Lebanon has warned that the army will go into battle if Israel invades the country as it has threatened to do -- a defiance, which analysts warn bears little relationship to military reality.
At the same time, Israel’s demand that the army replace Hezbollah in the south ignores the relative weakness of the official military compared with what some Lebanese, along with Iran and Syria, term Lebanon’s “national resistance” -- the Hezbollah movement.
According to “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.
The numbers are, however, misleading.
According to Mustafa Alani, senior security consultant at the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center, most members of the Lebanese military do police work rather than that of a real army.
“It is not a fighting force,” Alani told AFP. “Hezbollah is far stronger than the Lebanese Army.”
The Military Balance lists the army’s equipment as some 310 main battle tanks, mainly old Soviet-made T-54 and T-55 models, 1,257 armoured personnel carriers and 541 pieces of artillery.
It also has a paramilitary force of 13,000 men, a tiny air force of 1,100 servicemen and a navy numbering 1,000 personnel.
Alani said 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 last weekend, G8 leaders proposed an international stabilization force along the Lebanese-Israeli border to help Beirut get a grip on Hezbollah militants.
Meanwhile Israel’s repeated air strikes against the Lebanese army risk destroying the very institution Israeli leaders say they want to promote at Hezbollah’s expense.
“The Israelis are in the process of attacking the very instrument of implementation for Resolution 1559,” said Joseph Bahout of Beirut’s Institute of Political Studies.
“The Israeli offensive is not going to help the Lebanese state or its efforts to impose its sovereignty,” he warned.
“The army risks falling apart under the pressure.”
Lebanese Defence Minister Elias Murr has defiantly answered an Israeli threat to invade Lebanon in force.
“The Lebanese army will resist and defend the country and prove that it is an army worthy of respect,” he said.
