Inter-Arab Security Force
The inter- Arab security force or the Arab security force are peacekeeping forces under the mandate of the Arab League and consisting of military units from several league member states. Unofficially, the peacekeeping forces of the Arab League were also referred to as “green helmets” because of the green color of their helmets, analogous to the “ blue helmets ” of the UN , although green should stand for an Islamic or Arabic color .
Arab League Security Forces in Kuwait
Immediately after Kuwait gained independence from Great Britain in 1961 , the Iraqi Qasim regime made historical claims on Kuwait and threatened to invade and annex Kuwait. As a result, British troops returned in July 1961 (Operation Vanguard) to defend Kuwait if necessary. In August 1961, the Arab League decided to replace the British troops with military contingents from Arab states. The first units from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Sudan and Egypt arrived in Kuwait in September 1961, the last British left in October 1961. Only after the fall of Qasim in Iraq and the official recognition of Kuwait by the Iraqi Baath regime in 1963 did the last Arab contingents also withdraw from Kuwait.
Arab Deterrent Force
When, at the height of the Lebanese civil war and after the breakup of the Lebanese army, a victory of the predominantly Muslim and more left-wing patriotic militias and the PLO became apparent over the predominantly Christian and right-wing militias, Syrian troops marched in June 1976 at the request of the Christian Lebanese president enter Lebanon. For strategic reasons, Syria had no interest in a victory for the Lebanese national movement, which could possibly have provoked an Israeli intervention in favor of the right-wing militias. The initially 12,000, then 23,000 to 30,000 men and initially mainly composed of PLA units , Syrian troops immediately provided a small contingent as well, since Libya did not want the Syrians to take action against the national movement.
At its summit in Riyadh and Cairo in October 1976, the Arab League subsequently issued the Syrian troops a mandate for an “Arab deterrent force” (French Force Arabe de Dissuasion , FAD, Arabicقوات الردع العربية / Quwwāt ar-radʿ al-ʿarabīya ). The Syrians in the security force were to be flanked by contingents from other states, and the security force itself should be formally under the command of the Arab League. Most Arab states, however, declared themselves unable to send troops - Iraq referred to the tensions with Syria; Algeria and Morocco felt as threatened as Libya and Egypt. So there were only symbolic hundreds from Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the VDRJ and the UAE.
Since the other Arab states soon withdrew their contingents (Libya as the first in 1976, Sudan as the last in 1979), the force consisted exclusively of Syrians from then on. It was unable to defend the country against Israeli invasions (1978, 1982), but repeatedly intervened in internal Lebanese and internal Palestinian struggles and finally ended the civil war in 1990 with the defeat of the Lebanese army and in 1991 with the disarmament of the Palestinian camps . Although the Lebanese government and the Lebanese president had not extended the mandate, which expired in 1983, the Syrian troops were only withdrawn in 2005, after the murder of Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri, under Arab and international pressure.
literature
- Lothar Rathmann : History of the Arabs - From the beginnings to the present , Volume 6 (The struggle for the development path in the Arab world), Pages 74-81 (Lebanon) and 274 (Kuwait). Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1983
- Michael Wolf: Between the Attack and the UN - On the History of the Palestinian Resistance. Events, facts, contexts , pages 357-360. Military publishing house of the GDR 1985
- Arlett Rassel: Criminal Justice Over Members of the Peacekeeping Force in UN-Led Missions , pp. 265–268. Peter Lang Verlag, Dresden 2009