No rockets. No missiles. No bombs. A shaky peace seems to be holding in southern Lebanon:
n the one incident that occurred Monday, IDF troops killed a Hezbollah man who had opened fire on them in southern Lebanon, hours after the United Nations-brokered truce took hold, but the cease-fire held.
In mid-morning, IDF soldiers shot dead the Hezbollah fighter, who sprang from a hiding place and opened fire at them. The clash took place near the village of Ghanduriya, in central south Lebanon.
Senior IDF officers said the incident fell within guidelines allowing for resort to weaponry. The guidelines allow troops to fire at Hezbollah members who pose a mortal and immediate threat. According to the officers, the Monday incident did not jeopardize the cease-fire.
It is, no doubt, a welcome respite for the Lebanese.
However, it seems to me that to be anything other than an intermission during which both sides re-group and re-think their respective strategies, the Lebanese army must be prepared to hold up their end of the agreement. That doesn’t seem to be happening:
TODAY was supposed to be the day when the muchmaligned army of Lebanon took control of its borders and policed the UN ceasefire.
Instead, its military commanders were left humiliated and its troops stranded as Hezbollah told them not to try to disarm its fighters.
The first infantry units were preparing to head south yesterday when Hezbollah demonstrated who exercised the real control by announcing that it had no intention of surrendering a single weapon. General Michel Sleiman, the commander-in-chief of the Lebanese Army, and his lieutenants had been invited to join in Cabinet meetings to finalise plans to deploy their 15,000-strong force in a buffer zone south of the Litani river. However, they ended up being lectured by Hezbollah’s two Cabinet ministers in the coalition Government on what the army could and could not do.
In Beirut, Western diplomats said that it raised serious concerns about the army’s ability and appetite to deal with Hezbollah. The Lebanese Government was left struggling to maintain a united front after unanimously backing the UN resolution on Saturday.
What is the source of Lebanon’s impotence? There’s a military rule-of-thumb that
Power = capabilities X interest X will
The estimates of Hezbollah troop strength I’ve read suggest that there are perhaps 1,500 remaining. That would give a numeric advantage to the Lebanese army of perhaps 10:1. Are the Hezbollah fighters better equipt and trained than the Lebanese army? That’s a possibility and one that raises questions about the composition, structure, and mission of the newly-expanded UNIFIL. Certainly, familiarity with the terrain and conditions gives an advantage to Hezbollah. Put a question mark behind capabilities.
Clearly Lebanon has a vital interest in disarming Hezbollah. If the ceasefire fails, the very least that the Lebanese can expect is a resumption of Israeli bombing which is a real physical and political threat to Lebanon.
Does Lebanon and particularly the Lebanese army have the will to disarm Hezbollah? I’ve read reports that suggest that the army is sufficiently pro-Hezbollah that it is practically impossible for it to disarm the group. Mark “will†a definite no.
Lebanon can’t disarm Hezbollah.
If Lebanon itself is unable to disarm Hezbollah, it’s difficult for me to see how a UN peacekeeping force whose primary mission is force protection will have the capabilities, interest, or will to do so.
So, how long will the kabuki, the elaborate symbolic action, take to break down?
UPDATE
Lebanese Political Journal addresses the issue of will:
A Chapter 6 deployment does exactly what Israel says it does. It puts a force in place that Hezbollah can fire over. There’s no guarantee that the Lebanese Army will deploy in the south, and the situation could easily return to that pre-12 July. It might even get worse.
But anything greater than a Chapter 6 deployment would be a violation of Lebanese sovereignty. Even if the Christian, Sunni, and Druze political leadership support a Chapter 7 deployment, the Shia, the pro-Syrian Lebanese President, and the pro-Syrian Commander of the Army do not. Not taking their opinion into account is undemocratic (even though the President was fradulenting elected, Hezbollah was rightfully elected), but, as one might imagine, a government cannot quite make a decision about deploying the Lebanese Army and embracing foreign troops when the commander of the Lebanese Army does not agree with the decision and the government has no mechanism through which to replace him.
His conclusion: wait and see.
I don’t share Kevin Drum’s regret that the U. S. won’t be participating in the expanded UNIFIL. Â How would U. S. participation convince Arabs that Israel’s actions in southern Lebanon aren’t a joint U. S.-Israeli offensive?
Part of what really bothers me about this resolution is that it is not, in essence, different from 1559: it leaves in place a solution that cannot be implemented without the concurrence of Hizb’allah, and an environment where defiance is to Hizb’allah’s benefit and concurrence to Hizb’allah’s detriment. The incentives are such that it categorically returns us to the status quo ante, with each side appreciably weaker (Hizb’allah militarily, Israel politically), but with the conditions for the next war, along much the same lines, already in place. It will take only a few months to get set for the next war, and from that point on we’re just waiting for the incident that sparks the war we all know is coming.
The second problem, though, is potentially much larger: the UN cannot and did not negotiate with Hizb’allah, because Hizb’allah operates outside of the Westphalian system. Yet the UN created an agreement predicated on Hizb’allah’s concurrence. In other words, the UN tacitly recognized Hizb’allah, and tacitly separated it from Lebanon as a political entity. This removes all constraints from Hizb’allah — in the UN’s view, they are essentially just like any other NGO — and makes it much harder for any country in the future to fight a terrorist army with the concurrence of the UN. This will lead to considerably more bloodshed and a much harder transition to whatever post-Westphalian system eventually emerges.
Go us, as it were.
It’s worse than that, Jeff. See my next post.