By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal
When Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon in October, with Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants engaged in full-scale war, the Lebanese army largely stood on the sidelines. It’s not the first time the national army has found itself watching war at home from the discomfiting position of bystander.
This recent Israeli incursion into Lebanon, currently in a ceasefire, was its fourth in the neighbouring country in the past 50 years. In most of the previous invasions, the Lebanese army played a similarly peripheral role.
The army is militarily overshadowed by Hezbollah. It has about 80,000 troops, with around 5,000 of them deployed in the country’s south. Hezbollah has more than 100,000 fighters, and its arsenal, built with support from Iran, is also far more advanced.
With an aging arsenal and no air defences, and battered by five years of economic crisis, the national army is ill-prepared to defend Lebanon against either aerial bombardment or a ground offensive by a well-equipped modern army like Israel’s, whose current ground offensive aims to push Hezbollah back from the border and allow tens of thousands of displaced residents of northern Israel to return after a year.
By July 2006, when Hezbollah and Israel began fighting a monthlong war, the Lebanese army “had not been able to invest in any real-world postwar modernization, had no ability to deter Israeli air power” and “was left completely exposed,” explained Aram Nerguizian, a senior associate with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
When Lebanon’s financial system and currency collapsed in 2019, the army took a further hit. It had no budget to buy weapons and maintain its existing supplies, vehicles and aircraft. At one point, the United States and Qatar both provided a monthly subsidy for soldiers’ salaries.
In Lebanon, many believe that the United States has blocked the army from obtaining more advanced weaponry that might allow it to defend against Israel. “It is my personal opinion that the United States does not allow the military to have advanced air defence equipment, and this matter is related to Israel,” contended Walid Aoun, a retired Lebanese army general and military analyst.
Hezbollah’s de facto takeover of the country began in 2006, following its war with Israel. That December, Hezbollah and its allies started large street demonstrations to pressure parliament to give them veto power over government decisions. They boycotted parliament and delayed the selection of a new Lebanese president. Then in 2008, Hezbollah used its guns against fellow Lebanese to get what it wanted: veto power over any actions by the Lebanese state.
The 2006 Hezbollah-Israel conflict ended with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which was meant to create a demilitarized zone south of the Litani River in Lebanon, about 30 kilometres from the Israel-Lebanon demarcation line.
Lebanese soldiers were deployed in the country’s south in non-combat roles along with more than 10,000 peacekeepers with the UN’s Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).
UNIFIL, in its current iteration, was given a mandate in 2006 via Resolution 1701 to help ensure that the area south of the Litani River would remain free of any armed presence save its own and that of the Lebanese Armed Forces. The current ceasefire will again see Hezbollah forces move north of the river, replaced by UNIFIL and the Lebanese army.
Of course Resolution 1701 was ostensibly meant to end the earlier 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war on terms that would prevent Hezbollah from launching more attacks against Israel by giving the Israelis a demilitarized zone on their northern border enforced by international troops.
The catch was that UNIFIL would implement its mandate with the support of and in coordination with the Lebanese government -- which is effectively controlled by Hezbollah. So rather than decrease Hezbollah’s strength on Israel’s border, the group’s armed presence south of the Litani grew exponentially under UNIFIL’s oversight.
Will it work this time? UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti has explained that it is clear that the Lebanese army was not currently strong enough to implement Resolution 1701 and that it would need international support. Building the army up, he maintained, “will take a while, but the commitment is there. We need to bring state authority to the south. Not only of the army, but the full state authority to the south of Lebanon.”
But that would require a robust state, or at the very least a belief in one. And many Lebanese have lost faith in a country that was plagued by corruption, nepotism and political paralysis long before the current crisis.
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister Oct. 18 made a rare rebuke to Iran over reported comments that it would be ready to help “negotiate” a new UN resolution on Lebanon. Najib Mikati declared in a statement that the comments amounted to “a blatant interference in Lebanese affairs.”
Can Lebanon escape Hezbollah’s grasp? Only if Lebanese leaders, working together with European and U.S. support, act. So far, most seem unwilling or unable to do so.
Hezbollah’s support base is the Shiite community, which is about a third of Lebanon’s population. Yet anti-Hezbollah political forces are missing in action. Neither Sunni nor Christian nor Druze leaders have stepped forward to demand that Hezbollah relinquish its control of the state. Otherwise, little will change.
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