Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF)

The Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) moved into the village of Debbine in the Marjeyoun district on 22 June 2026, alongside UNIFIL, following a localised IDF redeployment. The same week, the fifth round of Lebanon-Israel talks in Washington centred on pilot zones where the LAF would take exclusive control and on disarming Hezbollah south of the Litani River. The June framework represents a substantive expansion of the LAF's role from Ceasefire monitor to deployment and handover force. An IDF strike on 6 June killed a Lebanese army colonel on the Khardali-Nabatieh road, one of the most direct military challenges to the LAF since the conflict began.

Lebanon's official military is constitutionally mandated as the country's sole legitimate armed force. Under UNSC Resolution 1701 (2006), the LAF was tasked with deploying south of the Litani and preventing armed groups operating there; it never enforced that mandate against Hezbollah, whose parallel military structure was never disarmed. The LAF has roughly 80,000 active personnel across army, navy, and air force, but depends heavily on US, French, and Gulf donor funding of approximately $580 million annually. Command is constitutionally reserved for a Maronite Christian general; the multi-sectarian officer corps reflects Lebanon's confessional political system. The LAF's institutional survival has historically rested on an informal compact: the army does not challenge Hezbollah's weapons; Hezbollah does not fracture the institution along sectarian lines.

That compact came under sustained pressure in 2026. President Joseph Aoun's government ordered the LAF to detain those who fired on Israel; the army withdrew from key border positions rather than comply. Washington warned it would no longer distinguish between the Lebanese state and Hezbollah if the LAF failed to act; the US has invested over $2.5 billion in LAF training since 2006. The Washington framework of 4 June included pilot zones under exclusive LAF control and a 22 June resumption of talks. The LAF is now caught between a diplomatic architecture that assigns it sovereignty and a ground reality where the IDF holds a 10-kilometre zone and Hezbollah has not agreed to disarm.