Hiding in Plain Sight Hezbollah’S Campaign Against UNIFIL • Assaf Orion REUTERS/HAIDAR HAWILA REUTERS/HAIDAR
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THE WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY ■ NOVEMBER 2019 ■ PN71 Hiding in Plain Sight Hezbollah’s Campaign Against UNIFIL • Assaf Orion REUTERS/HAIDAR HAWILA REUTERS/HAIDAR The Second Lebanon War, between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah, ended August 14, 2006. Since that summer, populations on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border have enjoyed the longest calm in their troubled history, thirteen years and counting. Mandated by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), an entity first established in the late 1970s, was expanded, and its 10,500 peacekeepers are busy and visible. UN reports over the past thirteen years emphasize the general calm. But calm does not mean safe and secure. During the war, Hezbollah launched approximately four thousand rockets out of its arsenal of twelve thousand toward Israel. Since the war, Iran has invested billions of dollars in building its Lebanese proxy military force throughout Lebanon, including in the south. © 2019 THE WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ASSAF ORION Hezbollah’s current arsenal is estimated to include of Majdal Zun, allegedly because the peacekeep- 130,000 rockets and missiles of various ranges and ers were taking photographs. During the course warhead sizes, in addition to attack drones, coast-to-sea of the incident, several individuals broke windows missiles, and surface-to-air missiles. This large firepower, of the patrol vehicles with hammers, shot at two exceeding that of most nation-states, is defended by of the vehicles as they sought to disengage and a land garrison and augmented by offensive infantry poured gasoline on a vehicle, setting it ablaze. A units. The group’s impressive military growth took place peacekeeper inside suffered minor burns. Some despite two obstacles: Hezbollah’s deep involvement individuals assaulted the peacekeepers, punching in regional fighting, especially in the Syrian war, and and beating the patrol commander with sticks as the UNIFIL mandate to help the Lebanese Armed Forces he attempted to mediate the situation and kicking (LAF) become the only military force south of the Litani and dragging another peacekeeper while he was River. But the seemingly calm blanket covering southern on the ground. Individuals also pointed weapons Lebanon is regularly pierced by the sharp edges of real- at the UNIFIL personnel, including at close range, ity, making Hezbollah’s efforts more difficult to obscure. snatching their weapons or demanding that they This study seeks to explain a dramatic gap between be handed over. The patrol requested Lebanese the UN’s reporting of southern Lebanon and the actual Armed Forces support immediately. Weapons, reality pregnant with disastrous potential. ammunition and equipment were stolen from the On August 29, 2019, the UN Security Council ad- patrol, most of which were later returned by the opted Resolution 2485 (2019), extending the mandate Lebanese Armed Forces.3 of UNIFIL for another year and “reaffirming its determina- But the greater picture extends far beyond even what tion to ensure that no such acts of intimidation prevent lengthier footage of the incident shows.4 This was not UNIFIL from implementing its mandate…that UNIFIL just an isolated local event; it is part of a much larger personnel are secure and their freedom of movement is campaign that seeks to achieve well-defined military fully respected…condemning in the strongest terms the and policy objectives. attack against UNIFIL forces on 4 August 2018 near Since August 2006, the UN secretary-general has the town of Majdal Zun, Southern Lebanon, and recall- submitted forty reports on Resolution 1701 to the Secu- ing the importance of the Lebanese authorities swiftly rity Council.5 These reports describe numerous incidents providing UNIFIL with further updates on this matter.”1 in which UNIFIL suffered restrictions of its movement or Over a year has passed since that blatant attack by violence against its troops. A thorough analysis of these Hezbollah on a UNIFIL patrol, of which Fox News aired reports reveals the anatomy of UNIFIL’s encounters in new 2018 footage conveniently close to the council’s southern Lebanon and exposes several clear and unmis- 2019 discussions.2 The incident was indeed extraor- takable patterns that point to the logic guiding Hezbollah’s dinary in its flagrant violence and the blunt conduct campaign against the UN force in southern Lebanon. of Hezbollah’s militants, but in fact it was just a care- A preliminary note about relying on the UN reports less, sloppy operation in an otherwise well-executed as a source of data: one needs to assume that they only continuous gray-zone campaign, which has effectively partially reflect the full scope of events on the ground, for reduced UNIFIL to its current cowed, incapacitated form. both bureaucratic and political reasons. Years of experi- This analysis puts the incident and many others like it ence show that many occurrences never appear in the in context, outlines Hezbollah’s campaign and other final reports, after being thinned out in one of the many Lebanese government actors’ role in it, and recommends echelons between the field patrol and the secretary-gen- possible policy steps. eral’s office. Officers from several of UNIFIL’s contributing In November 2018, UN secretary-general António countries confided that much more is going on than what Guterres reported the following: is reported. With this in mind, the data in the reports are One of the most serious incidents involving UNIFIL minimal numbers. The partial UN reports include more personnel in recent years occurred on 4 August, than 150 incidents that have broken through the reporting when some 20 individuals in civilian clothes threshold. Even if these do not represent all incidents, they stopped a four-vehicle UNIFIL patrol in the village offer sufficient pixels to form the picture. 2 THE WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT THE GRAND DESIgn presenting the issue as one of sovereignty. There were at least fifteen incidents of UNIFIL’s restriction under this Southern Lebanon is Hezbollah’s military’s main area of pretext, fully endorsed by the LAF, as reported in 2013: deployment against Israel, including massive rocketfire “UNIFIL patrols, including some conducted along with the arrays, defensive garrisons, fortifications, and assault LAF, were prevented from proceeding by individuals… infantry units. Hezbollah’s military is dug in to local vil- stating that the road was private property. These incidents lages as its main strongholds, and most of its assets and occurred…near Bmaryamir, Rshaf, Majdal Zun and Tayr arsenal are embedded in the populated areas. Since Harfa. UNIFIL protested all the incidents to the Lebanese 2006, Hezbollah has generally avoided an explicit mili- Armed Forces, which subsequently informed UNIFIL that tary form, including open display of arms and uniforms. the concerned areas were indeed private property.”8 Instead, it carries on its military operations in a civilian “Private property” occurs thirty-four times in the UN re- cloak, an illicit nongovernmental military deployment ports: only once between 2006 and 2012 (in 2009), in UNIFIL’s area of operations and a clear violation of once per report since 2012, and three to four times in 1701. Concurrently, Hezbollah conducts a systematic every report since July 2018, a steep rise in occurrence campaign seeking to avoid detection while expanding and use. Obviously, with so much to hide, the use of this its military activity, as well as to maintain a low political pretext has increased, and the UN has gradually found cost for its violations. To achieve these goals, it must it both more noteworthy and acceptable. constrain UNIFIL’s situational awareness and reporting on the actual reality on the ground. The following sections SEE NO EVIL: BLINDFOLDED explain the main elements of Hezbollah’s campaign. ObsERVERS IN SOUTHERN LEBANON “STAY AWAY” Another salient pattern in UNIFIL’s experience involves activities seeking to curtail UN situational awareness The main feature in Hezbollah’s campaign in southern and evidence gathering. Late in 2006, France had Lebanon is the restriction of UNIFIL’s mandated freedom shipped unmanned aerial vehicles to UNIFIL in Lebanon of movement.6 The UN, as noted, reports at least 150 to improve situational awareness, only to withdraw them incidents of restricted movement, of which Majdel Zoun under Hezbollah’s threats and accusations of espio- is just a sample. In ninety-five cases, UN troops were nage.9 Since then, fifty-five reported incidents included stopped, forty-five others involved vehicles blocking locals seizing UN equipment, mainly cameras but their path, and several more involved a stationary also navigation and communications gear, maps and physical barrier. documentation, and even weapons from UN person- As for the reasons given for preventing UNIFIL ac- nel or from their vehicles. Eight more cases involved cess, four incidents were explained as being for religious unsuccessful attempts to grab such gear. All the cases sensitivity, and six mentioned narrow or secondary roads involved some kind of forceful behavior toward the UN as inadequate for UN patrolling. As the July 2019 report troops. The verbal explanations given for these actions, describes, “the Mukhtar cautioned that the villagers might in fourteen cases, as in Majdel Zoun, stated “taking have reacted aggressively if the patrol had entered photographs”