Beirut: Saudi Arabia pledged $3 billion (Dh11 billion) to bolster Lebanon’s armed forces, in a challenge to the Iranian-allied Hezbollah militia’s decades-long status as Lebanon’s main power broker and security force.
Lebanese President Michel Sulaiman revealed the Saudi gift on Lebanese national television Sunday, calling it the largest aid package ever to the country’s defence bodies.
The Saudi pledge compares with Lebanon’s 2012 defence budget, which the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute put at $1.7 billion. Lebanon would use the Saudi grant to buy “newer and more modern weapons,” from France, said Sulaiman, an independent who has become increasingly critical of Hezbollah.
It followed what he called “decades of unsuccessful efforts” to build a credible national defence force.
As a direct challenge to Hezbollah, the Saudi gift — and the Lebanese president’s acceptance — has potential to change the balance of power in Lebanon and the region. It also threatens to raise sectarian and political tensions further in a region already made volatile by the three-year, heavily sectarian civil war next door in Syria.
The Saudi move was announced hours after thousands of Lebanese turned out for the funerals of former cabinet minister Mohammad Chatah and some of the other victims killed Friday in a bombing in downtown Beirut.
The bomb was believed to have targeted Chatah, an outspoken critic of Hezbollah’s dominance of Lebanese affairs and security. No group has claimed responsibility.
Saudi Arabia on Friday responded to the assassination by calling for Lebanon to build up the government and armed forces “to stop this tampering with the security of Lebanon and the Lebanese”.
Saudi Arabia sees itself as a patron of Lebanon’s Sunni Muslims. Saudi Arabia also backs rebels in Syria, while Iran and Hezbollah support Syrian President Bashar Al Assad.
Hezbollah, a Shiite political faction and militia that grew out of resistance to the Israeli occupation of Lebanon in the 1980s and now rivals Lebanon’s government and security forces in clout, made no immediate public response Sunday.
Saudi leaders, who were meeting with the visiting French President Francois Hollande at a palace near Riyadh when Lebanon announced the Saudi gift, also made no immediate public comment.
Interviewed by telephone, Mustafa Alani, a Gulf security official close to Saudi security officials, said the Saudi intention behind the gift “is not to go and open war with Hezbollah; but definitely it is to rebalance”.
The Saudi grant is intended as a five-year package to the Lebanese armed forces, allowing them not just to buy new French weapons systems but also to make broad improvements in areas including military bases and recruitment, Alani said.
Saudi Arabia increasingly is using massive cash infusions to support allies around the region. This year, the kingdom bequeathed billions of dollars to Egypt after the military helped force out a government allied with the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni political faction that, like Iran, Hezbollah and Syria, stands as a rival of Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia’s $3 billion grant to Lebanon surpasses the $1 billion in US assistance to Lebanon’s armed forces since 2006, when Washington resumed military aid after a long hiatus.
In Syria, Saudi Arabia as of late this summer had given $400 million in arms and other equipment to rebels fighting the Syrian president and his Hezbollah and Iran allies, said diplomats briefed on Saudi spending.
The French president, who met Sunday with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, later said France wanted to do its fair share in supporting Lebanon.
“France for a long time and even recently has been supplying the Lebanese army and intends to address every request.”
In Paris, a French official indicated France saw no reason for Israel to object to the aid to Lebanon’s army, saying Saudi Arabia and France were helping deal with Israel’s concerns about Hezbollah.
Still, concerns mounted in Israel on Sunday morning after a Katyusha rocket fired from Lebanon landed in northern Israel, two weeks after an Israeli soldier was killed on the same border.
Saudi Arabia since this summer has turned increasingly to France as a security ally, expressing dismay at the US — still Saudi Arabia’s and the Arab Gulf’s main protector — for refusing to intervene more forcefully in Syria. Saudis and French since this summer have held repeated joint military exercises. France is reported to be negotiating several large weapons deals with the kingdom.
US assistance to Lebanon’s army has mostly come in the form of logistical equipment such as trucks amid congressional concerns that any sophisticated weapons given might be used against Israel.
This fall, the US pledged $8.7 million in assistance to the Lebanese army during a meeting between President Barack Obama and Sulaiman, said Lebanese officials present.
Sulaiman scoffed at the offer, said the officials, saying it wouldn’t be enough to help Lebanon secure its border with Syria against jihadists flocking to fight in the Syrian war.
“When Presidents Obama and Sulaiman met in September, they discussed ... the United States’ continued support for Lebanon, including the US commitment to the unity and stability of Lebanon and the need for all countries in the region to respect Lebanese sovereignty,” said a spokeswoman for the US Embassy in Beirut, who didn’t address the aid. “They also discussed the long-term partnership between the two countries.”
Lebanon’s Ministry of Defence has long complained that it needs to beef up its outdated weapons reserves and that its forces have suffered high casualties fighting a rising terrorism threat in Lebanon because they are poorly equipped.
The inability of the Lebanese security forces was demonstrated in 2007, when radical Islamist militants occupied a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon. The military took three months to root out the militants from the camp.
The Saudi assistance to the military will also counter perceptions among the radical segment of Lebanon’s Sunni population, which believes that the army is in Hezbollah’s control.
That distrust has hobbled the army’s ability to patrol certain Sunni neighbourhoods in Tripoli and Sidon, where Islamist militancy is on the rise and attacks on the military are becoming commonplace. For the first time, Al Qaida is gaining a following among Lebanese Sunnis in Tripoli and Sidon.
In 2009, a report by the US-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies urged building up the Lebanese armed forces but warned that “any attempt to strengthen the LAF so that it can fight Hezbollah will fail”.
The study cited the large percentage of Shiite officers in the army, and argued that the socially diverse force couldn’t be successfully ordered to fight any faction in Lebanese society.
