Question: The Trump Admiration according to Lebanon's An Nahar this week announced that it was cutting off military aid to Lebanon. But the next day a senior U.S. general claimed that military aid to Lebanon would continue. What's behind this?
Franklin Lamb: Certainly an arms cutoff would be a harsh unexpected blow for Lebanon which since 2005 has received nearly $ 1.5 billion in US military aid and for that country's hopes of establishing a real army is shattered at least in the near term. For example, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) was expecting to receive two Super Tucano light attack aircraft in October with another two to follow in 2018 as well as the first batch of 32 M2 Bradley armored fighting vehicles. These shipments would have made Lebanon only the third country beside the US and Saudi Arabia to have and deploy them.
The Pentagon has also ordered the battlefield retrieval of approximately 50 of its latest model tanks some of which were deployed by the LAF the weekend of 8/26/2017. Other expected shipments of aircraft, drones, and even "missile proof "watchtowers will be stopped. Will the US insist that they be pulled from that battle field where some are presently deployed near the Lebanon-Syria border?
Briefly what is behind Washington stopping military aid to Lebanon's army is that the State Department recommended cutting aid to Lebanon in 2018 but this was advanced because the US government does not believe Lebanon's claims this week that the LAF did not coordinated its operations along the Lebanon-Syria border with Hezbollah and Syria's armed forces. Washington has been dismayed by Lebanon's agreement with Syria and Hezbollah to give free passage to Islamic State militants from Lebanon's border region to enter Iraq. Two days later the U.S-led coalition carried out air strikes to block Islamic State group fighters evacuated from Lebanon from reaching eastern Syria and entering Iraq.
To be blunt, while back in 2006 Washington believed the Lebanese government and its armed forces could be a counter weight to the rise of the Iranian backed Hezbollah but they admit they erred. Washington believes that Lebanon has essentially lost its sovereignty and that Iran through Hezbollah, which it created, arms and funds and now occupies Lebanon. Whatever Iran's wants from Lebanon's 28 ministries, Hezbollah will use its political power to obtain.
The same goes for Lebanon's army which, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Israeli lobby and many in Congress consider Lebanon's army, as does Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman merely a "subsidiary unit of Hezbollah."
Moreover, Members of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees claim that Iran now views Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon the same and that Tehran has essentially colonized all three countries and has no intension of withdrawing any of them. It remains to be seen what becomes of future US military aid to Iraq.
Question: Is there reason for optimism that the post-war government in Syria will allow the development of local autonomy as well as the formation of an active empowered civil society along with local administration and decentralization?
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