Defense Minister Maurice Slim and Army Commander Joseph Aoun during a meeting in Yarze, September 2023. (Photo from the Minister's X account)
Caretaker Defense Minister Maurice Slim on Wednesday disputed a front-page headline in the Saudi daily al-Sharq al-Awsat, according to which it said that "the Lebanese military is not combat-ready" in southern Lebanon, should they be deployed there.
In a statement issued by his office, the minister claimed that this statement is "truncated," and that he simply referred, in his statements to the newspaper, to "the difficulties" faced by the Lebanese army, particularly with regard to the insufficient salaries and allowances due to its members, since the start of the economic crisis and the devaluation of the national currency in 2019.
The article in which Slim's answers to a journalist from al-Sharq al-Awsat are included is devoted to "Lebanese discontent due to the postponement of the conference planned in Paris for the support of the Lebanese army."
In his press release, Slim stressed that he had simply "asked friendly countries to help equip the Lebanese army to enable it to fulfill its national duty of protecting the southern borders."
The deployment of the army in southern Lebanon, and the strengthening of its capabilities, are often mentioned in the context of the implementation of UN Resolution 1701, with the idea of putting an end to the fighting that has been going on since Oct. 8 between Hezbollah and Israel.
At the end of January, caretaker Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib called on the international community to "help strengthen the Lebanese army, knowing that we need more forces in the south of the country." "UN Security Council Resolution 1701 calls for a contingent of 15,000 men in the south. We have less than 5,000. We don't have the means to ensure this recruitment, even though demand is very high due to unemployment", he confided in an interview with L'Orient-Le Jour. For his part, the head of the Lebanese Forces political party, Samir Geagea, regularly declares that, if the troops were deployed in the South, there would be less likelihood of an expansion of clashes between Hezbollah and Israel.
This article originally appeared in English in L'Orient-Le Jour.