CAMP ZIOUANI, Golan Heights (AP) — For four decades, a multinational United Nations mission has quietly monitored the sleepy Golan Heights — providing a symbol of stability between bitter enemies as it enforced a truce between Israel and Syria.

But as Syria has plunged into civil war and the peacekeepers themselves have become targets of al-Qaida-linked rebels, the U.N. observer force has begun to fall apart, leaving its future — and the prospects for ever establishing peace in this rugged area of the Middle East — in doubt.