The Lebanese army may number 70,000 troops, but it amounts to more of a paramilitary police force ill equipped to rein in Hezbollah and secure Lebanon's border with Israel, an analyst said Tuesday.
"They are not really part of the army," as most of them carry out police work rather than that of a real army, according to Mustafa Alani, senior security consultant at the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center.
"It is not a fighting force," Alani told AFP when contacted from London. "Hezbollah is far stronger than the Lebanese Army."
According to the "The Military Balance ", an annual report published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, the Lebanese army numbers 70,000 troops, including conscripts.
It has 310 main battle tanks, mainly old Soviet-made T-54 and T-55 models, the report said. It also has 1,257 armored personnel carriers and 541 pieces of artillery, as well as a paramilitary force of 13,000 men, a tiny air force of 1,100 servicemen and a navy numbering 1,000 personnel.
Alani said that the army has suffered not only from lack of support from Syria, which backs Hezbollah and pursues its own agenda in Lebanon, but also from a lack of financing due to Lebanon's struggling post-war economy.
Nor has there been an international decision to rebuild the Lebanese army, he said.
Under UN Security Council resolution 1559 passed in 2004, Hezbollah is required to disarm and allow the Lebanese army to deploy in the south.
Over the weekend G8 leaders proposed an international stabilization force along the Lebanese-Israeli border to help Beirut get a grip on Hezbollah militants.
Two Lebanese soldiers were killed and 40 others wounded in an Israeli air strike on a military base east of Beirut overnight Monday.
