamed already-volatile sectarian tensions in the country, leading to the outbreak of a full-scale civil war in 1975. The war initially represented a three-way confrontation pitting a coalition of the PLO, the Druze and other Muslim militias against the forces of Christian

Lebanese groups as well as the ever-weakening national government. 159 Existing political loyalties began to shift as the civil war became increasingly sectarian in its violence.

In early 1976, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad brokered a truce between the opposing sides while clandestinely moving Syrian troops into Lebanon so as to bring

159 Mattia Toaldo, The Origins of the US War on Terror: Lebanon, Libya and American Intervention in the Middle East, (New York: Routledge, 2013), 45.

both the PLO and Lebanon under Syrian influence and prevent Lebanese collapse.160

However, this intervention did little to stop the escalation of the civil war. Later that year, newly-elected Lebanese President Elias Sarkis requested Syria to officially intervene in support of the Christian forces, now pitting Syria against the PLO and the leftist militias.161 Israel also started getting involved around this time, sending weapons, tanks and military advisors to the Maronite Christian militias, ironically putting the old foes of

Israel and Syria on the same side.162

To deal with the crisis, representatives from Lebanon, Syria, the PLO, Saudi

Arabia, Egypt and Kuwait got together at the 1976 Arab League summit at Riyadh. The summit led to the Riyadh Accords which called for the PLO to respect Lebanese sovereignty and gave Syria the authorization to keep troops in Lebanon to form the bulk of a multinational Arab Deterrent Force (ADF) meant to restore stability to the region.

However, the other Arab countries that formed the ADF soon lost interest, leaving Syria back in de facto sole control but now with an additional layer of diplomatic cover due to the ADF’s status as a multinational peacekeeping force.163 At this point in the crisis, the conflict entered a phase of uneasy quiet, but the situation began to deteriorate yet again as

PLO combatants, who had left Lebanon as per the Riyadh Accords, began infiltrating back into the country. As a result, the country became effectively divided, with the PLO

160 Fred Lawson, "Syria's Intervention in the Lebanese Civil War, 1976: A Domestic Conflict Explanation," International Organization 38, no. 3 (1984): 451. 161 Arthur Weisburd, Use of Force: The Practice of States Since World War II, (University Park: Penn State Press, 1997). 162 Eyal Zisser, "The Maronites, Lebanon and the State of Israel: Early Contacts," Middle Eastern Studies 31, no. 4 (1995): 890. 163 Eric Thompson, "Will Syria Have to Withdraw from Lebanon?," Middle East Journal 56, no. 1 (2002): 75.

and Muslim militias gaining control of the south and the Christian forces maintaining their position in the north.

Additional developments continued to have a destabilizing effect on the region.

First, the Christian forces consolidated as the Lebanese Forces, with Bashir Gemayel and his Kataeb Party having emerged as the dominant leaders. As the conflict raged on,

Gemayel continued expanding his own power and influence, putting him on a collision course with Syrian interests. In 1978, these tensions boiled over to the point of no return, and the formerly-allied Lebanese Front and Syrian Army turned on each other, initiating a sub-conflict within the Lebanese Civil War known as the Hundred Days War.164

Second, in 1977 and 1978, the PLO began crossing the border from southern Lebanon into Israel to launch a series of violent attacks on civilian targets, the most of infamous of which was the Coastal Road massacre.165 In response, the IDF launched Operation Litani, an invasion of southern Lebanon, that aimed to repel the PLO away from the border with

Israel and to bolster the Christian Lebanese forces that Israel was allied with.166

It was in this tense atmosphere that the United Nations finally got involved. The

UN Security Council’s resolutions 425 and 426 called for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon and authorized the creation of UNIFIL which was tasked with “confirming the withdrawal of Israeli forces, restoring international peace and security and assisting the Government of Lebanon in ensuring the return of its effective authority in the

164 Christopher Paul, Colin Clarke, Beth Grill, and Molly Dunigan, Paths to Victory: Detailed Insurgency Case Studies, (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 2013), 383. 165 "Arab Terrorist Raid in Israel Kills 30," The Washington Post, March 12, 1978. 166 Eyal Zisser, "The Maronites, Lebanon and the State of Israel," 890.

area.”167 The resolutions did not lead to an immediate ceasefire, and Israel continued their military operations for two further days, but the intervention of U.S. President Jimmy

Carter’s administration convinced the Israelis to change their position. President Carter had discovered that Israel was using American-made cluster bombs for offensive purposes and also passing on American weapons to Saad Haddad’s Lebanese Christian militia, both of which were violations of United States law.168 With the Carter administration threatening to notify Congress, which in turn would have led to the termination of American military aid to Israel, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin capitulated and halted the operation.169

In accordance with UN Security Council’s resolutions, Israeli forces withdrew from Lebanese territory in 1978, turning over their positions to their allies in Saad

Haddad’s South Lebanon Army (SLA). From the very beginning, the SLA had little respect for the UNIFIL peacekeepers in their country and launched deadly attacks against them.170 Palestinian militants also cared little for UNIFIL’s mandate and routinely violated the ceasefire to continue their attacks on Israel.171 Meanwhile, in the north,

Bashir Gemayel’s Lebanese Front and Camille Chamoun’s Tigers Militia began fighting over control of the Lebanese Christian faction, and the Syrians continued launching

167 Helena Cobban, The Palestinian Liberation Organization: People, Power and Politics, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 95. 168 Jimmy Carter, The Blood of Abraham: Insights into the Middle East, (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1993), 92. 169 Ibid, 93. 170 Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon, (New York: Nation Books, 2002), 138. 171 Jillian Becker, The PLO, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1984), 202.

offensives of their own.172 With tensions escalating all over yet again, the civil war entered a third phase in 1982 with the onset of another Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

With Israeli and PLO forces in southern Lebanon continuously attacking each other in clear violation of the UN ceasefire, the UN Security Council convened on June

5th, 1982 and passed resolution 508 calling for “all the parties to the conflict to cease immediately and simultaneously all military activities within Lebanon and across the

Lebanese-Israeli border.”173 However, the UN’s pleas fell on deaf ears, and the IDF, with assistance from Israel’s Maronite allies, launched Operation Peace for Galilee the very next day. This Israeli invasion of Lebanon successfully pushed PLO forces back towards

Beirut, and the ensuing Siege of Beirut incited another UN Security Council resolution calling for Israel’s withdrawal.174 This resolution was ignored just as the last one was.

Furthermore, even UNIFIL positions were overrun, primarily by the Israeli-allied SLA.

With casualties rising due to the siege as well as Israeli air raids over Beirut, international pressure upon the IDF began to intensify. Although the United States continued politically supporting Israel, going so far as to veto certain UN withdrawal resolutions because they made “a transparent attempt to preserve the PLO as a viable political force,”175 President Ronald Reagan nonetheless pressured Israeli Prime Minister

Menachem Begin to end the attack.176 Reagan’s special envoy to the Middle East, Philip

Habib, was sent in to negotiate a truce calling for Israeli as well as Palestinian withdrawal

172 Paul, Clarke, Grill, and Dunigan, Paths to Victory, 383. 173 S.C. Res. 508, June 5, 1982. 174 S.C. Res. 509, June 6, 1982. 175 Bernard Nossiter, “U.N. Lebanon Plan is Vetoed by U.S.,” The New York Times, June 27, 1982. 176 Edmund Morris, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan, (New York: Random House, 1999), 464.

from Lebanon.177 Additionally, this truce authorized the Multinational Force in Lebanon

(MNF) composed of American, British, French and Italian troops so as to oversee the disengagement. The presence of this new multinational force did little to stabilize the situation, and the assassination of Israeli ally and Lebanese President Bashir Gemayel as well as the ensuing massacres of Sabra and Shatila served to reignite the conflict.178

Additionally, the Islamic Republic of Iran had established a foothold in Syrian-controlled

Lebanon from which the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) “founded, financed, trained and equipped Hezbollah to operate as a proxy arm” for Iran.179 Militants, inspired by or potentially working for Hezbollah, went on to launch a series of terrorist attacks against American and Western interests in Lebanon, including the U.S. Embassy, MNF military facilities as well as individual Westerners.180 In light of these attacks, the MNF withdrew, leaving the conflict in Lebanon to rage on.

By 1985, Israel had partially withdrawn from Lebanon as per the truce negotiated by Habib, yet it retained control of some areas in southern Lebanon. Through guerrilla warfare, Hezbollah and other Shia military groups continued resisting this Israeli occupation for the next fifteen years.181 The Lebanese government and the United

Nations continued calling for Israeli withdrawal from the occupied zone, but Israel refused, maintaining that the occupation was a temporary arrangement governed by

177 David Shipler, “Cease-fire in border fighting declared by Israel and PLO,” The New York Times, July 25, 1981. 178 Nabil Mohamad, “Remembering the Sabra and Shatila massacre 35 years on,” Al Jazeera, September 16, 2017. 179 Timothy Geraghty, Peacekeepers at War: Beirut 1983—The Marine Commander Tells His Story, (Lincoln: Potomac Books, 2009), 165. 180 Ibid. 181 Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–1998, (New York: Vintage, 1999).

security concerns.182 In the meantime, conflict between Lebanese militants, Syria and the

PLO broke out yet again in the regions of Lebanon from which Israel withdrew. Due to the resulting power vacuum, Lebanese Armed Forces Commanding General Michel

Aoun rose to power as acting Prime Minister of Lebanon. Aoun received significant support from Iraq due to Saddam Hussein’s desire to counter Hezbollah’s rising influence and to open up proxy fronts for the ongoing Iran-Iraq War.183 His appointment was controversial to begin with since he was a Maronite Christian, yet the unwritten National

Pact that laid the foundation of the Lebanese state stipulated that the Prime Minister of the Republic should always be a Sunni Muslim 184 As such, General Aoun clashed against Syria as well as his country’s Muslim populace, inciting further conflict in

Lebanon. All these developments continued to hamper UNIFIL’s efforts in the region, but the UN Security Council nonetheless continued extending the operation’s mandate.185

The Arab League Summit of 1989 signaled the beginning of the end and led to the formation of a special committee run by Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Morocco tasked with bringing an end to the conflict. They proposed a peace plan, the Taif Agreement, that called for a ceasefire, reasserted Lebanese authority in southern Lebanon, outlined a timeline for Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon and elected a new President.186 Although the Lebanese parliament, weary from decades of war, approved of the peace agreement,

General Aoun refuse to renounce his power. Aoun launched an offensive against those

182 “UNIFIL: Background,” United Nations Peacekeeping, unifil.unmissions.org/unifil-background 183 Nora Boustany, "Doctrine, Dreams Drive Saddam Hussein," The Washington Post, August 12, 1990. 184 Thibaut Jaulin, "Citizenship, Migration and Confessional Democracy in Lebanon," Middle East Law and Governance 6, no. 3 (2014): 250. 185 United Nations Peacekeeping, “UNIFIL: Background.” 186 Laura Etheredge, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, (New York: Rosen Publishing, 2011), 151.

who questioned his authority, but with Saddam Hussein’s attention now focused on

Kuwait, Iraqi supplies to Aoun’s forces dwindled.187 In late 1990, Syria and its Lebanese allies launched a major military operation against Aoun’s stronghold at the Presidential

Palace, forcing Aoun to flee into exile in France. The United States, in return for Syrian support against Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War, convinced Israel not to intervene as

Syrian forces approached Beirut.188

And so, with Aoun’s exile, the Lebanese Civil War finally came to an end, at least officially. But with the war ending with Syria effectively occupying most of Lebanon and

Israel occupying southern Lebanon, the Lebanese people continued to resist both occupiers and tensions remained high.189 As such, UNIFIL continued operating in the region, losing several UN troops and peacekeepers to the violence around them.190

Hezbollah, now receiving support from Syria as well as Iran, emerged as the dominant power in southern Lebanon and united the other anti-Israel Shia Muslim movements behind them. Israel launched multiple operations into southern Lebanon during this post- civil war conflict, even shelling UNIFIL forces and civilians such as in the Qana massacre,191 but the IDF was unable to completely eradicate Hezbollah.192

187 Fisk, Pity the Nation, 643. 188 William Harris, Faces of Lebanon: Sects, Wars, and Global Extensions, (Princeton: Markus Weiner Publishers, 1996), 260 189 Charles Richards, "Hezbollah makes explosive return: Israel's proxy militia under fire in south Lebanon," The Independent, August 18, 1993; “Lebanese mark uprising against Syrian domination,” Deseret News, March 13, 2011. 190 United Nations Peacekeeping, “UNIFIL: Background.” 191 Robert Fisk, “Massacre in sanctuary,” The Independent, April 19, 1996. 192 T.P. Najem, "Palestinian-Israeli Conflict and South Lebanon," Economic and Political Weekly 35, no. 46 (2000): 4006.

Due to the escalation of the conflict and the rising number of casualties, Israelis became more and more disillusioned with their country’s occupation of Lebanon.193 As such, newly-elected Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak decided to initiate an IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon. The Israeli delegation informed UN Secretary-

General Kofi Annan of their intention to “withdraw its forces present in Lebanon” by

July 2000 in “full accordance with Security Council resolutions 425 and 426 (1978).”194

The Force Commander of UNIFIL, Ghanaian Lieutenant General Seth Obeng, as well as the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Norwegian diplomat

Terje Rød-Larsen, met with the governments of Israel, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan and Syria and representatives of the PLO to implement and confirm the Israeli withdrawal.195 The

UN cartographer, assisted by UNIFIL, marked up what would become known as the Blue

Line to keep Israeli and Lebanese forces separated.

Even though there were several violations of this Blue Line, the situation in southern Lebanon had nonetheless changed dramatically. In his report to the Security

Council, Secretary-General Annan praised the enormous improvements but warned that the potential for reignited conflict remained, suggesting that UNIFIL should maintain its presence in the region.196 As such, the UNIFIL force was reinforced in phases so that it could carry out its changing responsibilities. At this point, Secretary-General Annan believed that two of UNIFIL’s mandates had been achieved: it had confirmed the

193 Ibid, 4009. 194 David Levy, “Letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan,” April 16, 2000, Israel’s Foreign Policy: Historical Documents, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 195 United Nations Peacekeeping, “UNIFIL: Background.” 196 Kofi Annan, “Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon,” July 20, 2000, History of the United Nations, UN Digital Library.

withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon, and it had assisted, as much as it could, in bringing Lebanese authority back to the vacated areas.197 However, the restoration of peace and security was yet to be achieved, and the best UNIFIL could do at that moment was to continue maintaining the ceasefire along the Blue Line.

In spite of the establishment of the Blue Line, the IDF and Hezbollah continued fighting each other, with Hezbollah claiming that the disputed Shebaa Farms territory in

Israeli-occupied Golan Heights belonged not to Syria but to Lebanon and thus, the Israeli withdrawal was incomplete.198 In the meantime, as Israel had hoped,199 the IDF’s withdrawal eliminated much of the justification Syria had for remaining in Lebanon, increasing calls for the termination of its own occupation of Lebanon, especially after the death of Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad.200 After former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassination in February of 2005, prominent Lebanese leaders placed the blame on

Syria. This triggered the Cedar Revolution, a series of protests and demonstration that demanded Syrian withdrawal and an investigation into the assassination. Under pressure from the West and the United Nations, Syria complied and withdrew all its soldiers by the end of April.201 The UN Security Council established an International Independent

Investigation Commission to examine the Hariri’s murder, and its findings indicated that

Syrian and Lebanese intelligence services were behind the assassination.202

197 United Nations Peacekeeping, “UNIFIL: Background.” 198 Yaniv Berman, “Shebba farms – nub of conflict,” Ynet News, October 8, 2006. 199 Najem, "Palestinian-Israeli Conflict and South Lebanon," 4008. 200 Bassem Mroue, "Lebanese mark uprising against Syria's domination," Deseret News, March 13, 2011. 201 "Syria begins Lebanon withdrawal," BBC News, March 12, 2005. 202 Warren Hoge, "Syria Involved in Killing Lebanon's Ex-Premier, U.N. Report Says," The New York Times, October 20, 2005.

Even though this withdrawal indicated an improvement of the situation in northern Lebanon, tensions in southern Lebanon rose high enough to initiate the 2006

Lebanon War between the IDF and Hezbollah’s paramilitaries. In his report on UNIFIL,

Secretary-General Annan asserted that this onset of new hostilities “radically changed the context” in which UNIFIL operated. Despite being severely impeded by the ongoing conflict, UNIFIL forces continued running military observations and assisted with humanitarian initiatives.203 In response to the war, the UN Security Council passed resolution 1701 which called for the disarmament of Hezbollah, the withdrawal of IDF from Lebanese territory, and the redeployment of the Lebanese Armed Forces and an expanded UNIFIL into the region.204 UNIFIL now had its mandate enlarged and was awarded the ability to use force to resist violence by other parties.205

As the war began to wrap up, UNIFIL forces moved in to monitor the cessation of hostilities and to provide humanitarian assistance to the Lebanese population. Secretary-

General Annan visited the region himself so as to ensure the implementation of UNSC resolution 1701 and to secure the commitment of several neighboring troop-contributing countries.206 Annan praised the “significant progress” made by UNIFIL in facilitating and coordinating the IDF’s withdrawal and the Lebanese Armed Forces’ deployment.207

203 United Nations Peacekeeping, “UNIFIL: Background.” 204 S.C. Res. 1701, August 11, 2006. 205 "Lebanon: UN peacekeepers lay out rules of engagement, including use of force," UN News, October 3, 2006. 206 United Nations Peacekeeping, “UNIFIL: Background.” 207 Kofi Annan, “Report of the Secretary-General on the implementation of Security Council resolution 1701,” September 12, 2006, History of the United Nations, UN Digital Library.

Nonetheless, Annan warned that “in order to prevent a resurgence of violence and bloodshed, the underlying causes of the conflict in the region must be addressed.”208

Since then, UNIFIL has remained along its positions on the Blue Line. The situation remains tense, with both sides continuing to violate the ceasefire line as they always have.209 Additionally, the Maritime Task Force (MTF) was set up as the naval component of UNIFIL, tasked with assisting the Lebanese Navy with preventing illegal arms shipments intended for Hezbollah. The Tripartite Forum was also set up so as to improve communications between UNIFIL, the IDF and the Lebanese Armed Forces and hopefully lead to a peace agreement. However, such an agreement has yet to be reached and Lebanon, and the region at large, continues to struggle with economic and political instability.210

This examination shows that, in spite of UNIFIL’s decades-long presence in

Lebanon and its genuine efforts at promoting peace, violence has raged on. Although certain aspects of UNIFIL’s mandate were achieved, the attainment of peace and security proved unachievable. Additionally, throughout UNIFIL’s deployment, peace agreements were ignored, casualties increase, and other belligerents got drawn into the war. All of this suggests that, for all four of our parameters of success, UNIFIL can be regarded as a failure.

208 Ibid. 209 Andrew Carey, "Israel begins operation to 'expose and thwart' Hezbollah tunnels," CNN, December 4, 2018. 210 Fadi Tawil, "Protests spread across Lebanon over proposed new taxes," The Washington Post, October 17, 2019.

8) UNIIMOG (1988-1991)

The next United Nations excursion into the Middle East, was the United Nations

Iran-Iraq Military Observer Group (UNIIMOG). It was initiated in 1988 as a response to the Iran-Iraq War, which had then been going on for almost eight years. The war broke out soon after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran overthrew the Western-aligned monarchy of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and replaced it with a theocratic Islamic republic led by Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein hoped to take advantage of this post-revolutionary chaos to launch an invasion of Iran so as to annex some of its oil-rich provinces, settle historical border disputes and establish

Iraq as the dominant power of the Persian Gulf.211 Saddam also hoped that Iran’s subjugation would dissuade Iraqi Shia Muslims from rebelling against the Ba’athist government.212 However, Saddam had underestimated his enemy, and Iranian forces managed to halt and repel the Iraqi invasion.213 Although the United Nations urged Iran and Iraq to settle their disagreements through peaceful means, the war continued, and the use of proxy forces further exasperated the conflict.

By 1987, war weariness began to plague both belligerents and much of the regional and international community. UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar implemented a new diplomatic initiative to work out a peace settlement, enlisting the

211 Kaveh Farrokh, Iran at War: 1500–1988, (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2011). 212 Ibid. 213 Afshin Molavi, The Soul of Iran: A Nation's Journey to Freedom, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005), 152.

assistance of the UN Security Council. Their deliberations produced UNSC resolution

598, which called for an immediate ceasefire, a withdrawal of all forces to internationally-recognized borders and an exchange of prisoners.214 Iran formally accepted resolution 598 on July 17th, 1988, with Iraq doing the same on the following day. Secretary-General Cuéllar met repeatedly with representatives from Iran and Iraq to work out the implementation of the resolution, eventually authorizing the establishment of UNIIMOG. With the ceasefire itself set for August 20th, UNIIMOG was assigned “to verify, confirm and supervise the ceasefire and withdrawal.”215

UNIIMOG forces were deployed along the ceasefire lines where teams of military observers conducted mobile patrols, with a daily average of 64 patrols having operated around the clock.216 Although UNIIMOG received frequent complaints regarding ceasefire violations in the beginning, the number soon declined as the ceasefire became more and more stabilized. In cases where violations were encountered, incidents were minor and UNIIMOG generally managed to convince the belligerents to restore the status quo.217

The situation in the area began to alter following the Iraqi Army’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait in 1990. Although this development complicated the efforts being initiated by UNIIMOG, the situation in the Iran-Iraq border remained stable. By the end of September that year, the withdrawal of Iraqi and Iranian forces to internationally-

214 S.C. Res. 598, July 20, 1987. 215 Ibid. 216 “UNIIMOG: Background,” United Nations Peacekeeping, peacekeeping.un.org/sites/default/files/past/uniimogbackgr.html 217 Ibid.

recognized borders was nearly complete. However, UNIIMOG’s capacity to carry out its responsibilities would be seriously hindered following the passage of UNSC resolution

678 which authorized the use of “all necessary means” by a multinational coalition to push Iraq out of Kuwait.218 As hostilities broke out between Iraq and the American-led coalition, UNIIMOG personnel had to be moved from Baghdad to either Iran or Cyprus.

Despite these developments, Secretary-General Cuéllar recommended that the UN

Security Council renew UNIIMOG’s mandate as its task seemed very close to completion.

In early 1991, although the Gulf War kept UNIIMOG forces out of most of Iraq, they continued their attempts at implementing the ceasefire resolution. Once complete withdrawal had been achieved and verified by February, the Secretary-General recommended that no action be taken to extend UNIIMOG’s mandate and that it be replaced by civilian offices assigned with completing the remaining political tasks.219 The

Security Council complied, which led to the termination of UNIIMOG’s mandate on

February 28th. The civilian offices suggested by Cuéllar remained behind to assist with

UNIIMOG-related matters, but these offices too were phased out by the end of 1992.220

Because UNIIMOG successfully completed its mandate of facilitating disengagement between the two belligerents, our first parameter of success is satisfied.

Furthermore, the situation in the region improved significantly following UNIIMOG’s

218 S.C. Res. 678, November 29, 1990. 219 United Nations Peacekeeping, “UNIIMOG: Background.” 220 Ibid.

deployment. Although Iran and Iraq had already grown weary of war at that point, the fact remains that UNIIMOG’s presence helped limit the number of casualties due to ceasefire violations, prevented the further intervention of foreign powers in the area and facilitated peace between the two countries. In doing so, it satisfies the other three parameters of success as well, indicating that UNIIMOG can be classified as a successful peacekeeping operation.

9) UNIKOM (1991-2003)

The Gulf War not only impacted the work being done by UNIIMOG, but also led to the establishment of its own UN peacekeeping operation: the United Nations Iraq-

Kuwait Observation Mission (UNIKOM). Established by the UN Security Council in

April 1991 following the Iraqi defeat at the hands of the American-led coalition,

UNIKOM was meant to monitor the demilitarized zone between Iraq and the now- liberated Kuwait to deter and report on ceasefire violations.221

As previously mentioned, the Gulf War began with Iraq’s 1990 invasion and annexation of Kuwait. There were many potential motivations behind Iraq’s action, including its inability to pay back the large amount it owed Kuwait for financial support during the Iran-Iraq War, 222 the high Kuwaiti gas production levels over OPEC limits that kept revenues low for Iraq,223 and the ongoing conspiracy surrounding Kuwait’s use of slant-drilling to access Iraqi oilfields.224 As such, Ba’athist Iraq invaded their Persian

Gulf neighbor on August 2nd, overwhelming Kuwaiti forces in a two-day operation.

The Iraqi invasion was denounced by all major world powers, including all five permanent members of the UN Security Council as well as countries traditionally considered to be Iraqi allies such as India.225 As such, the UN Security Council adopted

221 Jan Bury, "The UN Iraq-Kuwait Observation Mission," International Peacekeeping 10, no. 2 (2003): 71-88. 222 Joe Stork, and Ann Lesch, "Background to the Crisis: Why War?," Middle East Report, no. 167 (1990): 13. 223 Thomas Hayes, "Confrontation in the Gulf: The Oilfield Lying Below the Iraq-Kuwait Dispute," The New York Times, September 3, 1990. 224 Derek Gregory, The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 156. 225 David Hirst and Simon Tisdall, "Superpowers unite on Iraq," The Guardian, August 3, 1990.

resolution 660 to condemn the invasion and demand Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait. This was followed a few days later by military and economic sanctions against the Iraqi government, yet the occupation continued. Saddam even dissolved the puppet state of the

Republic of Kuwait that he had set up and outright annexed it as the 19th governate of

Iraq.226 The UN Security Council passed numerous additional resolutions to try and pressure Iraq into withdrawing, but they proved to be unsuccessful. By late 1990, the

United States issued an ultimatum to the Ba’athist regime to withdraw by January 15th,

1991 or face war.227 This ultimatum was solidified by the UN Security Council’s resolution 678 which authorized the use of “all necessary means” to compel Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait after the deadline’s passing.

Iraqi disregard for the deadline resulted in a military assault on Iraqi forces by a coalition of 35 countries led by the United States. By the end of February, coalition forces achieved a decisive victory against Iraq, liberating all of Kuwait and advancing into Iraqi territory. After entering Iraq, the coalition halted its advance and declared a ceasefire, settings it conditions through UN Security Council resolution 687. Iraq accepted the resolution’s provisions a couple days later, making the ceasefire official. A demilitarized zone (DMZ) was set up between Iraq and Kuwait, and UNIKOM was formed to monitor it.228 More specifically, UNIKOM’s mandate was to monitor the

DMZ, deter violations of the buffer zone, and to observe any hostile actions coming from

226 “Iraq proclaims Kuwait annexed,” The Journal Times, August 8, 1990. 227 Thomas Friedman, "Standoff in the Gulf; A Partial Pullout By Iraq is Feared as Deadline 'Ploy'," The New York Times, December 17, 1990. 228 “UNIKOM: Background,” United Nations Peacekeeping, peacekeeping.un.org/mission/past/unikom/background.html

either side.229 Unlike most of the previous UN peacekeeping operations in the Middle

Eastern region, UNIKOM was merely reviewed for its modalities every six months without requiring a formal extension by the Security Council in each case.230 A formal decision from the Council was still required for UNIKOM’s termination, but nonetheless, it was ensured that the operation would have an indefinite duration until its goals were achieved.

UNIKOM forces began arriving in the region in April of 1991, initially tasked with monitoring the withdrawal of Iraqi, Kuwaiti, and coalition forces. With the withdrawals completed by early May, UNIKOM established the DMZ and assumed its observational duties. Initially, UNIKOM peacekeepers were unarmed and unauthorized to use force to prevent any excursions into the DMZ.231 However, after the detection of

Iraqi intrusions into the Kuwaiti region of the DMZ, the Security Council passed resolution 806 which initiated a “phased deployment of the strengthening of UNIKOM” and expanded the peace operation’s functions to include the capacity to use force so as to prevent ceasefire violations.232

For the following decade, UNIKOM continued detecting the occasional violation, but the overall situation remained calm. However, in 2003, UNIKOM’s operations was suspended once Secretary-General Kofi Annan received notice of an American-led

229 Ibid. 230 Ibid. 231 Marrack Goulding, "The Evolution of United Nations Peacekeeping," International Affairs 69, no. 3 (1993): 451- 464. 232 S.C. Res. 806, February 5, 1993.

coalition’s intention to invade Iraq.233 Annan did not want to risk UNIKOM forces getting caught up in this new conflict. Although a limited UNIKOM presence remained in the region for the next few months, the changing situation due to the Iraq War, especially the lack of an internationally-recognized Iraqi representative, made the continuance of UNIKOM impractical. As such, Annan recommended UNIKOM’s termination to the Security Council, acknowledging that it had served as an ideal peacekeeping operation for the last decade but noting that the Iraq War had greatly altered the geopolitical landscape to the point that the DMZ to protect Kuwait from Iraq was no longer needed.234 Having accomplished the tasks of its initial mandate, UNIKOM was officially closed on October 6th, 2003.

As previously noted, this peace operation proved quite successful in the period between the Gulf War and the Iraq War. As such, it can be considered to have accomplished the tasks set out in its initial mandate. For as long it was deemed necessary, the DMZ was effectively monitored by UNIKOM forces. Additionally, intrusions were infrequent and successfully reported on by the peacekeepers. The achievement of this mandate also had the result of reducing the amount of potential confrontations between

Iraqi and Kuwaiti forces which might have led to casualties, satisfying another parameter of operational success. Assessing success becomes more complicated when considering the parameters of conflict resolution and conflict containment. The outbreak of the Iraq

War and the international coalition that it attracted suggests that UNIKOM was unable to

233 United Nations Peacekeeping, “UNIKOM: Background.” 234 Jean Allain, International Law in the Middle East: Closer to Power than Justice, (Farnham: Ashgate, 2004), 157.

prevent the expansion of the conflict in Iraq. Arguably, one could say that it was the Gulf

War that deteriorated American-Iraqi relations and created the conditions for the Iraq

War to be possible. However, the motivations behind the American-led invasion had no direct connection with the situation in Kuwait, 235 and neither of the Gulf states that

UNIKOM was monitoring bore direct responsibility for instigating the Bush

Administration’s actions.236 Therefore, it is fair to conclude that UNIKOM was successful in containing the original Iraqi-Kuwaiti conflict and that the American actions that initiated the Iraq War were outside of UNIKOM’s jurisdiction.

Even though the findings so far satisfy three of our indicators of success, it is hard to conclude that UNIKOM was equally successful with the parameter of conflict resolution. The infrequent yet multiple Iraqi violations of the DMZ suggest that the

Ba’athist regime still resented the outcome of the Gulf War. Furthermore, Kuwait was not quick to forgive Iraqi actions either, especially in light of the colossal oil fires and oil spills initiated by Iraqi military forces as part of their scorched earth retreat policy from

Kuwait237 as well as continued Ba’athist claims that Iraq held a historical claim to

Kuwaiti territory.238 As such, relations between the two countries remained tense and the continuance of the DMZ was deemed necessary. When the Security Council decided in

2003 that the DMZ was no longer necessary, it was not because long-lasting peace had been achieved between the Iraqi and Kuwaiti governments, but because the United States

235 Paul Surlis, "The War in Iraq," The Furrow 54, no. 11 (2003): 597. 236 Faiz Shakir, "Bush Insists 'I Didn't Want War,' Overwhelming Evidence Suggests Otherwise," ThinkProgress, March 21, 2006. 237 “Timeline: 20 years of major oil spills,” ABC News, May 6, 2010. 238 Stork, and Lesch, "Background to the Crisis: Why War?," 13.

had deposed the Ba’athist regime that had posed a threat to Kuwait. Relations between

Iraq and Kuwait have been improving following Saddam’s removal, but since this peace was achieved by foreign military forces deposing the leader of one of the belligerent states, it can hardly be considered an ideal example of peaceful conflict resolution. As such, it can be concluded that UNIKOM was successful at achieving its mandate, limiting casualties and containing the conflict, yet it failed at conflict resolution, resulting in its classification as a moderately successful peacekeeping operation.

10) UNSMIS (2012)

Finally, this paper’s focus shifts upon the most recent UN operation in the Middle

East, which was initiated as a response to the ongoing Syrian Civil War. This conflict began after discontent with the Syrian government led by President Bashar al-Assad intensified during the 2011 Arab Spring protests. Assad’s violent suppression of these protests led to the initiation of armed conflict, with multiple rebellious factions forming to counter the Syrian regime. Some these factions include: the Sunni opposition groups, such as the Free Syrian Army; the Salafi jihadist groups, including the al-Nusra Front; the

Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF); and the notorious Islamic State of Iraq and the

Levant (ISIL).239

Such opposition groups, with the exception of ISIL, found themselves receiving support from various international and regional powers, including the United States, the

United Kingdom, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.240 On the other hand, the

Syrian Armed Forces received significant support from Russia, Iran and Hezbollah so that Assad may maintain control over his country.241 To respond to the situation, the UN

Security Council passed UNSC resolution 2043 which established the United Nations

Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS) as part of former UN Secretary-General and

Joint Special Envoy of the United Nations and the League of Arab States Kofi Annan’s

239 Mekki Uludag, "Syrian Civil War: Important Players and Key Implications – A Factsheet," Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses 7, no. 7 (2015): 4-10. 240 Ibid. 241 Ibid.

six-point plan to stop the escalating violence in Syria.242 The plan, which the Syrian government initially agreed to, called for the “cessation of armed violence in all its forms by all parties” in the region as well as for cooperation with the Special Envoy, dispersion of humanitarian assistance, release of “arbitrarily detained persons,” respect for the right to demonstrate peacefully and freedom of movement for journalists in Syria.243 As such,

UNSMIS’s mandate was to monitor the aforementioned cessation of armed violence by all parties and to support the full implementation of Annan’s six-point peace plan.

After it was established in April of 2012, UNSMIS was rapidly deployed into

Syria by the end of May, establishing a presence in Damascus, Aleppo and other critical

Syrian cities. Although the operation achieved some success at addressing political, civil and human-rights concerns,244 UNSMIS’s capabilities were hampered from the very beginning due to several factors. With the country still dealing with violent conflicts, security concerns prevent UNSMIS forces from deploying into all of areas they intending to enter. Additionally, anti-government forces, critical of the deficiencies of the protection provided by UNSMIS, began to grow hostile to the presence of the peacekeepers.245 Although UNSMIS did what it could to explain its limited role and contain public expectations, the fact remained that many desperate Syrian had believed that the deployment of UN forces would have completely ended hostilities and they were

242 S.C. Res. 2043, April 21, 2012. 243 “Text of Annan’s six-point peace plan for Syria,” Reuters, April 4, 2012. 244 Esmira Jafarova, "Solving the Syrian Knot: Dynamics within the UN Security Council and Challenges to Its Effectiveness," Connections 13, no. 2 (2014): 25-50. 245 “UNSMIS: Background.” United Nations Peacekeeping. peacekeeping.un.org/mission/past/unsmis/background.shtml.

be sorely disappointed to find out otherwise.246 Just as UNSMIS’s public image began to suffer, the violence in the country began to escalate, increasing with it the risk posed to

UNSMIS peacekeepers. Intended and unintended attacks against the peacekeepers began to mount up, with a June 12th incident in al-Haffah in which UNSMIS forces “were attacked by a crowd and then fired upon by unknown assailants” proving to be the final straw.247 Three days later, UNSMIS forces suspended normal operations and remained confined to their bases. In spite of attempts to resume their responsibilities shortly afterwards, UNSMIS peacekeepers found themselves unable to safely carry out their mandate in war-torn Syria.

On July 6th, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon submitted his report about resolution

2043 to the UN Security Council in which he examined the deteriorating situation in

Syria. He also presented potential options for the future of UNSMIS that included: terminating the mission completely, expanding its observational capabilities, reinforcing the task force with armed protection, shifting focus to civilian functions or relocating it strictly to Damascus.248 However, he warned that these options did not “account for operational or political developments subsequent to the submission of the present report.”249 His warning proved true, and the violence escalated to such a level that the

Security Council deemed it too dangerous to maintain a significant peacekeeping presence in the region. As per UNSC resolution 2059, it extended UNSMIS for a final

246 Ibid. 247 Christopher Phillips, The Battle for Syria: International Rivalry in the New Middle East, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 100. 248 Ban Ki-moon, “Report of the Secretary-General on the implementation of Security Council resolution 2043,” July 6, 2012, History of the United Nations, UN Digital Library. 249 Ibid.

period of 30 days with a further extension to only be considered “in the event that the

Secretary-General reports and the Security Council confirms the cessation of the use of heavy weapons and a reduction in the level of violence sufficient by all sides.”250 In his

August 10th letter to the Security Council, the Secretary-General reported that the

Council’s two conditions for UNSMIS’s extension had not been met, and as such, the operation’s mandate was left to expire on August 19th.251

This brief UN operation in Syria proved quite unsuccessful on all accounts and had little impact upon the overall conflict. UNSMIS peacekeepers, instead of being deployed after the conclusion of a peace agreement, arrived in Syria during a period of escalating violence and found themselves unable to achieve their mandate. They were unable to initiate a cessation of armed conflict, nor were they able to implement any of the other tenets of Kofi Annan’s six-point Syrian peace plan. As for the other parameters of success: the mission was unsuccessful at limiting casualties since the violence would continue escalating; it proved unable to contain the conflict as many of the previously mentioned regional and international powers would get drawn into the war; and it failed at resolving the conflict because, in spite of predictions pronouncing the forthcoming victory of Assad’s regime and his allies, the civil war is still ongoing.252 Since it failed to satisfy any of our parameters of success, UNSMIS can only be categorized as a failure.

250 S.C. Res. 2059, July 20, 2012. 251 Ban Ki-moon, “Letter from the Secretary-General to the President of the Security Council,” August 10, 2012, History of the United Nations, UN Digital Library. 252 Martin Chulov, “Hounded by war, can Idlib’s desperate civilians outrun final assault?,” The Guardian, March 13, 2020.

Results & Implications

Through this comprehensive analysis of Middle Eastern UN peacekeeping

operations and the conflicts that they were responding to, we can gain a better

understanding of the capabilities of UN peacekeeping operations as a whole. The table

below presents the results of this analysis:

DATE NAME LOCATION CONFLICT MAN CON. LIM. CON. CATERGORY

DATE RES. CAS. CONT.

1948- United Nations Israel / Palestine War / Arab-Israeli No No No No Failure present Truce Middle conflict Supervision East Organization

(UNTSO)

1956- First United Egypt & The Suez Crisis Yes No Yes Yes Moderately

1967 Nations Israel Successful Emergency

Force (UNEF I)

1958 United Nations Lebanon Lebanon Crisis of 1958 Yes Yes Yes No Moderately

Observation Successful Group in

Lebanon

(UNOGIL)

1963- United Nations North North Yemen Civil War No No No No Failure

1964 Yemen Yemen Observation

Mission

(UNYOM)

1973- Second United Egypt & Yom Kippur War Yes Yes Yes Yes Successful

1979 Nations Israel Emergency

Force (UNEF II)

1974- United Nations Israel & Yom Kippur War Yes No Yes Yes Moderately present Disengagement Syria Successful Observer Force

(UNDOF)

1978- United Nations Lebanon Lebanese Civil War No No No No Failure present Interim Force in Lebanon

(UNIFIL)

1988- United Nations Iran & Iraq Iran-Iraq War Yes Yes Yes Yes Successful

1991 Iran-Iraq Military

Observer Group

(UNIIMOG)

1991- United Nations Iraq & Gulf War Yes No Yes Yes Moderately

2003 Iraq-Kuwait Kuwait Successful Observation

Mission

(UNIKOM)

2012 United Nations Syria Syrian Civil War No No No No Failure

Supervision

Mission in Syria

(UNSMIS)

Figure 2 - Table of Results As per the results presented above, we can conclude that two UN peacekeeping

operations (UNEF II & UNIIMOG) were successful, four operations (UNEF I, UNOGIL,

UNDOF, UNIKOM) were moderately successful, and four (UNTSO, UNYOM, UNIFIL,

UNSMIS) were failures. Conflict resolution proved to be the most difficult success

parameter to satisfy, with only UNEF II, UNOGIL and UNIIMOG doing so. Most

successful and moderately successful operations were able to implement some or all of

their mandates, reinforced established ceasefires, had a reducing effect on the number of

casualties, prevented the outbreak of further large-scale violence and provided crucial

assistance to civilian caught in the crossfire. On the other hand, most failed operations

struggled to achieve their mandates, saw violence intensify despite their presence, were

unable to protect civilians and proved unsuccessful at preventing the intervention of

additional regional and international powers.

An important conclusion that immediately stands out is that all four of the failed operations were civil intra-state conflicts, whereas all of the moderate and complete successes responded to inter-state conflicts. This is understandable as civil wars are by nature “complex and ambiguous processes” that involve “local and supralocal actors, civilians, and armies, whose alliance results in violence that aggregates yet still reflects their diverse goals.”253 Unlike inter-state conflicts that occur between clearly-organized military forces which are generally more open to compromise, intra-state conflicts tend to involve decentralized insurgencies engaged in an existential struggle, making them asymmetric and “inherently-protracted affairs.”254 Furthermore, according to the incumbent UN Secretary-General António Guterres, civil wars are becoming longer, more complex and more frequent in our modern era due to the “external military and financial support to conflict parties” which is fueling “wider tensions as local fights become proxies for larger rivalries.”255

Another important conclusion is that duration does not seem to corelate with an operation’s success- a claim that conflicts with the assertions of some scholars.256 The continuation of some missions signaled failure, but with others it indicated success. This suggests that duration is not a reliable indicator for assessing peacekeeping operations.

253 Stathis Kalyvas, "The Ontology of Political Violence: Action and Identity in Civil Wars," Perspectives on Politics 1, no. 3 (2003): 475. 254 Arij Elshelmani, “Why are civil wars so protracted and difficult to end?,” E-International Relations, November 20, 2015. 255 “Wars getting longer, more complex, UN chief warns,” The Times of Israel, December 21, 2017. 256 Daniel Druckman, et al. "Evaluating Peacekeeping Missions," Mershon International Studies Review 41, no. 1 (1997): 156.

Overall, the results are not as bleak as some of the UN’s harshest critics portray.

That said, they could hardly be characterized as positive. However, even though additional complete successes and fewer failures would have been ideal, the fact remains that in about 60% of scenarios that UN peacekeepers got involved in, the overall situation improved, and lives were saved. This suggests that there is enough justification for the

UN to continue using peacekeeping operations as a tool to maintain peace and security in the Middle East. On the other hand, about 40% of circumstances in which UN peacekeepers intervened resulted in complete failures and continuation of bloodshed.

This makes it clear that additional steps must be taken to improve the UN’s performance in the region.

One way to ensure that effective measures are put in place to improve the performance of future UN peacekeeping operations is to determine the factors that led to success in prior operations and replicate them. One of the most important factors contributing towards success seems to the existence of a ceasefire agreement accepted by both sides which is already in place before the Blue Helmets are deployed. For example, in the case of the successful UNEF I, UNEF II and UNIIMOG, the UN assisted belligerents with the procurement of a ceasefire agreement and then only deployed peacekeepers after receiving genuine assurances that the ceasefire would be adhered to.

Such ceasefires go hand-in-hand with effective diplomacy that certifies the reliability of the belligerents’ assurances and ensures the inclusion of all parties in the agreement.

Conversely, failed operations such as UNYOM, UNIFIL and UNSMIS saw the UN deploy peacekeepers into regions where conflicts were ongoing and there was no peace to

keep. In each of these cases, ceasefire agreements either did not exist or were not accompanied by effective diplomacy, leading to ceasefire violations by untrustworthy regime or parties not included in the ceasefire. This suggests that UN peacekeepers do not have the capacity to be deployed into an ongoing military conflict so as to forcefully impose peace upon the belligerents. Instead, it is crucial for peacekeeping forces to deploy at the right time, once the conflict has subsided and a reliable ceasefire agreement has been reached. This is because even though “it’s hard to say that UN peacekeeping efforts have been terribly effective at preventing conflicts,” they have had much greater success at “ending them or at least guaranteeing ceasefires.”257 Deploying at the right time ensures that the Blue Helmets can play to their strengths.

As previously mentioned, this study clearly shows that UN peacekeeping tends to be more successful when dealing with inter-state conflicts that involve recognized state actors. Therefore, the UN should continue focusing on its successful inter-state peacekeeping initiates and remain wary of getting involved in civil conflicts. After all, the UN has a limited amount of resources it can call upon to deal with conflicts throughout the world. Getting bogged down in unattainable mandates not only fails to improve the situation in the conflicted regions, but also draws away resources from other operations that could be in crucial need of them. Nonetheless, this does not mean that the

UN should ignore civil conflicts completely; it simply needs to do a better job evaluating the situation to determine whether the deployment of a peacekeeping operation would be beneficial. This is where the UN should consider some of the other crucial factors that

257 Peter Juul (Policy Analyst at Center for American Progress), in discussion with the author, April 5, 2019.

contribute to success, such as the aforementioned need for reliable ceasefire agreements.

During the Lebanese Civil War, UNIFIL was deployed into the region even though there was no ceasefire in place and military operations were still ongoing. In the case of the

North Yemen and Syrian Civil Wars, belligerents had signaled an interest in de- escalation, but this was never solidified into a reliable, large-scale ceasefire and the fighting continued. As such, all three of these deployments into uncertain scenarios were unable to improve the overall situation. Had UN peacekeepers deployed into Middle

Eastern civil wars once ceasefires agreed upon by all sides went into effect, then their presence might have been more effective. Additionally, even if the conditions remain unsuitable for a peacekeeping operation, the UN can continue taking other measures, such as implementing sanctions to halt the conflict-exasperating foreign interference coming into the region, to try and contain the conflict and create the conditions for a ceasefire agreement to arise.258

Scholars have also hypothesized about what these factors that impact an operation’s success could be, and it can prove useful to examine how their proposals correlate with this thesis’ analysis. In his 2006 publication about UN peacekeeping operations, Jair van der Lijn considers various factors that contribute towards durable peace, including cooperation from outside actors and the use of competent leadership.259

The results seem to confirm that cooperation from outside actors is crucial for a successful operation, with many of the failed Middle Eastern operations having involved

258 Dmitriy Gershenson, "Sanctions and Civil Conflict,” Economica 69, no. 274 (2002): 185-206. 259 Jair van der Lijn, Walking the Tightrope, (Amsterdam: Rozenberg Publishers, 2006).

international powers that ignored the UN’s jurisdiction and intervened in the conflict.

Operations also seem to perform better if they have the united support and resources of the UN Security Council behind them, as evident by operations like UNIIMOG and

UNIKOM. After all, it is the Security Council that determines how well-funded an operation will be, and it is “often the lack of resources for peacekeeping operations [that] inhibits their ability to be successful.”260 However, for most of the UN’s history, a united

Security Council has been a sight of rare occurrence. This was initially due to the Cold

War, which pit the two superpowers on opposing sides for most of the conflicts that the

UN focused its attention on. As such, the members of the Security Council wanted not to simply end the conflicts in question, but to end them in favorable terms for themselves or their allies. Under such tense circumstances, it was common for the Security Council to become paralyzed over their disagreements while the fighting raged on. Unable to achieve their foreign policy objectives through the Security Council, the superpowers would instead circumvent the UN’s authority and attempt to influence the conflict’s outcome on their own. We see the United States do this during UNOGIL, the Soviet

Union during UNYOM, and both of them during UNEF II and UNIFIL.

It was after the fall of the Berlin Wall that the potential for a truly unified Security

Council first arose. The two Middle Eastern peacekeeping operations launched during this period, UNIIMOG and UNIKOM, would see all five permanent members of the

Security Council cooperating with each other and working towards the same goal. As our results have depicted, these would end up becoming two of the most successful UN

260 Carolyn Kenney (Policy Analyst at Center for American Progress), in discussion with the author, April 12, 2019.

peacekeeping initiatives in the region. However, this unity would not last forever, and old divisions nurtured by great-power rivalries would soon resurface within the Security

Council. We can see in this in the Syrian Civil War in which, much like the Cold War-era proxy wars, the United States and Russia support opposing sides, restricting the potential for a significant intervention instigated by the Security Council. If future peacekeeping operation have a unified Security Council to deal with and can count upon the resulting cooperation from outside actors, then it is undoubtable that impact and rate of success of these operations will increase significantly.

As for van der Lijn’s second hypothesis, obviously peacekeeping operations can only benefit from competent leadership, and upon closer inspection, it seems that many failed peacekeeping operations did indeed suffer from inept leadership. For example,

UNYOM Commander Carl von Horn would be described as an arrogant leader by those who knew him,261 with Secretary-General U Thant even describing him as “irresponsible and reckless” in his handling of the situation in Yemen.262 Additionally, the Commander of the ill-fated UNSMIS, Babacar Gaye, would later be dismissed by Secretary-General

Ban Ki-moon for ignoring reports of horrific child sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers under his command,263 and an independent panel would accuse him of having “abused his authority.”264 On the other hand, UNTSO would be supported by experienced and well- regarded diplomats such as Folke Bernadotte and Ralph Bunche, yet it would not be able

261 Claes Löfgren, Fredsknektarna: FN-svenskarna i Kongo 1960-64, (Stockholm: Fischer, 1990). 262 "The Mess in Yemen," Time, September 13, 1963. 263 Skye Wheeler, “UN Peacekeeping has a Sexual Abuse Problem,” The Hill, January 11, 2020. 264 Obi Anyadike, "Exclusive: Top UN whistleblower resigns, citing impunity and lack of accountability," The New Humanitarian, June 7, 2016.

to accomplish its mandate. Furthermore, many successful peace operations endured constant change in leadership due to a variety of factors yet overcame the instability to effectively complete the tasks required of them. This suggests that, even though the UN should obviously try and ensure that competent personnel ends up in leadership positions, it should remain aware that factors outside of leadership might have a greater impact on the operation’s success.

Similar contributors towards success have been hypothesized by the UN itself in the Capstone Doctrine. First, it claims that UN peacekeeping operations tend to be more successful if they adhere to the “basic principles of consent, impartiality and the non-use of force except in self-defense and defense of the mandate.”265 The principle of consent is closely related to the previously stated success factor of reliable ceasefires. Peacekeeping efforts tend to suffer when all parties are not included in the ceasefire agreement and therefore do not view the UN operation as legitimate. As for impartiality and the non-use of force except in self-defense and defense of the mandate, although certain UN operations in Africa have been criticized for supposedly failing to adhere to these principles,266 none of the Middle Eastern operations examined in this paper demonstrated such violations on a large scale. Since there are no comparisons to be made, the results of this thesis cannot prove the importance of impartiality and the restricted use of force, yet the very nature of peacekeeping suggests that these principles would indeed prove essential towards success by portraying UN forces as unbiased and trustworthy.

265 “Capstone Doctrine,” UN Digital Library, 36. 266 Peter Singer, “Peacekeepers, Inc.,” Brookings, June 1, 2003; Declan Byrne, “UN Peacekeepers Criticized,” Global Policy Forum, December 22, 2002.

Similarly, the Capstone Doctrine suggests that peacekeeping operations benefit from legitimacy and credibility, especially in the eyes of the local population.267 This is another suggestion that our results seem to confirm, with many failed UN peacekeeping operations, such as UNIFIL and UNSMIS, having dealt with attacks on peacekeepers by forces that did not recognize their mandate. Furthermore, the Capstone Doctrine asserts that “national and local ownership is critical to the successful implementation of a peace process.”268 Promoting this kind of ownership requires a thorough understanding of the political and socio-economic context that a peace process is operating in, but successfully doing so can help ensure the sustainability of peace once UN peacekeepers withdraw from the region. Our results seem to confirm this belief as well, with successful operations, such as UNEF II and UNIIMOG, having involved close cooperation between regional actors and UN authorities. In contrast, unsuccessful operations, such as UNIFIL and UNSMIS, struggled with coordination between regional actors and UN forces.

267 “Capstone Doctrine,” UN Digital Library, 36. 268 “Capstone Doctrine,” UN Digital Library, 38.

Conclusion

This thesis, in an attempt to assess the United Nations’ level of success at maintaining peace and security in the Middle East, has taken on a variety of tasks. First, it analyzed the historical background of the United Nations and its peacekeeping operations so as to better understand their overall evolution and the context within which the subjects of our analysis operate. Second, this thesis conducted a literature review of the peacekeeping-related research published by the scholars of international relations, including Paul Diehl, Duane Bratt, Darya Pushkina, Virginia Fortna, as well as by researchers of the UN itself, to determine what can be learnt from previously-conducted scholarly inquiries. Finally, so as to conduct an effective analyzation of the selected peacekeeping operations, it considered the proposals put forth by other scholars and defined the criteria used to determine an operation’s level of success. Specifically, it was decided that an operation’s success would be determined by its ability to complete its stated mandate, to promote a resolution to the conflict, to limit the number of casualties, and to contain the conflict within the confines of its initial belligerents.

This thesis provided an individual analysis for each of the ten UN peacekeeping missions that have operated in the Middle East and the conflicts that they responded to so as to determine their capacity to satisfy our predetermined parameters of success as well as their overall level of success. After doing so, it was concluded that two UN peacekeeping operations in the Middle East (UNEF II & UNIIMOG) could be classified

as successful, four operations (UNEF I, UNOGIL, UNDOF, UNIKOM) as moderately successful, and four of them (UNTSO, UNYOM, UNIFIL, UNSMIS) as failures. 60% of

Middle Eastern conflicts in which the Blue Helmets got involved in resulted in the improvement of the overall situation and saving of lives, suggesting that the presence of the peacekeepers is justified. Yet, the fact that 40% of circumstances resulted in complete failures and the continuation of bloodshed should make it clear that additional steps need to be taken to improve the UN’s performance in the region.

Further analysis of the results led to the determination of a number of factors that seemed to contribute towards a peace operation’s level of success. It was discovered that when the exact deployment of the peacekeepers took place had a crucial impact upon their ability to complete their mission. When peacekeepers, true to their name, deploy into a region where a temporary yet legitimate peace has already been achieved in the form of a ceasefire agreement, then they have much greater success at keeping that peace between the belligerents. However, when deployed into conflicts that had either weak or nonexistent ceasefire agreements in place, the Blue Helmets found that there was no peace to keep. It was also discovered that peacekeeping operations had a much higher success rate at dealing with inter-state conflicts between recognized state actors as opposed to intra-state conflicts, suggesting that the UN needs to be especially careful when considering how to bring peace to areas afflicted by civil wars.

Factors proposed by others were also considered and then compared with the results of this thesis. Jair van der Lijn considered the importance of cooperation from outside actors and the use of competent leadership. The first hypothesis was confirmed by

our results, especially when considering the importance of a unified Security Council.

Many failed operations consisted of outside actors prioritizing their conflicting foreign policy objectives over working together to bring an end to the fighting. As for his second hypothesis, it was discovered that factors outside of leadership might play a greater role.

Factors suggested by the UN in the Capstone Doctrine were also considered, with the results concurring with importance of adherence to the “basic principles of consent, impartiality and the non-use of force except in self-defense and defense of the mandate,”269 as well as of legitimacy, credibility and the promotion of national and local ownership.

Overall, the results proved to be not as bleak as what some of the UN’s harshest critics might have expected, yet they are not especially impressive either. Although its successes have proved enough to justify its existence, vital initiatives need to be undertaken to address the shortcomings that remain. Furthermore, although an in-depth analysis of all the UN peacekeeping operations conducted in the Middle East is in itself a challenging task, future research can benefit from expanding the scope from the Middle

East to other or even all region of the globe. This thesis focused on case studies from just one region so as to make it feasible to conduct an in-depth analysis of all peacekeeping operations being considered. The Middle East was chosen because conflicts from that region tend to receive significant attention from the UN, international powers and the media. As such, the UN’s success rate in this region could be indicative of its success at a larger scale. However, even though this limited scope ensures that this thesis does not

269 “Capstone Doctrine,” UN Digital Library, 36.

overflow with information, it must be acknowledged that considering a purely Middle

Eastern perspective might not be entirely indicative of the UN’s success in other regions.

After all the Middle Eastern context is distinct and different from the environment in the other regions where the UN has operated. Considering the UN’s impact in these other areas can help supplement the research conducted in this thesis. Additionally, future research can also benefit from expanding the scope of the comparative case study from only conflicts that invoked an intervention from the UN to conflicts that both invoked and did not invoke the initiation of a UN peacekeeping operation. By considering both cases, we can determine whether or not conflicts that instigated a UN response saw an overall improvement of the situation, at least in comparison to conflicts that were left alone.

In spite of the potential for future research, the implications of the analysis in this thesis remain consequential. Through this analysis, we have identified both the success rate of UN peacekeeping operations in the Middle East as well as the factors that seem to contribute towards a peace operation’s level of success. An awareness of these factors can lead to the successful completion of peacekeeping operations and help the UN achieve greater success at tackling its challenging yet crucial goal of maintaining peace and security.

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