Lebanese Army Openly Supports Hizballah

CNS News ^ | August 2, 2006 | Patrick Goodenough

[WmShirerAdmirer]

(CNSNews.com) - Empowering the Lebanese Army is seen as a key element in resolving the Mideast crisis, but the army's makeup and its attitude towards Hizballah raise serious questions about the feasibility of the plan.

The commander of the national army, Gen. Michel Suleiman, has made little attempt -- both before and during the current conflict -- to hide his support for Hizballah, the Shi'ite terrorist group also known in Lebanon as "the resistance."

In a speech delivered Tuesday, Suleiman said the ongoing cooperation between Hizballah and the army "guarantees ... the country's unity," Beirut's Daily Star reported.

The 58-year-old general, a Maronite who has held the post of commander since December 1998, is not the only top military decision-maker to hold such views.

Lebanon's president, Emile Lahoud, who is constitutionally commander-in-chief, told the Germany magazine Der Spiegel last week that "Hizballah enjoys utmost prestige in Lebanon, because it freed our country."

Lahoud added that Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah "of course ... has my respect."

The 2004 U.N. resolution that lies at the heart of Western attempts to end the fighting between Israel and Hizballah calls for the dismantling of all Lebanese "militias," the extension of Lebanese government control over all Lebanese territory, and the removal of foreign forces.

Syrian troops, which had been deployed in Lebanon since 1976, officially left last year, but the government in Beirut has done nothing to fulfill the other requirements of resolution 1559, arguing that such steps could be taken only by agreement following a "national dialogue."

By insisting that it is a national resistance movement and not a "militia," Hizballah has so far fended off talk about disarming or shutting down. (Its Shi'ite ally, Amal, has not been disarmed, either.)

The view of Hizballah as a resistance movement is shared by Hizballah supporters, including -- evidently -- the Lebanese Army, on which the West is placing so much hope, and which the State Department last Friday announced would receive an additional $10 million in U.S. funding "on an urgent basis."

"The national resistance which is confronting the Israeli occupation is not a guerilla [force] and it has no security role inside the country and its activities are restricted to facing the Israeli enemy," the army declared in an official viewpoint on resolution 1559, posted on its website.

"Preserving this resistance constitutes a Lebanese strategic interest," it said.

A year ago, at a ceremony marking the army's 60th anniversary, its annual report to the nation included the assertion that protecting Hizballah "is a national and moral obligation" that works in "the country's and the people's interest."

"Abandoning the resistance implies [ending] the conflict with [the] Israeli enemy without reaching a comprehensive and just peace, and without any guarantee of stopping the Israeli aggressions on Lebanon."

Suleiman, whose decorations (as listed on the army website) include the "Syrian Order of Merit, grade of excellence," is also regarded as close to Damascus, a key sponsor of Hizballah.

At an April 2005 ceremony marking the departure of Syrian troops, he praised the foreign force for its role in Lebanon, saying: "Together we shall always remain brothers in arms in the face of the Israeli enemy."

'Smart weapons'

Around 20 Lebanese soldiers have been killed in Israeli airstrikes since the conflict began on July 12, after Hizballah crossed the border, killing and capturing Israeli soldiers.

The army has largely kept out of the fighting so far, although Defense Minister Elias Murr told Al-Jazeera television last Thursday that in the event of an Israeli ground invasion, "the Lebanese Army will resist and defend and will prove that it is an army that deserves respect."

Wire service reports on Monday quoted Lebanese sources as saying that the army had opened fire on Israeli helicopters trying to land in the Bekaa valley.

According to Israeli security analyst Daniel Sobelman, Hizballah has been drawing increasingly close to the Lebanese Army in recent years.

"[Israeli intelligence material] suggests that many people in the Lebanese military and political establishments see Hizballah as helping to compensate for the inferiority in forces compared to Israel," he wrote in a 2005 strategic assessment for the Jaffe Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University.

A 2004 news report quoted Suleiman as telling Nasrallah that Hizballah constituted Lebanon's "smart weapons" in the absence of a strong army and fighter aircraft.

The U.N. has suggested that Hizballah fighters be assimilated into the army, although the terrorist group has shown little interest in doing so.

"We don't believe that it is indeed possible to go down south or into the Bekaa Valley and take away the weapons of Hizballah," Terje-Roed Larsen, Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special envoy for Lebanon, told a press conference in Beirut last March.

"Our goal is to integrate Hizballah into the Lebanese Army," he said

Shi'ite dominance

Security and political analysts note that the majority of troops in the Lebanese Army, which has an authorized strength of 70,000, are Shi'ites, and warn that asking them to act against Hizballah could lead to a new civil war.

"If the army were to try to curb Hizballah, it would have to contend with its numerous Shiite conscripts who are not about to act against the movement," said the International Crisis Group, a conflict-resolution think tank.

"The Shi'ites have become the strongest element in the Lebanese Army," David Kimche, a former director-general in the Israeli foreign ministry, wrote last month.

"When our leaders declare that the Lebanese Army must take over the positions facing our northern frontier, they may not realize that nearly two-thirds of its soldiers are Shi'ites, most of them with relatives in Hizballah. When we state that the Lebanese must disarm Hizballah, who do we think will do it, the Shi'ite dominated army?"

According to the CIA's website, the Lebanese Army in 2004 had an annual budget of around $540 million.

State Department spokesman Tom Casey said Friday the U.S. had a small program of assistance" for the army, worth a little more than $1.5 million.

The administration had informed Congress that it intended to provide an additional $10 million for the army "on an urgent basis," to help enhance its logistical capability.

"It also will help provide some support for communications and other kinds of operational gear that, again, will help that force not only get to where it needs to go in southern Lebanon, but be better able to communicate and operate once it's there."

German deputy foreign minister Gernot Erler said last week his country was ready to train the Lebanese Army as part of a multinational effort to enforce peace.

[sheik yerbouty]

"I'm shocked! Shocked. I tell you!"

[TheKidster]

We send bobmbs to resupply Israel and then money to Lebanon which will be used to resupply the terrorists.
Ridiculous!!

[nikos1121]

What do you think he's going to say? I bet he'll change his opinion once those @ssholes are exterminated.

Nothing succeeds like success.

[kinghorse]

LSAT for dummies question

Taliban is to Al Qaeda as the Lebanese Army is to ___________.

[Kenton]

Empowering the Lebanese Army is seen as a key element in resolving the Mideast crisis, but the army's makeup and its attitude towards Hizballah raise serious questions about the feasibility of the plan.

Your choice, your karma. By openly taking sides with hezbollah, you're disabusing a lot of people of the notion that Lebanon is just some poor bunch of innocents who have unfortunately got a bunch of bullies that have moved into their neighborhood.

I know that's my reaction anyway.

You also lost a wonderful opportunity to establish soveriegnty over your own country; you've ceded it to Iran, Syria and their proxy Hezbollah. Lebanon is no longer the poor victim of years of sectarian violence, it's an impotent, non-soveriegn territory run by a terrorist group and its' supporters, with the apparent willing cooperation of the government.

You could have been part of the solution, but since you ragheads are so suicidally bone-headed, you teamed up with the losing side. Again.

So to hell with your "innocent civilian casualties"; people who keep Katyusha launchers in the yard are fair targets, whether they wear a uniform or not. The more of your hellspawn that Israel slaughters, the better.

[Torie]

What a mess.

[OldFriend]

Just in case the hezzies turn around and start warring with the hapless Lebanese military.

[SBprone]

Who cares what Lebanese commanders say or where their sympathies lie. All that matters is will they engage the IDF. So far it looks like they'll do whatever they have to do to stay out of IDFs way.

They'll cheer for the Hez but they don't want to die with them. They have this in common with about half the Muslim world.

[steel_resolve]

A 2004 news report quoted Suleiman as telling Nasrallah that Hizballah constituted Lebanon's "smart weapons" in the absence of a strong army and fighter aircraft

what a ridiculous statement.

[WmShirerAdmirer]

Clever!

[Convert from ECUSA]

Ping!

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

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[JimSEA]

Empowering the Lebanese Army is seen as a key element in resolving the Mideast crisis, but the army's makeup and its attitude towards Hizballah raise serious questions about the feasibility of the plan.

Is seen by whom. Let's see, how do you get a lasting peace in the Middle East. First, Israel and the Israelis must go -- the rest of the Jews in the world as well. As eminent an authority as Noam Chomsky (raised a jew himself and thus immune to any criticism) has for years argued thusly. Then either all the Sunni or all the Sunni must be killed or converted -- The bloodiest war in recent memory was between Iran and Iraq. Sharia must be imposed and the "immorality" of democratic thought must yield to Allah. After the Mullahs or Tali ban clones have taken over and killed any unclean people, peace will reign . . . in the Middle east that is.

The problem of what to do with the rest of the world comes next and the political Left seems eger to help.

Don't worry, some "far thinkers" from the seventh century have already mapped out the conquest (did I say conquest) or rather subjugation of the rest of the world can proceed apace. Why it has already started in France, England, America, East and Southeast Asia, Latin America, Canada, South Africa . . . .

[greenthumbedislndr]

finally the true colors are showing. What a bunch of morons. Well that's not going o help the lebanese cause one bit as they've shown to the world that they're terrorist sympathizers. Go get them Israel!... Hit them hard and kill them DEAD!

[gotribe]

I don't think you'll see many lebanese troops following the orders of the generals to wage war against Israel. Predicting many desertions.

[Salem]

---

Zec 12:6 In that day will I make the governors of Judah like an hearth of fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire in a sheaf; and they shall devour all the people round about, on the right hand and on the left: and Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place, even in Jerusalem.





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