Can Lebanon’s Army Secure the South? a Cease-Fire Deal Could Depend on It.

The Washington Post / Kareem Fahim, Suzan Haidamous, Mohamad El Chamaa

12:01 JST, November 21, 2024

BEIRUT – The Lebanese army convoy snaked through the capital’s battered southern suburbs on a recent afternoon, past buildings demolished in Israeli air raids, in a show of public reassurance rather than force by soldiers keenly aware of the limits of their power.

There was nothing they could do about the airstrikes, even ones that had killed fellow soldiers. “Not antiaircraft,” a soldier said, gesturing to a gun mounted on a Humvee supplied by the United States. Along with other foreign benefactors, Washington has provided the Lebanese army just enough support over the years to survive – but hardly enough to give it an edge over foreign enemies or domestic rivals.

The army’s strength and readiness are matters of growing urgency as the Biden administration makes a new push for a cease-fire between Israel and the militant group Hezbollah, which would end more than a year of war and thrust Lebanese soldiers into a critical role.

Additional troops would be expected to deploy to southern Lebanon if and when Hezbollah fighters and Israeli forces withdraw – acting as a buffer, alongside United Nations peacekeepers, between the two armed groups in an area stretching from the border to the Litani River, about 18 miles to the north.

Such a deployment would not only test the army’s ability to maintain peace but also raise larger questions about the precise role of the force, tugged this way and that by the whims of its donors, regional rivalries and Lebanon’s own quarreling political forces. The army declined to comment for this story, citing its sensitive position in the ongoing conflict.

The mission would only succeed if “all of Lebanon agrees on the role of the Lebanese army in stabilizing the security situation,” the country’s prime minister, Najib Mikati, said this week.

U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein spent a second day in Beirut on Wednesday, discussing a draft cease-fire agreement with top Lebanese officials. Hochstein refused to divulge details about the negotiations, saying only that “additional progress” had been made and that he would travel to Israel later Wednesday “to try to bring this to a close if we can.”

Sticking points in the agreement are likely to center on long-standing grievances between Israel and Lebanon, including the process of permanently demarcating their border as well as Israel’s desire to continue attacks on Hezbollah.

Western officials have cast the Lebanese Armed Forces, or LAF, primarily as a counterweight to Hezbollah, even as army officials have asserted their independence and their rare status in the country as a multi-sectarian force with broad appeal.

Lebanese officials and people close to the army say its mission after a cease-fire would be to provide security in the south and not to confront Hezbollah, which is at the same time a political party in Lebanon with millions of supporters that coordinates with the army through its intelligence division.

Ultimately, the nature of its presence in the south rests on “a political decision” by Lebanon’s leaders, a person close to the army said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. “They have to decide what they want from 1701,” a U.N. resolution that ended the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war and called, among other things, for weapons in the south to be controlled only by the army or U.N. peacekeepers.

The army’s position could be further complicated by the possibility that Hezbollah would not completely withdraw from the south, officials and analysts said. While the group may remove its weapons from the area, many of its fighters were “born in villages and towns in the south, grew up there and joined the resistance there,” said Mounir Shehadeh, a retired army brigadier general.

“How can you ask a person from the towns of Aita al-Shaab, Maroun al-Ras and Kfar Kila … to leave his village,” he said, referencing front-line border towns. “This withdrawal will never happen.”

Also looming was the question of whether the army would defend the country against attacks from Israel, potentially putting two U.S.-backed forces in direct conflict. Israeli officials have insisted they be allowed to act militarily against threats in Lebanon, even after a cease-fire.

“Israel’s freedom of action must be maintained in cases of violations,” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said Wednesday in a meeting with foreign ambassadors.

The Lebanese army has largely been a bystander in the current conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which started more than a year ago after militants began firing on northern Israel in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza. Though the army is not supposed to be a target of the Israeli military, 42 soldiers have been killed in Israeli strikes – 18 who were on duty in the south, and 24 who were killed in their houses, the military said.

Four soldiers were killed this week, including in an Israeli attack on an army position in Sarafand, south of the city of Sidon, that occurred just hours after Hochstein met with Gen. Joseph Aoun, head of the LAF.

Israeli strikes have hit army checkpoints, bases and vehicles. From the commander’s office at a military headquarters in Beirut’s southern suburbs, the blasted top floors of an apartment tower were visible just beyond the walls, one of hundreds of buildings damaged or destroyed in the area.

“How to talk about this issue,” the person close to the army said, describing the dilemma the Israeli attacks had posed. “It’s embarrassing. It’s really so hard for an army not to respond.”

Any clash between the army and the Israelis, though, would be likely to imperil U.S. funding to the force, which has amounted to more than $3 billion since 2006. The funding has been in the past been delayed and faced resistance from Republican lawmakers claiming Iran and Hezbollah exerted influence over the LAF.

Lebanese military officials concede they would need additional support before carrying out a mission in the south: more soldiers, more training, more equipment.

Even before the war, the army had been devastated by the country’s financial crisis, and some portion of the 80,000-strong volunteer force is effectively part-time – allowed by the army to take second jobs because military salaries have plummeted.

“There are material needs in life we cannot ignore,” said an army lieutenant who was moonlighting as the manager of a gas station in Beirut, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media. He was “committed heart and soul to the army,” he added, but “we are also survivors and we find ways to sustain.”

Donors, including the United States and France, pledged about $200 million for the LAF at a conference last month, but that amount was “not enough,” a senior Lebanese official said, given the army’s multiple responsibilities – to “really spread law and order” across the country and, after any cease-fire, to secure the south.

The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, estimated that the cost of equipment, training and recruitment would be well over $1 billion – funds Lebanon does not have. Shehadeh said the army would need between 6,000 and 7,000 troops to secure the south in cooperation with the United Nations.

It would be difficult to “take the current structure of the LAF and throw them in the south and expect them to be in charge,” said Jean-Loup Samaan, a senior research fellow at the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore. “We are talking about a mission the LAF has not been performing since the civil war.”

The army engenders complicated feelings in Lebanon. “There is on the surface respect for the integrity of the LAF, and across communities,” Samaan said. But “the same people who will express their respect will say very quickly that they are useless.”

It was possible the respect would “erode when we ask them to operate in the south,” he added, as the army is caught between the agendas of its donors and the sympathies of people in the region, where Hezbollah enjoys broad support.

The LAF’s authority there would also remain tenuous without a comprehensive settlement on the core disputes between Lebanon and Israel, including the demarcation of the border, the senior Lebanese official said. Without such an agreement, Hezbollah “will come back,” the official said.

“If there is occupation, there is resistance.”