Since 2006, American policy has been to support the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) with money and equipment in the hope that doing so will give it the capability to restrain, and perhaps forcibly to disarm, Hizballah. But, argues Tony Badran, the Lebanese will never do anything of the sort so long as Hizballah controls the government in Beirut:
Western intelligence sources have revealed that in July and August Iran used a civilian airliner to fly arms to Hizballah directly through the Beirut International Airport. That would be right after the United States completed the delivery of light attack aircraft to the LAF in June, and right before a high-ranking [U.S military] delegation visited Lebanon in mid-August. On both occasions, American officials praised the LAF as the “defender of Lebanon’s borders.” . . . The key to solving the “Hizballah problem,” according to this line of thinking, was to assist the Lebanese state to exert control over all its territory.
This same reasoning is evident in [annual] State Department reports on terrorism, which have classified Lebanon as a “terrorist safe haven.” The U.S. government defines terrorist safe havens as ungoverned or poorly governed areas where the absence of state control allows terrorists to organize and to move about freely. Hence, in the 2015 and 2016 reports, the State Department declared that the Lebanese government “did not have complete control of all regions of the country, or fully control its borders with Syria and Israel.” . . .
But the issue in question is not a remote border region where government authority is lacking—especially since the LAF has been deployed to the south since 2006, and in recent years it has completed its deployment to the eastern border with Syria. None of this has meant anything for Hizballah’s ability to operate freely. If anything, the LAF has protected and facilitated it. . . .
Take, for example, this data point: . . . over the course of more than a decade, [the UN] has referred over 10,500 suspicious vessels to the Lebanese navy for inspection. How many vessels, out of 10,500, did the LAF find to be carrying arms? Zero. In other words, the LAF is . . . actively facilitating Hizballah’s armament. The U.S., meanwhile, foots the bill, and soaks the LAF in praise. . . . The LAF will never take action to prevent Hizballah’s arms smuggling, because it will never be asked to by the Lebanese government.
Read more on Tablet: https://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/270269/the-myth-of-an-independent-lebanon