“Critics of long-term military aid to Lebanon from the U.S. have been bolstered by the May 6 parliamentary elections that have given Hezbollah and its allies a majority in the legislature. Opponents to the aid are specifically concerned about an apparent warming of relations between the U.S.-equipped Lebanese Armed Forces and Hezbollah. Hezbollah itself and other skeptics of the U.S. assistance program in Lebanon have repeatedly emphasized a close proximity between the Lebanese Armed Forces and Hezbollah in an attempt to get the U.S. to reconsider its ties to the LAF.
‘So far those efforts have failed, but there is a growing chorus of Lebanon skeptics in congress who ― from their perspective ― think less in terms of equipment falling into the hands of Hezbollah, and more in terms of what they see as the declining autonomy of the LAF relative to Hezbollah,’ according to Aram Nerguizian, the co-director of the Program on Civil-Military Relations in Arab States at the Carnegie Middle East Center.”
Source: Does Hezbollah’s electoral victory spell the end to Lebanon’s US military aid?
