America Should Nix—Not Try to Fix—UNIFIL
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has continuously failed to fulfill its mandate of restoring peace and security in southern Lebanon. Originally intended, as its name suggests, to be an interim force, UNIFIL should at long last be dismantled. The United States has a chance to do exactly that when UNIFIL comes up for its annual mandate renewal vote at the United Nations Security Council this August.
UNIFIL is ineffective and a waste of U.S. funds. The force’s dismal 47-year track record includes pervasive anti-Israel bias, serial risk aversion, and a manifest failure to prevent—and, at times, complicity in— Hezbollah terrorism, all at a rough cost of $140 million annually to U.S. taxpayers. For two decades, UNIFIL did nothing to prevent Hezbollah’s military buildup despite repeated requests from Israel. Captured Hezbollah terrorists even admitted in recent months to having successfully bribed UNIFIL personnel, enabling Hezbollah to use UNIFIL facilities and equipment for terrorist activity.
Now, UNIFIL is profoundly incapable or even unwilling to do what is needed to build on the current momentous opportunity for peace, security, and sovereignty in Lebanon: preventing Hezbollah from reconstituting. Worse still, UNIFIL’s existence disincentivizes the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) from assuming the role and responsibility of sole provider of Lebanon’s security, which should be the ultimate objective of U.S. policy. Efforts to reform UNIFIL are unlikely to be fruitful. Past international efforts to inject life into UNIFIL by strengthening its mandate yielded no changes to the force’s ineptitude. The United States should veto UNIFIL’s mandate when it comes up for its annual renewal vote this August.