On October 6, 1973, in a surprise attack, Egyptian forces crossed the Suez Canal and advanced beyond the observation posts of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) on its eastern bank, while, in a coordinated move, Syrian troops simultaneously attacked Israeli positions in the Golan Heights. By October 9, following a request by Egypt, United Nations observation posts on both sides of the Canal were closed and the observers withdrawn. Israeli troops were able to repel the attacks. On October 24, there were reports that Soviet troops might be dropped into the battle zone to save Egypt's Third Army from encirclement. Washington responded that evening by declaring a military alert.
Early on the morning of October 25, the eight Security Council members belonging to the Non-Aligned Movement caucused and Yugoslav Ambassador Lazar Mosjov proposed a new UN peace force as an alternative to direct military action by the superpowers. The nonaligned group agreed to the US condition that no Soviet troops be allowed in what became UNEF II. In return, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger agreed to 36 Soviet officers joining the UN Truce Supervision Organization in Egypt and allowed the use of a Polish logistics contingent by UNEF II-the first time a Soviet-bloc nation contributed to a UN peacekeeping force. The resolution was adopted the same day.
Because of the continuing superpower dispute over financing and control, the Secretariat could make no contingency plans for peacekeeping operations. "If word got out that we were planning ahead," says Brian Urquhart, a Briton who succeeded Ralph Bunche as the director of UN peacekeeping operations, "the Russians and French would have marched into the Secretary-General's office and raised hell." So once again, as in the Sinai and the Congo, everything was improvised. In drawing up the ground rules for UNEF II, the peacekeeping staff-Urquhart, George Sherry and F. T. Liu-achieved in three hours, late on the night of October 25, what Russian and American negotiators had failed to work out over a decade. They put on paper the definitive blueprint for a peacekeeping operation. The first UN units-Austrians, Finns and Swedes borrowed from the UN force on Cyprus-were in the field in 17 hours.
That UN report essentially resolved the political battle over command and control of peacekeeping. It gave a degree of control to the Secretary-General, leaving him in command of day-to-day operations. But it granted the Security Council a short leash, requiring its consent to the appointment of the UNEF II commanding general and a Council vote every six months to renew the force's mandate. The mission of UNEF II was also spelled out in detail, as was its right to use force if necessary to resist "attempts by forceful means to prevent it from discharging" the duties set by the Security Council. The UNEF II blueprint became the model for all future peacekeeping operations.
The UN peacekeeping staff-a handful of impartial civil servants insulated over the years from governmental pressures and from politicized departments elsewhere in the Secretariat-was aided by a logistics genius, George Lansky, the Director of the UN Field Operations Service. Unlike a nation, the United Nations has no resource reservoir of its own, so success lies in knowing where to get things fast. Lansky operated like a computer. At the critical organizing meeting for UNEF II, Urquhart was told in a call from the field that the last item on the equipment list before the force could be deployed was trained dogs to track down the bodies of Egyptian dead, which the United Nations had agreed to recover. Urquhart recalls: "I said, 'George, 20 teams of tracking dogs.' He always carried this bulging folder, and he flipped through it, pulled out a paper and said, 'Could I use your phone?' In five minutes the dogs were on the way to Sinai."
Negotiations then began where the Egyptian and Israeli lines met, in tents on the Cairo-Suez Road. They took place under the guidance of the UNEF commander, Major-General Ensio Siilasvuo of Finland, and Urquhart's aide, James Jonah of Sierra Leone. Quite soon negotiations went far beyond the initial objectives of prisoner exchange and supplies for the encircled Egyptian Third Army. By November 26 Israeli Major-General Aharon Yaariv and his Egyptian counterpart, General Mohamed l-Gamasy, were close to a disengagement agreement. Under it, Israel would pull back from the canal in return for Egyptian troop reductions in the area. The Israelis broke off the dialogue, however, under pressure from Kissinger. He wanted to achieve a disengagement agreement himself as the first fruit of the peace talks scheduled to open in Geneva one month later. The first disengagement pact was eventually completed by Kissinger in January 1974.
[In March 1979, Egypt and Israel concluded a peace treaty. This agreement led to the eventual termination of UNEF II on July 24, 1979].
From United Nations: The First Fifty Years, by Stanley Meisler. Copyright 1995 by Stanley Meisler. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
