Lebanon military weak despite gift of MiG 29s

San Francisco Chronicle
December 18, 2008
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/18/MNQ314Q1ET.DTL

By Hugh Macleod
Beirut

In Lebanon’s most significant military upgrade since the end of the Civil War two decades ago, Russia has said it will supply the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) with ten MiG-29 fighter jets, trumping faltering American efforts to bolster the LAF and challenging Israel’s air dominance over the country for the first time.

Russian news agencies ITAR-Tass and Interfax quoted Lebanese Defense Minister Elias Murr saying Moscow would gift his country the Soviet-designed fighter jets following a meeting with his Russian counterpart Anatoly Serdyukov in Moscow on December 16.

Head of Russia's Federal Military and Technical Cooperation Service, Mikhail Dmitriyev, also said Moscow and Beirut were in talks on selling Lebanon amour for its ground forces, adding that supplies of Russian weapons here were “now possible after the situation in this nation has stabilized.”
“We view the Lebanese army as the main guarantor of this nation's stability, therefore the armed forces of this country must be strengthened,” Dmitriyev said.
The move is a much needed boost for the long-neglected LAF, which split along confessional lines during the 1975-1990 Civil War and was subsequently largely confined to barracks and left to rust as Syria’s military continued to occupy Lebanon until 2005.

Official figures put the number of LAF personnel at around 70,000, but former military officials concede the figure is closer to 45,000, of which only around one third are fighting men – much less than the estimated 175,000-strong Israel Defence Forces (IDF), who have fought three major offensives in Lebanon since the start of its Civil War.

Lebanon’s airforce consists of just four old UK-made Hawker Hunter jets which have not flown combat missions since the early 1980s, nine French Gazelle attack helicopters, which lack missiles, and two dozen US-supplied Hueys, the iconic chopper of the Vietnam war.

During last year’s bloody battle between the LAF and Islamist militants based in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in north Lebanon, the airforce adapted a Huey to drop bombs on the insurgents, the first such time the troop carrying helicopter has been used in such a way. The five 250kg bombs failed to explode.

While challenging Israel’s total dominance of Lebanese airspace – Israeli jets have flown scores of sorties over the country this year, according to UN monitors, and bombed large swaths of Lebanon unchallenged during its 2006 war with the Shia militants of Hezbollah – defence specialists said the Russian MiGs were no match for Israel’s US-supplied F15 and F16 fighters.

“Ten aircraft will not change the strategic balance. We would lose them in ten minutes,” said retired General Elias Hanna, now professor of political science at Lebanon’s Notre Dame University. “They are not adequate for urban warfare, like Nahr al-Bared, and I would prefer fighter helicopters, troop carriers and anti-tank weapons.”

Russia’s surprise intervention in Lebanon’s complex defence strategy comes as politicians and military leaders here wrestle with the vexed issue of who decides on war and peace in this tiny, but battle-scarred country.

Though slowly growing in stature since the withdrawal after 29 years of Syrian troops from Lebanon in April 2005, following accusations of Syrian involvement in the assassination of former premier Rafik Hariri, the long-neglected LAF remains less powerful than the military wing of Hezbollah.

The point was graphically underlined this May, when the army withdrew from the streets as Hezbollah fighters and allies used arms to take-over areas of west Beirut dominated by its Sunni political rivals, taking the country to the brink of civil war.

In 2006 the unresolved status of Hezbollah’s arms drew Lebanon into a ruinous war with Israel, triggered when Hezbollah militants - acting without the knowledge of the government in Beirut - crossed the border with Israel and kidnapped two Israeli soldiers. Israel later conceded it has lost the war to the Iranian-funded fighters.

Hezbollah’s foreign affairs spokesman, Nawaf Mousawi, told the Chronicle the issue was not integrating Hezbollah’s “resistance” into the LAF, but how to defend Lebanon against Israeli attack.

“We know Arab armies are not capable of confronting Israel if fighting in a conventional way. But in Lebanon we now have a successful example called the resistance, which stopped Israel’s invasion in 2006. Why should we change a successful formula? The question is how to combine the capabilities of army and resistance in a strategy.”

Lebanon’s arms deal with Russia comes as America ratchets up its military assistance to the LAF, boosting spending from just $45m in 2006 to $270m the following year. In the past three years, the US has spent $410m on the LAF; still a drop in the ocean compared to the $2.4bn annual military aid to Israel.

A flurry of military brass have jetted into Beirut this year, including General David Petraeus, former Commander of the Multi-National Force-Iraq now Commander of US Central Command who visited Lebanon in August and December to discuss America’s assistance to the LAF. The US has made two major assessments of the LAF since Syria’s withdrawal in 2005.

US military assistance to the LAF peaked during the Nahr al-Bared conflict, when it broke its own long-standing ban on direct flights into Beirut with military airlifts of ten million rounds of ammunition and several thousand new assault rifles after the Lebanese ran out of bullets. High-tech sniper rifles and bunker busting bombs, used only by the US army and Marine Corps, were also supplied, as well as spare parts for ageing vehicles.

The US has also sent 285 Humvees to Lebanon, with another 312 due by March, and has supplied 200 new trucks and 41 155 mm artillery pieces.

Overall though, US military assistance has focused on Special Forces training and specialized equipment, with an emphasis on counter terrorism. For the duration of 2009, US Navy Special Forces, Seals and Marine Commandos will be in Lebanon training Lebanese Special Forces in a series of six two-month courses. “Six such courses in China would be a large number,” said a US official involved in the training.

In October the two countries initiated a Joint Military Commission (JMC) in Beirut to assess Lebanon’s needs and, according to the embassy press release, to discuss “the need for a broad range of military capabilities for counterterrorism.”

The US has also been training hundreds of Lebanese Internal Security Force (ISF) officers since 2006 as part of an ongoing $60 million law enforcement assistance program. In August, the US trained twenty-four ISF members in anti –terrorism techniques at a base in California. Senior ISF officers also visited the US Coast Guard Station in San Francisco.

Lebanon’s police force has struggled to investigate a string of political assignations in this country since Hariri’s death. In January, Wissam Eid, an ISF officer investigating Fatah Islam was assassinated by a car bomb.

Crucially, however, America has failed to deliver on requests from their Lebanese allies for heavier hardware, such as Cobra attack helicopters, which American officials had hinted over the summer the US would be willing to supply, only to roll back expectations this autumn. The Pentagon recently stated that the US military may supply Lebanon with M-60A3 battle tanks.

Speaking to the Chronicle at the US embassy north of Beirut, Deputy Chief of Mission Bill Grant said: “After the Syrian withdrawal the US has been engaged in a more focused process of assistance to the Lebanese military and this will continue through the change of administration.

“We want to see the LAF as a force capable of operating throughout the country to defeat terrorist threats and to operate in professional way to defend Lebanon’s borders and implement resolution 1701.”

UN Security Council resolution 1701 brought the cessation of hostilities to the 2006 July War and demanded full Israeli withdrawal, an end to Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel and the deployment of a 30,000-strong peacekeeping force of Lebanese and UN soldiers to south Lebanon, formerly Hezbollah’s stronghold.

The resolution also reiterated Security Council demands on Lebanon for the disarmament of all militias – which American officials say means Hezbollah, but which most Lebanese politicians prefer to direct towards the various armed Palestinian groups operating in the country.

US support to the LAF is limited by its commitment to maintaining Israel’s qualitative military advantage over its neighbors. Discussing the issue in an interview published December 3 Chris Straub, US deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Near East and South Asian affairs, said: “We don't have a conversation on these matters without considering the concerns of Israel and Israel's qualitative edge.... That's a commitment we take very seriously.”

American efforts are also hamstrung by serious conflicts of interest in boosting a military that has a strategic military relationship with Hezbollah, listed as a terrorist organization by Washington.

The point was underscored this August when just five days before General Petraeus sat down with the Lebanese acting army chief, the same chair was occupied by a delegation from Hezbollah who “praised the army’s national unifying role and underlined the strong relation joining the army and the resistance.”

But though officials admit the paradox, they praise the LAF as having one of the best records of foreign militaries on accounting for US-supplied equipment and express confidence in its new chief Jean Kahwaji.

Officials express less confidence, however, when asked where US policy toward the LAF would go were Hezbollah and allies to gain a majority of seats in parliamentary elections next May and form the next government, as some analysts here expect them to do.

Russia’s intervention in Lebanon is thus seen by some observers as an attempt to outflank faltering US policy in this strategic area of the Middle East. Though more rhetoric than military reality, the Russian navy announced in September that it would be returning to the Syrian port of Tartous, just north of Lebanon, a move that followed Syria’s backing for Russia’s war against US and Israeli-trained Georgian forces in the breakaway region of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

“These MiGs are Russia’s challenge to America’s perceived monopoly here and could also be a message to Israel after their support for Georgia in South Ossetia,” said retired General Hanna. “My fear is that Lebanon will be caught in the middle.