“Peacekeeping, Development and Counterinsurgency: The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and “Quick Impact Projects””

This chapter examines the function of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon's (UNIFIL) post-2006 “Quick Impact Projects” (QIPs), small-scale and short-term development projects carried out with local municipalities. More international interventions were carried out in the name of “peace” in the decade following the end of the Cold War than in the previous four decades put together. In the era of United States unipolarity, following the demise of its Soviet rival, the budget of United Nations peacekeeping missions has increased from a total of US$3.6 billion in the year 1994 to US$8.27 billion in the year 2016. After providing a brief background on the history of UNIFIL, the chapter suggests that QIPs illustrate the mission's contradictions and its frequently thorny relations with the local population, who welcome UNIFIL's economic development efforts but reject their underlying political objective of constructing a rival authority and influence to Hizbullah in southern Lebanon.