The absence of the regular Lebanese army in the current crisis raises questions about state institutions’ capacity to confront a major conflict.
As the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon keeps teetering towards an outright war, many are asking, does Lebanon have an army and why it is nowhere to be seen?
However, its role and place in the conflict are much more complicated than one might think.
Khalil Helou, on-leave general of the Lebanese army and a professor of geopolitics at St Joseph University of Beirut, told Euronews that the Lebanese army’s role in Lebanon is not just to defend the country’s borders.
“It’s not a classic army like Western armies. The Lebanese army is subject to the instructions of the Lebanese government,” he said.
“For the time being, and for a long time, there have been extreme divisions. The army was left to itself. Now whoever commands the army, whoever is the commander-in-chief of the army, they must take the decisions that they finds suitable.”
Lebanon’s leadership has several significant issues to consider — all of which come with serious consequences.
If the Israeli army turns the current airstrikes into a boots-on-the-ground operation as it did in 2006, and violence spills over from southern Lebanon and the Bekka Valley into the rest of the country, the entire Middle East will be under threat.
Southern Lebanon and the Bekka Valley are supposedly under the legal shelter of the UN Security Council Resolution 1701.
This resolution establishes the creation of a UN peace keeping force, the UNIFIL, in the South. It also gives an active role to the Lebanese regular army, and calls upon the Government of Lebanon and UNIFIL “to deploy their forces together” so that “there will be no weapons without the consent of the Government of Lebanon and no authority other than that of the Government of Lebanon” after the withdrawal of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).
In the case of a major military attack, the Lebanese armed forces will be faced with a dilemma: either confront the Israeli army or disarm Hezbollah by force, complying in both cases with the UN resolution.
Delicate balance of power and unfriendly neighbours
Between 1975 and 1990, Lebanon was ravaged by civil war, and it became a military playground for regional actors and major powers.
The country’s current political regime is a delicate balance between the representatives of different confessional communities, and the army is constitutionally subordinate to political institutions whose members have mutually contradictory views of the ongoing crisis.
“If there is ever a ground attack, the units deployed in the south should defend themselves and should defend the Lebanese territory with the means at their disposal,” Helou explained.
“But basically, the mission of the brigades deployed in the South is to work together with UNIFIL and not with the use of force. So it’s not a strike force, it’s not a force that’s going to oppose Israel. The balance of power is not at all in our favour in this case”.
According to Resolution 1701, Hezbollah should have pulled its armed groups out of Southern Lebanon, and especially its missiles systems capable of targeting Israel — yet it did not comply with the commitments.
Hezbollah is formally first of all a legitimate and constitutional Lebanese political force mostly composed by Lebanese Shia Muslims. Its armed force is operating as highly operational contingents alien to the command structure of the Lebanese army as proxies of Iran.
When Hezbollah takes the unilateral initiative to target Israel, the other Lebanese political forces and the army are completely paralysed.
Many Lebanese people of different confessions wouldn’t see a defeat of Hezbollah as an headache, they could easily live with it like a relevant sector of the Lebanese army. However, in Lebanon everyone knows that there are inter-communitarian red lines that cannot be crossed.
“To confront Hezbollah is an immediate and automatic recipe for civil war. And the army command knows that the absolute priority is the internal stability first all over a war that could drag on between the army itself and Hezbollah,” Helou said.
The relations between Hezbollah and the Lebanese security structures have been also marked by some constructive moments of crucial cooperation:
“One only has to think of the collaboration between Hezbollah and the Lebanese Army during the period of maximum expansion of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, when elements associated with the Islamic State group and Al-Nusra were present and operating within Lebanon itself in terms of preparation, training and recruitment,” Claudio Bortolotti, a researcher from the Milan-based International Politics Research Institute, told Euronews.
Hezbollah’s armed wing has a peculiar paramilitary structure. It has a vigorous ballistic capacity, but uses guerrilla units as infantry and has neither an air force nor tank regiments.
The Lebanese regular army, by contrast, has a typical military structure but insufficient weaponry.
The role of Europe
“The European Union has always been trying to boost the Lebanese armed forces capabilities. And it’s not new. They have helped the Lebanese army,” explained Lebanese security correspondent Agnes Helou.
“Mainly, let’s say first Germany has helped the Lebanese army to maintain all the towers, the surveillance towers on the navy side, as well as on the land side, land borders with Syria and on the naval sites on the Mediterranean.”
“Some EU countries and the US will try to organise a conference to help arming the Lebanese army on the southern border if there is a political decision to send the Lebanese army,” she explained.
“So the issue is not with the armament or with the capabilities or perhaps means the issue is just with the Lebanese political decision to be sending them or effectively deploying them.”
The Lebanese ambassador to the EU, Fadi Ajali, praised the bloc’s contribution.
“The European Peace Facility is providing funds for the Lebanese army to play its central and fighting vital role in promoting the 1701 resolution, which would provide peace and security to the country and to the region,” he told Euronews.
However, he emphasised, “the Lebanese army is overstretched because it must deal with the internal security affairs of Lebanon (such as) trying to control the overflow of migrants to the EU.
“The Lebanese army is also trying to provide security for those refugees. The Syrian refugees and the Palestinian camps.”
What about the army in Bekka?
This is an army unable to operate on new fronts. And if the Lebanese regular army became involved in a direct ground confrontation between the IDF and Hezbollah, it would cause enormous political problems for its financial sponsors in the West, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.
Meanwhile, Israeli missiles are hitting Lebanese territory, but the Lebanese army is not even trying to shoot them down. Why not?
“Missile defence and air defence are the same thing,” Khalil Helou said. “It’s defence against flying targets. But the Lebanese army does not have any of its own.
“Hezbollah doesn’t have any. The Syrians have S-300s. It hasn’t worked at all. And when you talk about a balance of forces like that, there are huge regional powers that are unable to shoot down missiles. So we can’t ask the Lebanese army to do it.”
History has it that an army needs clear objectives and well-defined orders.
“The Bekka Valley is controlled by the Bekka brigade, which is an operational brigade with essentially standard personnel. The question is whether it is a fully staffed brigade today and whether it is ready to confront a threat that is not only external but could also be internal,” said Bortolotti.
“I believe that there could be two scenarios. That is, in the event of a land invasion by Israel, there could be, and I believe this is the most likely scenario, a disengagement of the regular army units, thus leaving the Bekka Valley uncovered or leaving it as a battleground between Israel and Hezbollah.
“Scenario number two here is possible, but more improbable instead, a reinforcement of military units not so much to counter a military presence or to give support to Israel. However, the presence of the Lebanese army could be a deterrent to Israel’s operational activity,” he concluded.
During the Israeli invasion of 2006 the Lebanese regular army avoided any confrontation with the IDF, despite the bombing of the some of its military bases. The Lebanese army did not use its force to disarm Hezbollah despite the binding provisions of Resolution 1701.
