Mission impossible

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Mission impossible: ""If you think you understand Lebanon, you haven't been properly briefed." This wise but slightly despairing advice used to hang in the office of the spokesman for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon - known by its acronym Unifil - when it still played at least a symbolic role in policing the volatile border between Israel and its northern neighbour.

Mired in what became known as the Lebanese "quagmire" it had itself created, Israel struggled on until 2000, when the Labour prime minister Ehud Barak decided to withdraw his forces unilaterally. However, Unifil has proved no more able to stop Hizbullah attacks since then. Israeli anger was fuelled when four of its soldiers were abducted in a previous incident and the UN did nothing.

If Unifil is to be of any use in helping stabilise a ceasefire it will need many more soldiers, and heavier weapons. Its current force of 2,000, with personnel from China, France, Ghana, India, Ireland, Italy and Poland, is woefully inadequate.

With fighting still heavy, it is hard to imagine a new force being quickly assembled or deployed. John Bolton, the hawkish US ambassador to the UN, posed the right question: "You would have to ask what would make a new multilateral force different from or more effective than Unifil." The answer is that it would have to be far larger and more robust, mandated to allow the Lebanese government to truly deploy south to its own international border once Hizbullah was disarmed. However this dangerous crisis ends, that is not going to be a simple task."

Past experience indicates that any UN force in south Lebanon will struggle to keep the peace, writes Ian Black