Nation against nation: what happened to the U.N. dream and what the U.S. can do about it.

• Author: Ignatius, David

NATION AGINST NATION

Supporters of the United Nations and its global peacekeeping mission should consider the lesson of FIJIBAT.

FIJIBAT is the military name for a battalion of troops from the Fiji Islands that, during the early 1980s, formed part of UNIFIL, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. The roughly 6,000-man UN peacekeeping force has also included Scandinavian troops--known as NORBAT and FINBAT--as well as contingents from such unlikely countries as Ghana and Senegal.

Most of UNIFIL is an expensive joke and an illustration of why the United Nations has failed so miserably in its central task of keeping the peace and deterring aggression among nations. The UNIFIL mission looked sensible on paper. After the 1978 Israeli incursion into Southern Lebanon, the United Nations voted to send troops to police a buffer strip between the major PLO strongholds of South Lebanon and the Israeli border. Their job, in theory, was to separate the combatants--to curb Palestinian attacks against Israel and to block a new Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

In fact, UNIFIL proved to be a toothless, pseudomilitary force that didn't deter anyone from doing anything. It failed to prevent Palestinian rocket attacks against the Israeli towns of northern Galilee; later, when the Israeli army invaded Lebanon in June 1982, UNIFIL stepped politely aside. The UNIFIL forces presented an absurd sight in South Lebanon, traveling from village to village in their antiseptic white Jeeps, tut-tutting the locals and issuing dire warnings, but never doing anything credible to keep the peace.

Except for FIJIBAT. The Fijians, it was said, had a simple way of handling troublemakers. Rather than issue European-style reprimands to misbehaving Palestinians, they simply broke their fingers.

"The Fijians didn't mess around,' recalls one State Department official. "If the rule was you weren't to carry a gun across a checkpoint, then the Fijians made sure you weren't carrying a gun.' In the process of enforcing the rules, the Fijians lost 18 men, more than the other contingents of UNIFIL. They even tried briefly in 1982 to stop the invading Israelis from crossing a bridge in their sector, until cooler heads at UNIFIL command prevailed.

The story of FIJIBAT was related to me in Beirut several years ago, probably at a hotel bar late in the evening, so I cannot vouch for the finger-breaking detail. My informant claimed that in the vicinity of FIJIBAT you could see scores of...