Lebanon’s army stays on sidelines as Israel and Hizbollah clash

Since Israeli forces invaded south Lebanon and began battling Hizbollah fighters on the ground for the first time in two decades, there has been a noticeable absentee from the conflict: the Lebanese army.

The weakness of the Lebanese Armed Forces is testament to the fragile and fractured state of a country whose military has little or no capacity to defend against invaders. Indeed, it has not even been the most powerful force in the country: that title belongs to the Iran-backed militant group Hizbollah, which controls southern Lebanon. 

“The Lebanese army has a different function than any other military,” said Sami Atallah, director of The Policy Initiative think-tank in Beirut. “The army doesn’t have the resources to defend its territory. Rather it’s used to maintain domestic stability.”

The LAF has since the end of the country’s 15-year civil war in 1990 mostly acted as a domestic bulwark against sectarian tensions. Numbering about 80,000 but without an air force, it can neither take on Hizbollah in its own backyard nor defend the country against an Israeli onslaught. Instead of engaging in the fighting in this conflict, it has largely confined itself to supporting civilians.

Four members of Lebanon’s armed forces have been killed and several more have been injured by Israeli fire since last week’s ground invasion, including two killed on Friday by Israeli air strikes that hit a building near their checkpoint.

The enfeeblement of the Lebanese army is a reflection of the country’s turbulent history and its complex sectarian domestic politics.

Lebanon’s bloody civil war led to divisions within the army along confessional lines, with many soldiers abandoning the force to join militias.

After the war ended in 1990, and with the departure of Syrian occupation forces in 2005, Lebanon’s rival factions that were mainly rooted in sectarian groups had no interest in seeing the multi-confessional LAF emerge as a strong national military, analysts say.

“I don’t think the Lebanese political establishment has historically wanted a strong army beyond the control of factions,” said Atallah.

He also said that, among foreign powers with influence in the region, there had been “no interest in allowing the LAF to grow strong enough to threaten Israel’s military supremacy”, although many including the US have provided funding.

Aram Nerguizian, senior associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in the US, said that no recent Lebanese government had “credibly spent on defence in ways that were centred on reinforcing the LAF’s ability to deploy to the south, let alone to defend it”.

“The army doesn’t have a network of bunkers and other hardened structures it can fall back on,” he said. “Most LAF positions are exposed and could easily be targeted by artillery or air power.”

Despite this, opinion surveys often place the LAF at the top of the list of institutions trusted by the Lebanese public. Analysts say the army might be called upon to play its peacekeeping role in the current crisis, as large numbers of war-displaced Shia Muslims from bombed parts of Beirut and the south are forced to move into areas with majorities from other confessional groups.

“The army remains a nationally popular force in no small part because it represents all of the country’s mix of confessional communities,” Nerguizian said.

Lebanon’s prolonged financial collapse since 2019 has also hurt the LAF in the same way it has made many other Lebanese destitute.

Sami Rammah, a retired brigadier-general who has been a vocal critic of the government’s financial mismanagement, pointed out that his monthly pension payment had plummeted from the equivalent of $4,000 to just $500 since the crisis began.

“I rely on a monthly transfer of $500 from my son in the US,” he said. “I live on the edge of poverty.”

The US and gas-rich Qatar have stepped in to fund some of the salaries of Lebanese soldiers, which can be as low as $100 a month for lower ranks. Soldiers are also allowed to spend time on second jobs to make ends meet.

But the LAF is not without its strengths. Since Hizbollah last fought a war against Israel in 2006, external assistance mainly from the US has helped it professionalise and modernise in preparation for bigger future roles should the balance of power within Lebanon change.

One focus has been elite special units, with Nerguizian saying that Lebanon now had “one of the region’s more capable counterterrorism forces”.

This has enabled the army to take on some militant groups and win — notably Isis in 2017, when the group threatened the country’s borders during Syria’s civil war.

The army has also, with support from the UK, Canada and the US, set up four land border regiments along the frontier with Syria, though not on the southern border with Israel, where Hizbollah is present.

The role of the LAF would be expanded if the country were to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1701 that ended the 2006 war and which foresees Hizbollah withdrawing north of the Litani river, 30km from the border with Israel. The UK, which has helped to train the LAF, has pledged $10mn to beef up border defences if the resolution is eventually implemented.

Prime minister Najib Mikati said this month that Lebanon was prepared to implement the resolution after any ceasefire, but added that the LAF first needed to be better equipped.

“In terms of armaments, everyone knows the Lebanese army does not have all it should have, so we would need some time,” he told Sky News.

The implementation of Resolution 1701 would be welcomed by Lebanon’s western partners, which have invested in the army in anticipation of that moment. The risks of a destabilising sectarian war had long made that an unlikely prospect, yet conditions might be shifting, Nerguizian said, partly because of the severe blows taken by Hizbollah. These could weaken its hold on south Lebanon and the Lebanese state.

Hizbollah, which is designated a terror group in the west, is the main target of Israel’s offensive. In the past two weeks, Israeli forces have killed its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, along with many of its top commanders in air strikes on Beirut and southern Lebanon.

“Iran can’t restore Hizbollah back to the political and military juggernaut it once was, thus presenting an opening for the LAF to consolidate its national security role,” Nerguizian said.

“This is a once-in-a-generation event that could have lasting implications for the balance of power in Lebanon and the region.”