Abstract
Throughout the twentieth century, civil-military relations in Lebanon were marked by sectarian divisions, ultimately leading to two civil wars. Thereafter, the Syrian occupation of Lebanon from 1990 to 2006 hindered sovereign and effective reforms in the security and defense branches. Since Syria’s withdrawal, institutions for civilian control have been formally established through several reforms. Yet the actual performance of these institutions is deeply flawed. This weak performance can be traced back to Lebanese sectarianism, which up to this day dominates the civilian state apparatus. As civilian policy-making mostly builds on consensus between Lebanon’s sectarian factions, such divisions regularly paralyze the political arena. This chapter will thus focus on the consequences of sectarianism and factionalism on civilian control. It illustrates how sectarianism and factionalism can render institutions of civilian control ineffective. In the Lebanese case, civilians are neither able to agree on adequate security and defense policies, especially in regard to Hezbollah’s militia, nor locate much needed resources to counter new security threats. Further, the chapter shows that the lack of such policies and funding severely reduces the Lebanese Armed Forces’ effectiveness, as it leaves it without a clear role and adequate capacities. On a positive note, the Lebanese military has legitimized itself as a cross-sectarian institution in an environment dominated by sectarianism and is considered a model for multi-sectarian forces. Beyond that, it has developed a security plan to counter current security threats, through which it could successfully locate international resources. The Lebanese Armed Forces can thus play a stabilizing role in a state where civilian authorities fail to provide such stability.
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Notes
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- 2.
- 3.
Overrepresentation of Christians can be traced back to the period of French rule, in which the Mandate administration heavily recruited Christians to counterweight Sunni pan-Arab sentiments (Bou-Nacklie 1993, p. 645, 653).
- 4.
The National Pact (orig.: Pacte Nationale) was an oral arrangement established by the first Lebanese heads of government after independence. Then-President Bishara al-Khoury and Prime Minister Riad al-Solh agreed on Lebanon’s political autonomy vis-à-vis Arab and Western interests and a power-sharing distribution of influential posts between the confessional communities (El-Khazen 1991, p. 4). Since then, it its political tradition for the Lebanese presidency to be occupied by a Maronite Christian, while the Prime Minister post is held by a Sunni Muslim and the Speaker of Parliament is of Shi’a affiliation (ibid., p. 36).
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Supporting evidence for such allegations has been found by an UN independent investigation commission (Mehlis 2005, p. 5).
- 7.
In their 2014 reports, the BTI and Polity IV have classified Lebanon as democratic, although with low scores, whereas Freedom House categorized it as “partly free”.
- 8.
In the past 10 years, the Defense Minister has never been an active or retired military figure. In contrast, the post of President of the republic has repeatedly been occupied by the former commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces. While judges and high-ranking civil servants are unable to be elected to the presidency during their active service or for 2 years after their resignation, the Lebanese constitution does not hinder military personnel, active or not, from running (Leb. Const., Article 49, Paragraph 3). In the latest crisis of presidential vacancy, current AC Kahwagi had been a favourite candidate to be agreed on (Knudsen 2014, p. 5), before Michel Aoun’s election on 31 October 2016 finally ended the 29-month vacuum.
- 9.
In October 2015, Michel Aoun as the leader of the Free Patriotic Movement, which belongs to the March 8 Faction, started a boycott of cabinet sessions due to the Lebanese government’s inability to agree on a replacement for current Army Commander Jean Kahwaji, whose term had officially ended in September 2015 but was extended for a second time in August 2015 (The Daily Star Lebanon, 13 October 2015).
- 10.
- 11.
On structural weakness of the Internal Security Forces, see Nashabe (2009).
- 12.
Approval has only been generated for draft budgets during this time span. The provision, which allows for the procedure of adopting the last approved budget, can be found in the Lebanese Constitution, Article 86. Further, a detailed report on fiscal transparency in Lebanon highlighting several general shortcomings in preparation, coordination, and review of the national budget, among others, was published in 2005 by the International Monetary Fund (IMF Report 2005).
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Kara, S. (2017). Lebanon: The Limits of Controlling a National Army in a Sectarian State. In: Croissant, A., Kuehn, D. (eds) Reforming Civil-Military Relations in New Democracies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53189-2_10
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