Syria's objection to the deployment of UN troops on the Lebanese side of the joint border is hardly surprising. It is seen as a double affront in Damascus. From its point of view, the UN seems to be siding with Israel, which refuses to lift its blockade of Lebanese ports and airports unless an international force is deployed along the border. Worse, it appears the UN suspects that arms could be smuggled across the border to Hezbollah. It is a major slight on Syria’s integrity.
However, its threat to close the border to normal traffic if such troops are deployed is a mistake. It allows its enemies to try and isolate it even more than it already is by claiming that it is trying to sabotage the UN’s effort to bring peace to Lebanon and that the real reason it does not want troops in the area is because it hopes to continue arming Hezbollah. As for its claim that the deployment of such troops would be an “infringement on Lebanon’s sovereignty,” it opens the door to counteraccusations, not just from Damascus’ enemies but from large number of Lebanese, linking Syria’s role in the past in Lebanon and Lebanese sovereignty. Nor does the claim make much sense. What is the reasoning that makes deployment of UN troops on the border an infringement of Lebanese sovereignty but their presence elsewhere in Lebanon politically acceptable to Damascus?
In any event, it is up to Lebanon and the UN to decide where peacekeepers should be deployed. They are the only ones who can confer legitimacy on the presence of such forces — with the greater legitimacy going to the UN. Over the past 15 or so years, partly because of events in former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda and very much because of 9/11, there has been a shift in international understanding of the meaning of sovereignty. There is now an acceptance that the UN has the legal authority to override the territorial integrity of a country. This shift is at the heart of current suggestion to send UN forces to Sudan’s troubled Darfur province even though Khartoum objects. In the present case, the Lebanese government is desperate for them to come in. There is therefore a double legitimacy to the deployment of peacekeepers there. Syria’s reading of events is wide of the mark. That is not to say that it will not get what it wants. It may well be that no UN troops are deployed on the border — or anywhere else in Lebanon.
The struggle to find the necessary 15,000 UN peacekeepers is proving far more daunting than even the most pessimistic of observers imagined; Europe’s reluctance to put troops into a firing line if they have to force Hezbollah to disarm and while Israeli forces are still shooting, is understandable but time, as the Israelis have so menacingly warned, is running out; they are not prepared to wait much longer for a UN force to move in. There has to be a breakthrough today when UN Secretary-General Kofi Anan meets European foreign ministers in Brussels to discuss Europe’s contribution to the force. If the Europeans commit, other countries will so too; a sufficient force will be found. If they do not, the threat of a fresh outbreak of violence becomes very real.
