Asia Defense | Security | Southeast Asia

Indonesia’s UNIFIL Dilemma: Don’t Hand the US and Israel a Victory by Proxy

Withdrawing from Lebanon would undermine Indonesia’s peacekeeping credibility and ironically serve the very powers Jakarta claims to resist.

Troops aboard the Indonesian Navy corvette KRI Sultan Iskandar Muda-367 in the TNI Marine Task Force of Garuda Contingent (Konga) XXVIII-P, UNIFIL (the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon), Jan. 9, 2025.

The deaths of three Indonesian peacekeepers in southern Lebanon in two separate incidents on March 29 and 30 have prompted calls for President Prabowo Subianto to withdraw the Garuda Contingent from UNIFIL, the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Lebanon. The pressure is politically potent but may prove to be a strategic miscalculation. 

Indonesia remains one of the mission’s principal troop contributors. UNIFIL has a mandate in place until December 2026 and a planned drawdown into 2027. A premature withdrawal would not enhance the safety of Indonesian personnel; it would instead hand strategic advantage to the United States and Israel, remove a recognized peacekeeping presence that has supported civilian protection in southern Lebanon, and erode the peacekeeping credibility Jakarta has spent seven decades building. More importantly, such a move would expose a growing tension at the center of Prabowo’s foreign policy – namely, the idea of retreating from a legitimate U.N.-authorized mission while simultaneously engaging with a far more contestable Board of Peace initiative.

The facts on the ground are grim. On March 29, indirect artillery fire struck an UNIFIL position near Adshit Al Qusayr, killing Private First Class Farizal Romadhon and wounding three others – one critically. The following day, two more UNIFIL peacekeepers – Captain Zulmi Aditya Iskandar, and First Sergeant Ikhwan – died when an explosion destroyed their vehicle near Bani Hayyan. These were the latest in a pattern of attacks on U.N. positions in Lebanon. In October 2024, Israeli tanks fired on UNIFIL’s Naqoura headquarters, wounding two Indonesian soldiers. 

The mission’s force has already shrunk from over 10,500 to approximately 8,200 as the drawdown accelerates. Croatia has withdrawn. Argentina pulled out in November 2024 due to security concerns. South Korea has announced its departure by the end of 2027. Poland plans to leave by August 2026. 

The domestic pressure on Prabowo to pull Indonesian peacekeepers out as well is real and growing. Islamic organizations, opposition figures, and social media have converged on a single demand: bring the troops home. Dave Laksono, the vice chairman of Indonesia’s House of Representatives Commission I, which oversees defense and foreign affairs, publicly called for an evaluation of the TNI’s presence in Lebanon, arguing that the peacekeeping mandate cannot be fulfilled in an active combat zone. An emotional logic now dominates Indonesian social media: “our soldiers are dying, and the government is doing nothing.” 

Many Indonesians remain underinformed about the specifics of the current escalation, which intensified after the United States and Israel struck Iran on February 28, 2026, triggering retaliatory strikes and a reopening of the Lebanon front. The political salience of the casualties is undeniable, yet the strategic calculus argues firmly against withdrawal. 

For years, Indonesia has been UNIFIL’s single largest troop contributor. As of late March 2026, Jakarta maintained around 756 personnel in southern Lebanon – compared with roughly 774 from Italy, 657 from Spain, 642 from India, and 624 from Ghana – within a total force of about 8,200. These numbers represent a gradual reduction from the 1,200-person battalions of past rotations, as the mission draws down ahead of its December 2026 mandate expiration under U.N. Security Council Resolution 2790, adopted unanimously in August 2025. Brokered by France despite sustained Israeli-U.S. pressure for an abrupt termination, the resolution extended UNIFIL’s mandate for a final year and ordered an orderly drawdown through 2027. 

If Indonesia exits early, it would not merely weaken UNIFIL; it would hasten the collapse Washington and Tel Aviv have long sought. The mission’s removal would dismantle a monitoring system that documented nearly 7,800 Israeli airspace violations and more than 1,000 Blue Line crossings in the year following the........

© The Diplomat