Lebanese Armed Forces Research Articles

Unlocking HRM Challenges: Exploring Motivation and Job Satisfaction within Military Service (LAF)

This research investigates the intricacies of motivation and job satisfaction among military service members within the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) amidst various challenges. Employing an intrinsic–extrinsic framework, the study adopts a sequential mixed-method design. Interviews were conducted with 42 LAF service members, a Focus Group was convened with 12 LAF subject matter experts, and a survey was administered to 3880 LAF service members across the country. The findings underscore the significance of monetary rewards and praise as primary motivators. Notably, the expectation of rewards emerges as a crucial motivating factor closely linked to job satisfaction, while intrinsic factors exhibit comparatively lesser influence. Salary emerges as the foremost determinant of job satisfaction. Moreover, economic challenges, particularly the drastic decline in purchasing power, serve as a significant moderating factor, adversely impacting the relationship between motivation and job satisfaction. Health challenges, such as the scarcity and increased prices of medical supplies, also exert a negative moderating influence. Conversely, security challenges demonstrate no significant moderating impact. Insights gleaned from the Lebanese context emphasize the importance of offering competitive salaries and recognition programs, ensuring equitable compensation, designing reward systems aligned with performance expectations, regularly reviewing, and adjusting salary structures, providing comprehensive support for employees’ physical and mental well-being, and fostering a secure work environment.

Artificial intelligence in the defense sector: an RBV and isomorphism perspectives to the case of the Lebanese Armed Forces

PurposeThis paper aims to dynamically analyze the opportunities and challenges of AI in the defense sector in Lebanon or any security agency or any organization with sensitive data through a resource-based view perspective, the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI)/narrow AI applications in the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and to diagnose the current strategic orientation toward innovation and technology within the LAF while avoiding isomorphism.Design/methodology/approachThe methodology is based on a qualitative interpretive case-study approach collected from several departments of the LAF. In fact, there is a developing convention to use qualitative research approaches among which case studies to study information technology phenomena (Trauth and Jessup, 2000; Benbasat et al., 1987; Klein and Meyers, 1999). Data were collected through centered semi-structured in-depth interviews (two to three hours each) with an interview guide coded abductively between the researchers and the interviewees conducted in numerous departments of the LAF with their top officials and generals (O1, O2, O3…); the anonymity of the interviewees was kept due to the sensitivity of the data collected, which took place between September 2018 and March 2019. Data consolidation and processing were conducted using NVivo.FindingsThis paper shows that the LAF is undeniably facing many challenges among which isomorphism caused by the lack of resources; it also shows that narrow AI applications provide new avenues for the LAF to avoid such institutional isomorphism.Originality/valueThe role of narrow AI in limiting isomorphism in the defense sector.

Training on EMT, CLS, CMAST and DMALS for the Lebanese Armed Forces

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Positive hybridity? Unpacking UN security sector reform in South Lebanon

ABSTRACTRebuilding the local legitimacy of a national army after civil war is an important part of security sector reform (SSR) to help ensure the survival of the institution once the statebuilding bandwagon has moved on. The peacebuilding literature argues local ownership can provide international actors with local legitimacy. This article shows how an international actor can help to legitimise a local institution. Using new empirical material, this article examines the capacity-building work of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) with the Lebanese Armed Forces, and opens up the ‘black box’ of the micro-processes of SSR. First, it shows how an international actor can build the local legitimacy of a national army over time to build local knowledge and develop strong relationships with key stakeholders at national and civilian levels. Second, it explicates the political tensions that impact local and international agency and create hybrid solutions on the ground. Finally it argues that a successful hybrid solution in peacebuilding is possible when the normative values of the SSR project are accepted by key stakeholders and the local population. The article argues that UNIFIL’s SSR is assisted by the factors of time, flexibility, and pragmatism.

The LAF - Hezbollah duopoly: a stake for the Lebanese safety and the regional security

This article explores the evolution in the relationship between the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and Hezbollah in Lebanon, which can be qualified as a duopoly in the use of legitimate physical violence. Building on an explanation of Hezbollah’s path to political and military power, the second section of this article will provide an insight into the current nature of its relationship to the LAF, and the power-sharing between the two of them. In a third section, this article questions the future of this security duopoly in the context of the increasing military threat posed by radical elements from Syria at the border. In order to do so, the article elaborates and assesses two overarching scenarios in which each actor empowers the other, and five sub-scenarios to describe the different expectable modi operandi. The security duopoly is further analysed by introducing the regional stakes and influences on the LAF and Hezbollah. The conclusion of those 5 sub-scenarios’ assessment is that the current equilibrium of the relationship between the LAF and Hezbollah is not likely to change radically since every sub-scenario has flaws impacting its credibility, and hence its potential for becoming true.

The pieces that make the peace: the micro-processes of international security

ABSTRACTThis article uses the case study of UNIFIL in South Lebanon to provide fresh empirical evidence on how peace operations influence their security environment. This article discusses the micro-processes of peace operations to show how peace and stability can be maintained through small incremental measures employed consistently over time. Threats to stability are controlled by the actions of both military and civilian actors within a peacekeeping mission: Peacekeepers and Political Affairs Officers. Response mechanisms used by peacekeepers include: a visible security presence; responding to violations; reporting; and collaboration with the Lebanese Armed Forces. Preventative measures used by Political Affairs Officers include, liaison with the military, monthly tripartite meetings and the generation of micro-security arrangements. This article argues two factors facilitate the effectiveness of these mechanisms: good coordination between civilian actors and military actors in a peacekeeping mission and the use of a technocratic approach to resolving disputes on the ground.

REPRESENTATION AND STABILITY IN POSTWAR LEBANON

The two decades that elapsed since the end of the civil war in Lebanon (1975–90) were not always stable but did not witness a return to conflict. This article suggests that a significant factor that can help account for this outcome is the reforms introduced in Lebanon's security sector, and especially in the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), which made the LAF more representative and hence more legitimate in the eyes of members of Lebanon's various societal sectors. This case suggest that in divided societies in the aftermath of conflict, stability can be attained by enhancing the representativeness of the security sector, in addition to similar reforms in the political system.

Reintegration and the relevance of social relations: the case of Lebanon

The DDR process that took place in Lebanon after the internal wars (1975–89), based on the Ta'if Accord (1989), was not co-ordinated by any international organisation. This paper assesses the reintegration of a number of combatants of one of the militias, the Lebanese Forces, placing particular emphasis on the context in which it unfolded. A programme of reintegration into the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) was proposed to the ex-combatants, but because of the high number on one side and because of the situation within the LAF itself (a pluri-religious organisation under reorganisation) this programme had little effect on the process. Instead the majority of the ex-combatants came to rely on their family and network established within the militia for their social and economic reintegration. This study finds that there has been little rupture between life as combatants and life as civilians. Three contextual factors were particularly important: the small size of the country, the rhythm of the war where periods of combat alternated with periods of calm, and the close contact combatants managed to keep with their family, work, schools and universities. A key lesson for DDR processes more generally stems from the study: DDR initiatives are likely to be most effective when they work alongside and augment indigenous positive social processes contributing to reintegration.

Destroying Nahr el-Bared: Sovereignty and urbicide in the space of exception

During the summer of 2007, Nahr el-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon was the scene of a fierce battle between the Lebanese Armed Forces and a militant Islamist group called Fateh al-Islam. When Palestinian evacuees returned after the conflict, they found Nahr el-Bared utterly destroyed, houses smashed first by shells and bombs, then by vandalism and arson, possessions stolen and broken, offensive graffiti daubed on walls. I argue in this paper that the battle of Nahr el-Bared, and particularly the month of looting and arson that followed the battle, was a case of urbicide in a space of exception. The seemingly unrestricted destruction of homes, the theft of possessions and arson, went beyond any possible military necessity and became the deliberate and systematic erasure of the camp. This urbicide was made more possible by the very nature of the political spaces of the camp, which are in Lebanon but not of Lebanon, in which Lebanese sovereignty and law are not fully enforced, in which a whole range of non-Lebanese actors exercise political power outside the control of the Lebanese state. In these spaces of exception in which the rule of law is suspended, the looting, arson and vandalism took place without sanction. Palestinian homes and lives had become sacred in the sense that they could be destroyed without sanction, without recourse to legal redress, because there was no law.

Disarming Hezbollah

Hezbollah has become a powerful yet destabilizing force in Lebanon, affecting internal stability, allowing Syria and Iran dangerous influence, delaying peace with Israel, and complicating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Moreover, it forces the United States to struggle between traditional support for Israel and newfound support for Lebanese democracy. The international community should capitalize on Hezbollah's damaged public image following its 2006 war with Israel and pursue a multiparty disarmament effort, to include incentives for the major regional players. The effort should address Hezbollah's continued presence in the Lebanese Parliament, international support for the Lebanese Armed Forces, return of the Golan to Syria in exchange for its cutting military support to Hezbollah, and a nonaggression agreement between Israel and Lebanon.

Stabilizing Lebanon: Peacekeeping or Nation-Building

The summer 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war demonstrated that Israel views the problem of Hezbollah geostrategically, as a proxy military challenge supported by its long-term enemies Syria and Iran. This view led the government of Israel to attempt the eradication of Hezbollah through the application of overwhelming military force, an effort that was flawed in design and failed in execution. Similarly, the United Nations has viewed the problem as a conflict between two warring military entities, a problem it has unsuccessfully sought to mitigate since 1978 with the deployment of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). Colored through the lens of the global war on terrorism, the United States also views the threat created by Hezbollah geostrategically, the influence of a top-tier terrorist organization financed by Iran and supported by Syria. Together, these views led to the delayed implementation of a ceasefire in 2006 and the misguided belief that Israel would be successful in its efforts against Hezbollah. After 34 days of air and ground engagements the Hezbollah continued to fight, delivering what some have termed a strategic victory. Meanwhile, the state of Lebanon was once again decimated, with more than 1,200 civilians killed, 130,000 homes destroyed, and damage to the economy and infrastructure totaling over $7 billion. (1) The post-war response of the United Nations and the United States continues to focus on the symptom (Hezbollah), rather than the root cause that allows such an organization to exist; the weakness of the Lebanese government. This conflict should be seen in the context of a series of conflicts that have afflicted Lebanon during its history. In striking similarity to the current crisis in Iraq, Lebanon has struggled with internal sectarian conflict, the rise of transnational armed groups, foreign occupation, insurgency, and the use of its territory as both a battleground and a launching pad for regional conflicts fought by proxy. While outside actors have played a major role, the weakness of the Lebanese government lies at the foundation of these problems. The Lebanese government finds itself unable to exercise the most fundamental elements of state sovereignty: the control of borders and a monopoly on the use of force. Thus, any international effort to stabilize and reconstruct Lebanon in the wake of this most recent conflict needs to focus on the political objective of strengthening the Lebanese government. The Expanded UNIFIL The United Nations and American-led international response to the summer 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war was the passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1701. (2) The central initiative of UNSCR 1701 was the dramatic expansion of UNIFIL and the simultaneous deployment of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) to South Lebanon. At the tactical level, the expansion of UNIFIL and the deployment of the LAF enabled Israel to withdraw its forces from South Lebanon without ceding the terrain to its antagonist, Hezbollah. Strategically, the LAF deployment serves the critical mission of strengthening the sovereignty of Lebanon's government, demonstrated by placing Lebanese soldiers on the border with Israel for the first time in decades. Simultaneously, the expanded UNIFIL deployment is intended to support the LAF's southern deployment and provide political space for the Lebanese government as it tries to strengthen its institutions. The UNIFIL mandate and peacekeeping presence have been in existence in various forms since their inception in 1978. Prior to the 2006 war, UNIFIL consisted of 2,000 lightly armed peacekeepers. (3) This force was of insufficient size and capability to provide any form of credible deterrent to hostile forces on either side of the Israeli-Lebanese border, commonly referred to as the Blue Line. With the unilateral withdrawal of Israeli forces in 2000, Hezbollah had extensive freedom of maneuver allowing them to arm and train local militias and to conduct detailed surveillance of opposing Israeli forces. …

The Multinational Force in Beirut 1982-1984

The performance of the ill-fated multi-national forces deployed to Lebanon in the early eighties was unique in the history of international peacekeeping: analysts agree that no operation suffered so much to achieve so little. As one of the few peacekeeping forces conducted outside UN auspices, MNFI was a daring attempt by three, later four, Western powers to exert influence and contain bloodshed in Beirut in the summer of 1982. By the fall of 1983, MNF had become part of the problem rather than its solution. The two-year history of the MNF, presented here in essays first delivered at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, demonstrated the hazard of applying military means to political conflicts and offers invaluable lessons for ocnflict management. The contributors - soldiers, academics, journalists, politicians and diplomats - almost all had direct personal experience in the deployment of the MNF. Though their viewpoints vary, one consensus to emerge is that ignorance of Lebanese social and religious complexities among decisions-makers in Washington, Paris, Rome, New York and London explains many of the problems. In the end, the MNF was a tragic player with no clear mandate and a thankless task in difficult circumstances. The book's sections cover historical and theoretical background on the general issue of peacekeeping; military, diplomatic and political views from the four contributing nations; and views of other interested parties such as the Israel Defence Force, the Lebanese Armed Forces and the Shiites.