Despite the escalation of the war between Israel and the extremist organisation Hezbollah, new Finnish peacekeepers will arrive in Lebanon as planned in about two months, Lieutenant Colonel Jukka Honkanen, commander of the Finnish peacekeeping force in Lebanon, told Finnish News Agency STT.
"The normal planned rotation is around the turn of November and December, and that's the way it looks like we're going to go; no change in our plans. We are prepared for the majority of this team to change," Honkanen said.
About 200 Finnish peacekeepers are serving in the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) as part of the French-led Force Commander's Reserve (FCR) battalion. In the peacekeepers' daily life, the war has reduced the number of patrols the Finns take outside their base.
"We can no longer work in quite the same way in that area of operations, for example by patrolling, but we have to spend a lot of time now at this base. We will not go out there if it is deemed too risky," said Honkanen.
Turmoil in the region
Finnish peacekeepers are still conducting patrols, but their number has decreased considerably, Honkanen said. The French-led FCR battalion would typically go on four to five patrols daily. Now, those patrols have been limited to only one per day or none at all.
"For each day, we always prepare the patrols the day before, and then the next morning we wait for permission from Unifil headquarters. They are also in contact with the Israel Defence Forces to find out if it is safe to go into an area. If they give the green light, then of course those patrols will be carried out," Honkanen said.
There have been no signs of an Israeli ground invasion in the area controlled by the Finns, but scattered reports have come from other battalions in the area controlled by Unifil.
The commander said he has not noticed any major frustration among the Finnish soldiers and that morale is good.
"It [morale] is surprisingly high," Honkanen said.
Honkanen noted that if the need arises, there are plans to evacuate Finnish peacekeepers. Earlier this year, Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen (NCP) said that Finland would repatriate its soldiers if the situation required it.
"Let's hope that the peacekeepers can continue their work, because the work they do in that region is very important," Valtonen said at the time.
Former peacekeeper: Unifil a failure
Former peacekeeper and PhD researcher Olli Nurmi believes that the UN peacekeeping operation in Lebanon has failed.
In Lebanon, around 10,000 peacekeepers from more than 40 countries are currently serving in Unifil. Nurmi himself was a peacekeeper in Lebanon in 2012-13.
Unifil's mission includes assisting the Lebanese government in securing the country's borders and protecting the civilian population.
According to Nurmi, the peacekeepers are heavily armed and their mere presence has been used to act as a supposed deterrent against violence in the region.
However, the extremist organisation Hezbollah wields great power in southern Lebanon and fighting has flared up again in the region despite the presence of peacekeepers.
Israel and Hezbollah have carried out numerous missile strikes on both sides. On Tuesday evening, a missile strike was also carried out by Iran, which supports Hezbollah.
"Now we have seen that this approach has not been sufficient to prevent violence," Nurmi said in an interview on Yle TV1's Wednesday morning talk show programme.
Discussing better options
It was already clear from the outset that a peacekeeping operation could not prevent a full-scale war.
Nurmi stressed that he does not blame individual peacekeepers. According to Nurmi, however, there should be a debate on what would be a better alternative to the current operation.
According to Nurmi, the UN could choose between two options: it could either do more or less in the region.
It would mean more that the peacekeepers would take over the buffer zone along the Israeli-Lebanese border. But that would require broad political support, which is not easy to achieve.
Another option would be to seek a situation in which the Lebanese state would have a greater presence in the region and Lebanon's own armed forces would be primarily responsible for security. In practice, the peacekeepers would be left in a purely observer role.
"The main reason why Hezbollah is so strong in Lebanon is that there has been a power vacuum that this extremist organisation has managed to fill," Nurmi said.