Almost 24 months have passed since the November 2024 ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel, and the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) are confronting a widening chasm between the sweeping security and territorial responsibilities the international community has placed on their shoulders and the tangible financial and material support pledged to back those efforts. As the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) prepares to wrap up its mandate at the end of 2026, the LAF has been directed to expand Lebanese state control across the entire country, starting with the strategically critical territory south of the Litani River, and absorb all of the security duties currently carried out by the UN peacekeeping mission.
Senior Lebanese government and military officials speaking exclusively to Middle East Eye confirm that a French-led initiative to rally global backing for the LAF has so far failed to deliver meaningful concrete assistance. A preparatory coordination gathering hosted in Paris on September 17 brought together delegations from 17 nations to discuss support for both the LAF and Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces, alongside planning for post-UNIFIL governance in southern Lebanon. Yet according to a high-ranking Lebanese government source with direct knowledge of the closed-door talks, the meeting yielded no major financial commitments and no set timeline for a full donor conference that would unlock large-scale funding.
“Frankly, nothing actually happened,” the source told MEE. The only tangible contribution to date has come from Jordan, the source added, though the LAF delegation that attended the talks characterized the Jordanian aid package as relatively modest. A separate senior LAF official echoed that assessment, telling MEE the meeting delivered “nothing real” to address the force’s pressing needs.
This gap between the LAF’s documented requirements and donor willingness to deliver has grown increasingly urgent as global powers pressure Lebanon to extend state authority and consolidate all weapons under official state institutions, rather than allowing armed groups like Hezbollah to maintain independent military capabilities. Verified internal LAF documents reviewed by MEE show the force estimates its short- and medium-term operational and transformation needs will cost roughly $3 billion to implement.
That $3 billion price tag is outlined in a 21-page strategic presentation the LAF prepared for an earlier preparatory conference held in Cairo in February 2026, which lays out a comprehensive five-year institutional modernization and expansion plan for the force. The document details a military grappling with overlapping political, financial, security and operational pressures simultaneously. Key risks identified include Lebanon’s ongoing nationwide economic collapse, a shrinking annual defense budget, overreliance on foreign aid, declining donor contributions, persistent cross-border hostilities, terrorist threats, and the destabilizing consequences of a drawdown of international presence in the country.
The presentation also highlights deepening personnel and operational readiness challenges, including eroded real salaries amid soaring inflation, a growing exodus of skilled service members, difficulties retaining top talent, rising cyber threats, coordinated information warfare campaigns, and a continuously expanding list of mandated missions. The LAF is currently tasked with border security, counterterrorism operations, disarmament of non-state armed groups, internal security patrols, and humanitarian disaster response, creating what the document terms a crisis of “mission overstretch.”
The plan is structured around four core strategic pillars: consolidating state security and border control, restructuring and modernizing the LAF’s force structure, strengthening national resilience and crisis response capacity, and upgrading human resources and personnel support. The short- and medium-term priorities place special focus on southern Lebanon, where the LAF aims to establish full stability, take over the security responsibilities currently held by UNIFIL, strengthen border management, and ultimately assume full border defense duties once the UN mission concludes.
The plan also calls for expanded border control along Lebanon’s lengthy frontier with Syria and a transition of maritime security responsibilities currently held by UNIFIL’s Maritime Task Force. Broken down by budget line, the $3 billion request allocates roughly $1.09 billion to boost combat readiness, $654 million for critical new military capabilities, $364 million for adjusted salaries and retention incentives, $334 million to absorb duties from UNIFIL’s Maritime Task Force, $193 million to extend border control infrastructure along the Syrian border, and $150 million to stand up full border defense operations after UNIFIL’s mandate expires.
Personnel crises are particularly acute: the document places current operational readiness at just 75% of the full readiness required to meet all mandated missions, and draws a direct link between stagnant military salaries and Lebanon’s skyrocketing cost of living, which has left many service members struggling to support their families. The presentation also makes explicit that the LAF’s institutional mission cannot be separated from Lebanon’s ongoing political struggle over the ownership of weapons, listing the “monopoly of arms” as a core strategic objective and explicitly calling for all use of military force to be restricted exclusively to official state institutions.
This goal, and the parallel reality of Hezbollah’s large, independent arsenal, has become a central sticking point in international discussions over aid to Lebanon. While participants at the February Cairo meeting publicly reaffirmed their commitment to mobilize financial and technical support to help the Lebanese state extend its control across all national territory, with Egypt’s foreign ministry noting the end goal is to enable the state to establish an exclusive monopoly on weapons, the LAF’s presentation makes clear that achieving this objective requires a far better resourced and more capable force. The core argument is that the LAF cannot be expected to take on expanded territorial and security responsibilities without the personnel, funding, infrastructure, and capabilities needed to execute those duties effectively.
Pressure on the LAF has grown steadily since the 2024 ceasefire, which stipulated that the LAF would deploy across southern Lebanon alongside the withdrawal of Israeli forces, and that only official Lebanese state personnel would be permitted to carry weapons south of the Litani River. In August 2025, Lebanon’s cabinet formally tasked the LAF with implementing a national plan to extend state authority and restrict weapons access exclusively to official institutions. By January 2026, the LAF announced it had completed the first phase of this plan in the South Litani Sector, though it explicitly excluded areas still remaining under Israeli occupation from this assessment.
The force also noted that unexploded ordnance, unaddressed cross-border tunnels, and persistent Israeli military activity that restricts access to key areas have slowed progress on completing the mission. The first phase was framed as a meaningful step forward, but not the completion of the LAF’s broader national mandate. The next, far larger phase of the mission will require extending state control north of the Litani and eventually across the entire country, a goal that demands massive additional resources at a moment when major international donors are increasingly questioning whether the Lebanese state and its military are willing to confront Hezbollah over its independent weapons stockpiles.
The February Cairo meeting was initially intended to pave the way for a high-level donor conference in Paris the following month, with the European Union already signaling it was prepared to commit €100 million primarily for logistical equipment for the LAF. However, on March 1, 2026, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and French President Emmanuel Macron announced the Paris conference would be postponed, citing that the preconditions required for a productive meeting were no longer in place. The next day, Hezbollah launched a new round of rocket attacks targeting Israel, prompting the Lebanese government to ban all unauthorized military and security activity by non-state actors including Hezbollah, and direct the LAF to begin implementing disarmament measures north of the Litani.
This resumption of hostilities completely reshaped the political and security context the donor conference was meant to operate in, leaving the LAF tasked with even more urgent responsibilities while its international support mechanism remained on hold. September’s Paris meeting was organized to restart the stalled donor process.
France has long sought to maintain a central diplomatic and political role in Lebanon, and has led planning to prepare for a stable post-UNIFIL environment. Jordan has also taken on a more active role, with the senior Lebanese government source noting Amman is increasingly concerned about the regional spillover of Lebanese instability, particularly amid ongoing tensions in Syria and the West Bank.
Public messaging from Paris following the September meeting was far more positive than the private assessments offered by Lebanese officials. Macron framed the gathering as a step to strengthen Lebanese sovereignty and enable the Lebanese state to guarantee its own security, while Aoun expressed satisfaction with the discussions and repeated his call for expanded international support for the LAF and Lebanese security forces. The United States also participated in the meeting, with US Ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa describing the gathering as a useful opportunity to coordinate global backing for the LAF.
Despite this upbeat public framing, the senior Lebanese government source confirmed “the meeting did not result in a commitment to provide the army with the resources it has requested,” and “there was also no agreed timetable for the full donor conference.” The source noted that the participation of major global powers including the United States and Saudi Arabia was one of the only clear positive outcomes, but added that “there was no immediate financial pledge and no framework for when the main conference would take place.”
The senior LAF source offered a matching analysis: “France wants to preserve a significant role in Lebanon and genuinely wants to support the army, but countries with greater financial capacity remain reluctant.” According to the senior Lebanese government source, Saudi Arabia remains hesitant to commit large-scale funding because it believes the LAF has not yet fulfilled all expected obligations regarding addressing Hezbollah’s weapons status. Washington shares similar concerns, the source added, and is also currently distracted by other pressing regional priorities.
This deadlock has left the LAF facing an intractable dilemma. The international community is demanding the force expand its presence, secure all of Lebanon’s borders, prepare for UNIFIL’s departure, and establish the state’s exclusive authority over all weapons. The LAF’s own internal assessment confirms achieving these goals requires $3 billion in new funding and a sweeping institutional transformation. But major powers capable of providing that level of support are increasingly tying assistance to broader political demands that have yet to be met.
For France, the issue is as much about preserving long-standing French influence in Lebanon as it is about avoiding a dangerous security vacuum in southern Lebanon once UNIFIL withdraws. For Lebanon, the stakes center on whether the LAF can build the capacity required to implement a policy that has placed the force at the heart of the country’s ongoing internal confrontation over Hezbollah’s arms. For Washington and Riyadh, Lebanese officials say, the core question is whether additional funding will actually deliver the political and security outcomes the two powers are seeking.
The LAF’s February Cairo presentation anticipated many of these hurdles. It did not merely request new equipment, vehicles, and salary support from donors; it laid out a full five-year institutional transformation plan, with an estimated price tag of $3 billion for the initial phases. Seven months after that formal request was submitted, the international coordination process has yet to deliver a matching commitment. With UNIFIL’s mandate set to expire at the end of 2026, the gap between the responsibilities assigned to the LAF and the financial support global powers are willing to provide has become impossible to ignore.
