A US-backed disarmament track risks turning the Lebanese Armed Forces into a weapon against Hezbollah – and Lebanon against itself.
The Cradle
This is why the mere circulation of a plan to form a special unit inside the LAF, tasked with pursuing and disarming the resistance movement, has not been received in Beirut as a technical security idea. It is being read as an extremely dangerous strategic shift that could alter the shape of the Lebanese state itself and reopen the sectarian, institutional, and wartime wounds that have not healed since 1990.
The proposal began leaking into media, and political and security circles after the latest rounds of negotiations between Lebanon and Israel, particularly amid talk of a security meeting expected to be held at the Pentagon to launch a joint security track.
It cannot be separated from the wider regional shifts that followed the latest Israel–Hezbollah war, nor from Washington’s growing pressure to push Lebanon toward a new phase centered on ending weapons outside state control.
But the more dangerous question is not whether the idea is being discussed. It is whether it can be implemented at all. Can the Lebanese army, an institution that has spent decades trying to preserve an internal balance, be transformed into a direct party in a confrontation with the most organized and heavily armed military force inside Lebanon?
In theory, the proposal may appear attractive to some international and regional actors. Instead of Israel launching a new and costly war against Hezbollah, or waiting for a wider regional settlement that may not arrive soon, this logic suggests assigning the task to an internal Lebanese force.
Under direct US supervision and with international political cover, such a force would be expected to implement Resolution 1701 and gradually dismantle the party’s military structure.
Here, the idea of the “special unit” or “special brigade” emerges. According to what is being circulated, it would be practically separated from the LAF’s traditional chain of command and tied instead to the “mechanism” operations room overseeing ceasefire arrangements in southern Lebanon.
The danger in the proposal lies not only in the mission assigned to this force, but in the nature of its command. According to The Cradle’s sources, the unit’s authority would in practice be linked to US monitors rather than to the LAF command in its traditional form. That would amount to the creation of an exceptional military-security body, closer to an army within the army than a normal Lebanese military unit.
This is where real Lebanese concern begins.
The Lebanese army is supposedly one of the last institutions still holding Lebanon’s fragile national balance together. In a state built on delicate sectarian arrangements, any rupture inside the military would strike far beyond the security file and threaten the foundations of the state itself. That is why the memory of the 1980s still weighs heavily, when the army split during the civil war, and some of its brigades were pulled into the internal conflict.
The ghosts of 1983
The Fourth Infantry Brigade remains the most sensitive example in this context. The brigade, which effectively collapsed during the Mountain War in 1983 before being officially dissolved in 1984, was not simply a military unit that disintegrated.
It became a symbol of the collapse of the very idea of a unified army under the pressure of political and sectarian division. At the time, the defection of the 43rd Battalion under Captain Walid Sukkarieh shifted the balance of the battle and later fed into the path that culminated in the 6 February uprising and the fall of the 17 May Agreement.
This is why the mere discussion of forming a military force dedicated to confronting Hezbollah immediately brings back scenarios of fracture and collapse. Inside the LAF are thousands of Shia officers and soldiers, many of whom would not see a direct confrontation with the party as a national mission. It would be read as a confrontation with their own social, sectarian, and political environment.
This also explains the firm rejection reportedly coming from the military establishment toward any proposal of this kind. The Lebanese army understands that the secret of its survival since the end of the civil war has been its refusal to become a tool in internal conflicts.
The leadership rejects any formula that could drag the LAF into a confrontation with Hezbollah, as well as any military structure that could be read inside Lebanon as a project aimed at a specific sect or political community.
Yet the changes taking place on the ground cannot be ignored.
The US has invested for years in the Lebanese army through training, weapons, and funding. At bases such as Hamat and others, elite units, including the Commando Regiment and special forces, receive advanced training under US and British supervision.
This has led some circles to believe that the technical and military infrastructure needed to establish a force with special missions already exists, and that the issue is political decision-making more than military capacity.
The core problem, however, remains Lebanon’s political environment. Lebanon is not a centralized state capable of imposing major decisions by force without navigating complex internal calculations. Any attempt to impose Hezbollah’s disarmament by force would, in practice, open an internal confrontation whose dangers may exceed those of the latest war with Israel.
For this reason, the party’s position has been clear and severe. According to The Cradle’s sources, Hezbollah considers any force of this kind a “new Lahad Army,” in reference to Antoine Lahad and the South Lebanon Army (SLA) that collaborated with Israel during the occupation. The comparison is more than a political description. It is a warning that Hezbollah would treat any force created for this purpose as hostile and treacherous.
In Lebanese political memory, the phrase “Lahad Army” carries enormous symbolic weight. It evokes not only cooperation with Israel, but the loss of national and popular legitimacy and the entry into open confrontation with the resistance’s social base.
Hezbollah’s harder line, and quieter room for maneuver
What is notable, however, is that Hezbollah itself appears more pragmatic than its public rhetoric suggests, according to special information conveyed by The Cradle’s sources.
While the party rejects forced disarmament, it has tolerated the LAF’s expanded role in parts of the south and has not opposed the seizure of unmanned weapons caches under the ceasefire framework. The more sensitive question of advanced weapons, including ballistic missiles, remains confined to closed-door discussions and would depend on wider domestic and regional arrangements.
Here lies one of the major paradoxes of the current scene.
Hezbollah, which absolutely rejects any attempt to disarm it by force, appears prepared to discuss the reorganization of these weapons and their functions within broader domestic and regional understandings.
This is partly due to a real military reassessment inside the party after the latest war. According to The Cradle’s sources, heavy and ballistic missiles did not achieve the desired deterrence against Israel, while cheap and flexible drones proved far more effective in battle.
The reassessment goes beyond battlefield tactics. It points to a wider strategic rethink inside the party over whether the vast arsenal built over the past two decades can still deliver the same deterrent value under Israel’s intelligence reach and air superiority.
In this context, the signals inferred from Lebanese President Joseph Aoun’s remarks about “individual weapons” being part of Lebanese culture become more understandable. Some read the comments as an implicit distinction between strategic heavy weapons, which may become subject to negotiation, and light weapons or short-range missiles, which are far harder to eliminate completely in practice.
As for Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, his circles appear highly sensitive to the proposal. According to Ain al-Tineh circles that spoke to The Cradle, the matter has not been presented seriously to Berri, because merely raising it could be seen as a direct provocation. The same circles stress that any party daring to present such an idea may receive an extremely harsh answer from Ain al-Tineh, and could even be diplomatically expelled.
Leading sources in the “Shia duo” (Hezbollah and the Amal Movement) also tell The Cradle that the proposal would be interpreted inside the Shia military environment as a personal insult to Shia officers in the LAF, and could threaten the unity of the military institution itself.
At a deeper level, part of the purpose behind leaking these ideas appears to be pressure rather than implementation. The message being sent to Hezbollah is that the alternative to understandings and gradual concessions could be a broad internal explosion, or at least an attempt to manufacture a new internal balance by force.
Pressure tactic or civil war trigger?
But does the US, or any international actor, actually have the ability to push Lebanon toward this scenario?
So far, the answer appears largely negative. All previous experiences have shown that the stability of the Lebanese military establishment is a red line at the international and regional levels. Even the actors most hostile to Hezbollah understand that the collapse or division of the LAF would be a strategic disaster. It would turn Lebanon into a fully open arena of chaos and create an environment even more dangerous for Israel itself.
For this reason, the more realistic scenario is not the formation of a “special unit” to pursue the party, but a gradual strengthening of the Lebanese army’s role in the south, an expansion of its deployment, and perhaps the creation of new brigades specialized in border security within indirect understandings with Hezbollah itself.
This is what some military sources who spoke to The Cradle hint at when they discuss a serious project to form a new brigade tasked with securing the southern border, but within the Lebanese army’s traditional structure rather than as an independent force or one directly tied to external operations rooms.
In the end, the idea of a “special unit” looks less like a plan ready for implementation than a political bomb placed inside Lebanon’s most fragile institution. It collides with sectarian balances, the army’s internal calculations, Hezbollah’s red lines, and the limits of a system that has survived by avoiding this very rupture.
Lebanon today is not only facing a technical battle over the implementation of Resolution 1701. It is facing a deeper existential question over how to rebuild the state without blowing it apart, and how to address Hezbollah’s weapons without pushing the country toward another civil war.
So far, no one has a clear answer. What is certain is that any attempt to leap over Lebanon’s complex realities or to impose security solutions by force could reproduce the nightmares of the 1980s in a more dangerous and bloodier form.
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