The Philippines is deploying 336 troops to the United Nations peacekeeping mission in strife-torn Golan Heights in Syria, the country's biggest overseas deployment in almost a decade.

In a report to the Department of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday, Hilario Davide, Philippine Permanent Representative to the UN, said the composite battalion of Filipino peacekeepers will be deployed in September to serve in the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) in the Golan Heights.

"The Golan Heights is not only going to be the biggest peacekeeping operation that the Philippines will be taking part in, it would also be the most challenging," Davide said. The Philippines last sent a huge number of peacekeepers to UN operations in Timor Leste in 2000.

The Philippine contingent will replace a battalion of peacekeepers from Poland and will join more than 1,000 peacekeepers from Austria, Canada, Croatia, Japan, India and Poland that are presently stationed across the so-called area of separation--a hilly 80-kilometer stretch in the Golan Heights that has been under UN supervision since 1974.

Davide said the Philippine troops will conduct static, mobile and night operations out of Camp Ziouani and from the six permanent positions and five observation posts along the Line of Separation that are presently manned by Polish peacekeepers.

"The Golan Heights brings our peacekeepers to the frontlines. While no major incident has taken place in the UNDOF area of operation, hostilities could break out any time," he said.

UNDOF was an offshoot of the 1973 Six Day War or the Arab-Israeli War and was established by Security Council Resolution 350 of May 31, 1974 to maintain the ceasefire and supervise the disengagement of Israeli and Syrian forces and the so-called Areas of Separation and Limitation as provided in the Agreement on Disengagement between the two parties.

Davide said Filipino troops also face risks from landmines and unexploded ordnance along the UN-supervised Area of Separation that have separated Israeli and Syrian forces for the past 35 years.

"The Golan Heights poses a significant challenge to the Philippines since it is different from the other peacekeeping missions that the country is taking part in such as those in Liberia and Haiti where Filipino peacekeepers are not in the frontlines but are tasked to secure the UN headquarters in Monrovia and Port-au-Prince," Davide said.

Increased civilian presence along the Syrian side resulting from ongoing construction activities is also a cause for concern, he said.

The Philippines presently ranks No. 29 in the UN list of top troop contributing countries with a total of 611 military and police personnel deployed in Afghanistan, Cote d' Ivoire, Darfur, Haiti, Liberia, Sudan and Timor Leste as of July 2009. It is also the third largest contributor from Southeast Asia next to Indonesia and Malaysia.

Source: Xinhua