The Next Phase in Hezbollah's Preemptive Media Campaign Against the Lebanese Army
As the war between Hezbollah and Israel is still ongoing, international mediators, led by the U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein, are trying to lay the groundwork for a ceasefire agreement. The operating assumption is that the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) is going to play a critical role in any such agreement that will dictate the nature of the next phase in the bilateral relationship between Israel and Lebanon.
The LAF is one of the only functioning state institutions in Lebanon, and it is expected to dramatically reinforce its forces in southern Lebanon to implement U.N. Security Council Resolution (UNSC) 1701, which all parties accept as the baseline for the future security agreement to be in place along the international border. At the same time, the LAF will play a significant part in any understanding regarding the strengthening of Lebanese control over the border with Syria, which is today prone to unsupervised smuggling of arms, men, and funds by Hezbollah and Iran.
The potential for friction between the LAF and Hezbollah is a sensitive point in Lebanon. Traditionally, the LAF maintained cautious neutrality when it came to any activity that might clash with Hezbollah’s vital interests. For the past 18 years, the LAF forces in southern Lebanon disregarded Hezbollah's massive military buildup in the area and took no action to prevent Hezbollah's unchecked supply routes that have crossed the border between Lebanon and Syria. Similarly, during Hezbollah's de facto military coup against the government in May 2008, the LAF did not intervene in the violent clashes between Hezbollah's fighters and its political rivals that led to deaths and the total paralysis of the country.
The LAF's neutrality and its failure to prevent Hezbollah's violent takeover of central Beirut was criticized by many Lebanese. The LAF commander at the time, Michel Suliman, was appointed shortly after the events to be the president of Lebanon in a political deal called the Doha Agreement that also entitled Hezbollah to a veto power over any future government decision-making. This development was seen by many as part of the LAF commander's highly politicized posture and its deep reluctance to take part in any domestic conflict.
From Hezbollah's point of view, keeping the LAF on the sidelines of events is a crucial goal, as the LAF is the only state apparatus that can challenge the organization's freedom of action and independence in Lebanon. The fact that the current LAF chief, Joseph Aoun, is considered to be close to the U.S. government makes Hezbollah's need to assert its influence over him even more pressing, mainly due to the possibility that Aoun will follow the footsteps of his predecessors making the move from LAF chief to president – the top executive position in the country that has been vacant for the past two years.
By now, Hezbollah and its affiliated media outlets are already in the middle of a campaign aimed at messaging Aoun that he shouldn't make any move against Hezbollah's interests. This is especially true in the current situation as Hezbollah is at its weakest point in years after a series of Israeli blows to its leadership and military infrastructures.
The opening shot of this campaign was the highly controversial article published a few days ago by Ibrahim Al-Amin, the editor of Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Akhbar newspaper. Al-Amin blamed Aoun for eliminating "any distance between himself and the Americans" and warned him not to repeat the acts of former Army chief Ibrahim Tannous. It was under his term in the early 1980s that the Army was torn apart amid the ongoing civil war in the country.
Al-Amin's article was seen by many as a direct and unprecedented Shiite threat to the LAF’s cohesion in the eventuality that Aoun would not concede to Hezbollah's dictates. It attracted fierce criticism from media and political parties which oppose Hezbollah.
The Israeli commando operation in the coastal town of Batrun a few days later gave Hezbollah and its allies another cause to delegitimize the LAF and its high command as Hezbollah and its allies focused on the LAF’s responsibility for failing to prevent the raid. Once again, Hezbollah's opponents were quick to rebuff those accusations, mentioning that Hezbollah itself, with all its might, could not stand in the way of the Israeli ground incursion into southern Lebanon and blamed the organization for manipulating the Batrun incident to hinder the LAF’s image.
Hezbollah's "toolbox" to message the LAF leadership does not end with confrontational articles or politically-driven accusations. In the past, Hezbollah did not hesitate to use targeted violence to send messages. In 2007, the high profile assassination of Brig. Gen. Francois al-Hajj, an aspiring Christian officer who was the leading candidate for the position of LAF chief, shocked the country. As in many other assassinations in Lebanon, the perpetrators were never caught, but the use of a massive car bomb located in the highly secure area of the Ministry of Defense and the Presidential Palace, had the familiar trademarks of a Hezbollah attack and was most likely part of the organization’s string of assassinations in the early 2000s.
Marwan Hamadeh, the Druze politician and the telecommunications minister at the time who himself was a target of a Hezbollah assassination attempt a few years earlier, stated immediately after the attack against al-Hajj that it was part of a wider campaign to weaken "the only body in Lebanon who can balance the power of Hezbollah and other militias in the country.” Less than year later, the LAF’s leadership chose not to intervene in Hezbollah’s May 2008 violence.
A critical priority of Hezbollah is to prevent what it perceives as an American plan to weaken its hold over Lebanon. Hezbollah and its political allies still hold influential positions in the government and the parliament, and can foil any real change in the political balance of power.
Nevertheless, as the war with Israel continues, the possibility that Hezbollah's opponents and LAF leadership might try to exploit the weakening of the organization to challenge its political influence and military independence rises. The probability of Hezbollah turning to more violent options to safeguard its interests, as it did in the past, also increases.
The LAF leadership is facing unprecedented political and operational challenges as all sides of the conflict with Israel see the LAF as a critical instrument in the day after the firing stops. Unfortunately, there is no agreement about what this instrument's role will be: will the LAF maintain its traditional neutral position and refrain from confronting Hezbollah, or will it take a historical part in reestablishing Lebanon's sovereignty and freeing the country from Iran and Hezbollah's grip? The answer to this question has significant implications for Lebanon’s future.
Dror Doron is a senior advisor at United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) focusing on Hezbollah and Lebanon. He spent nearly two decades as a senior analyst in the Office of Israel’s Prime Minister. Dror is on Twitter @DrorDoron
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