Center for a New American Security

Okay, I am not the pro's pro on the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) -- that would be, for my money, Aram Nerguizian -- but the rumblings in Congress about the long-standing U.S. train-and-equip mission to Lebanon are starting to gather some momentum and need to be addressed.

Elias Muhanna, whose blog I followed yesterday while simultaneously listening to the speech by Sec. Gates -- honestly, can't Hassan Nasrallah and Bob Gates coordinate when they're going to be speaking so I can listen to both? -- has a good inst-analysis of Nasrallah's speech up on Foreign Policy. I think he more or less nails it here:

1. Regarding those asking whether or not soldier within the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) might be sympathetic toward Hizballah and their operations in the South: one of the quirks of the LAF is that with a little wasta, you can get stationed close to where your family lives. (This is actually not that much different than the U.S. military: at Fort Drum, we had a disproportionately high number of soldiers from New York and New England.) Thus the sectarian complexion of units in the LAF tends to reflect, more or less, the sectarian make-up of the area in which they operate.

Supporters of Israel are used to seeing that country get something decidedly less than a fair shake in the halls of the United Nations in New York, and I sympathize with them. But no organization has more selflessly served Israeli interests with so little appreciation as the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).

A hobby of mine is to examine and reflect upon the ridiculous amount of money the military-industrial complex spends on advertising in the DC metro system in its effort to convince congressmen and bureaucrats to buy all the crap it sells. My rugby team practices on a field close to the Capitol South station, and for the past few months, I have passed this series of advertisements for Northrop Grumman trying to sell, uh, something to do with ISR. I'm not really sure what it's all about, but some of the advertisements highlight remotely piloted aircraft.

I had dinner last night with several Levant specialists, including Aram Nerguizian of the CSIS. Tony Cordesman speaks highly of Aram, and their paper on the Lebanese Armed Forces is probably the best thing you can read on the subject.

I don't really have all that much analysis to add to the allegations that Syria has transfered Scud missiles to Hizballah. So let me just contribute two points:

This priceless email report is from Beirut-based Mitch Prothero, of The National:

Oh no, the pride of Mahrouna, Haifa Wehbe, has gotten in trouble for calling those from Upper Egypt "monkeys". Tsk, tsk. I don't think singing this in Aswan is going to make up for the hurt, either.

Yezid Sayigh, to whom this blogger owes both a dissertation chapter as well as an interim progress report, has a new white paper out from the Carnegie Institute on secutiry sector reform (SSR) in Palestine, Lebanon and Yemen (.pdf). Considering Yezid's background, the section on the Palestinian Territories will be especially worth reading.