Under pressure

FINUL ou Le Fait Nul?


Ana Maria Luca/Mona Alami
NOW Lebanon
08 July '10
Posted before Shabbat

Some say it was embarrassing. French UN peacekeepers were attacked in South Lebanon last week when a mob of Hezbollah supporters hurtled stones and sticks at them and took their weapons. Others say the French UNIFIL soldiers reacted in the best possible way: keeping their “sangfroid” and putting up with the humiliation without fighting back so that the incident wouldn’t turn into a new war. But what the French people agree on is that if the attacks happen again, it might be the end of their country’s involvement in the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.

It started 10 days ago, when French soldiers were simultaneously attacked by people in 20 villages in South Lebanon during a routine exercise. The violence was repeated last Saturday in Tulin, where “some residents of the village and of the close-by Kabrikha village attacked a patrol with sticks and threw stones and eggs at them,” according to a French military spokesperson.

According to the French army, what triggered the anger of the villagers was the soldiers’ detention in Kabrikha of a young man who had asked them what they were doing in the village. By the time they reached the neighboring village, people were already on the streets and ready to fight.

“The locals took the [UNIFIL] soldiers’ weapons and briefly took control of their vehicle before the Lebanese army intervened and made the patrol leave. The weapons were given back to UNIFIL, and the incident ended,” the French military spokesperson added.

The skirmishes might have ended quickly, but questions on the efficacy of UNIFIL are just beginning to pop up. The incidents surprised and worried the European countries that send their troops to South Lebanon as Blue Helmets. When the news broke in France, it caused a wave of discontent over the participation of the French troops in UNIFIL, and publications were flooded by reader requests for the withdrawal of the troops from South Lebanon. “FINUL ou Le Fait Nul?”(“UNIFIL or the Null Fact”) the French people joke.

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