 Ladies and gentlemen, even though this is a Middle East meeting, I hope you'll forgive us if we don't begin 20 minutes late. Quite seriously, in introducing Erum, I wanted to make at least a few remarks about the broader situation in Syria and the scale of the tragedy that we're going to be focusing on. I think it is worth noting that this obviously has expanded to the point where it involves the Arab Gulf States, Iran, Turkey, Jordan, all of Syria's neighbors, Israel. It is also a tragedy which has reached the point where the UN has had to stop providing casually estimates. If you have wondered why you do not see new figures, it's because it's no longer possible to make an estimate. At this point, we know it's over 130,000 dead. And that is an estimate of direct casualties, not people who have starved or had medical crises or other causes. I think if you look at it more broadly, the UN now estimates there are about 6.2 million people who have been displaced or made as refugees. That's about 28% of the population of the country. If you look at the number of people who are displaced, have lost access to their homes, education, security within Syria, it's about 4.6 million people. That's something on the order of 26% of the population. But I think one reason I wanted to make these remarks is there's a tendency to focus on the present and to see the humanitarian crisis in Syria in present terms. But the fact is that what Aram is going to be discussing this morning extends almost indefinitely into the future. What you are doing is displacing and creating refugees over a period that is already several years. Historically, that means many of them never return to their homes, their businesses, and many never return to their country. And one of the things that tends to be forgotten about Syria, particularly for those of you who have visited it and seen it as a Western tourist, is how poor and badly developed a country it has become over the last quarter of a century. Sirius per capita income before this started ranked 156th in the world. It was one of the worst managed economies in the region, one of the worst managed economies in the developed world. Its productivity gain in 2011 before this began ranked 179th in the world and was negative. Considering this was a country that once had a GDP equal to that of South Korea, you have an idea of how much this country was frozen in place and failed to develop. Something like 12% of the population was below the poverty line before this crisis began. And that poverty line today is set so low that it is at basically the subsistence level. It is not poverty as we would think of poverty in the United States. You had 15% direct unemployment before this began. Youth unemployment was somewhere between 25% and 30%, one of the highest figures in the developing world, ranking 156th in the world. It's a very young country and it's very urbanized. And I think, again, as we look at this, one of our problems as analysts, as policy makers, and planners, in a situation where, and I think Eric makes these points very clearly, this is likely to go on for years to come. What I've outlined is going to deteriorate and have an impact that goes on and on. It is a country which did not invest in health or education before this crisis began. And with a third of the people who are essentially displaced or refugees, children 14 years of age or younger, you are impacting 5, 10, 20 years into the future on the legacy of this fighting in terms of its impact on the young. Now, having said that, the focus we have today is an area where Aram has unique expertise. He's done a lot of military and regional analysis. But his work on the Lebanese armed forces, the security situation, that affects both Lebanon and Syria I think is truly outstanding. He's just come back from a trip to Lebanon, one of many, where he's been an advisor to several of the donor countries on how to support the Lebanese armed forces. With that point, Aram, let me turn it over to you. Thank you, Tony, and I hope everyone can hear me fine. We have a tendency to put together slides that require maybe a two or three hour briefing. We're gonna try and do it in 15 minutes. So with that, I'll just segue over from Tony's opening remarks and just focus in specifically on how Syria has affected Lebanon's own internal security structure, what the threat pattern looks like, and how this impacts the long term prospects for stability. We're just gonna go over four key points and I will note that I will go through the slides rather quickly, don't be upset with me for doing so. We'll come back to any of them you like. And then we can certainly talk about the disability because these slides will be rolled in into a report that is scheduled for release next week. So the first key point is to really go through the patterns in terms of Hezbollah's role in Syria and also the effects that has in terms of the rise of Sunni militancy and the impact on the Sunni community in Lebanon. You have a long history and I don't wanna go into it in detail of competing Lebanese factions with diametrically opposing views on Syria and Iran. And the polling, of course, with all its limits does reflect a broad pattern. You have very real and I would say even more pervasive impacts in terms of divisions along Sunni Shiite lines on the issue of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hezbollah in Syria and Hezbollah in terms of its regional role. These hardening sectarian positions are in no rush to become softened by dramatic changes in terms of regional competition. And when you look at some of the views vis-a-vis key individuals that represent power and prestige and influence within the region, whether in Lebanon or the Gulf, if you look at the examples of Hezbollah's Secretary General Hassan Asrola or views tied to the Saudi monarchy, you have similar patterns of diametrically opposed narratives. This extends forward in time when it comes to the Assad crisis and whether or not the Assad regime should allow Jigata exist, stay on, have a role. The divisions along Sunni Shiite lines also remain largely fixed. And unlike any country in the region where you have a vast majority of public sentiment that is clearly against the Assad regime, clearly favors the idea of his withdrawal, these Sunni Shiite dividing lines translate very clearly into a real split in public opinion. In every way, the Arab uprisings in 2011 have accelerated these divisions and turned them into a key component of the Lebanon, Syria insecurity nexus. And we start looking at this mainly from the point of view of Hezbollah because frankly that is the most visible aspect of this. Hezbollah has seen its role in Syria and its sinking on the Syria crisis of all from 2011 through to 2014. What was a initially cautious and ideologically loaded response dramatically shifted to a military role first in support and training and then dramatically, far more aggressively focused on achieving tactical gains in areas surrounding the frontier region in the North Beka. You have had very real side effects in terms of violence and in terms of escalating tension which we will address. The core missions remained largely unchanged since 2012. Defend the Saeed-Zaynab shrine, protect Lebanese Shia villages east of the Beka Valley, offer counterinsurgency training to Assad forces, protect key through fares and highways linking Lebanon and Syria and play a combat role in places like Zabadani, Kusair, and now Qalamun. All of these priorities were driven by a preference to try and minimize at least some of the blowback from Syria from the perspective of Hezbollah. Another factor was the perceived need to manage Lebanese internal dynamics. Of course, all of these initial concepts in 2012 shifted dramatically by 2013 and all those priorities focused mainly on the combat role. So this graphic illustrates in very uncertain terms and without any real accuracy, the key theaters where Hezbollah is engaged in Syria. And you'll notice the red square for Al Qalamun because that is the most pressing and real tactical engagement the group faces in the short term, let along the medium term. Al Qalamun is very different from Kusair. The battle there includes a defensive structure that makes it difficult for Hezbollah to have a clear initial advantage. The mountain range favors the anywhere between 5,000 to 30,000 potential fighters that are hunkered down. You do have the likes of course of factions include Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahra al-Sham al-Islamiyyah, Liwal, Tahaid and others. And again, this is only anecdotally the best. And any estimates of the strengths on either side, I think are difficult and uncertain. With all of this, you have another backdrop that has very little to do with Hezbollah and the Shia directly, but it frankly feeds the threats and risks that Hezbollah faces. Hezbollah's actions in Syria have served to antagonize, if not mobilize, the mainly Sunni North. Not only against Hezbollah, but against the Shia community more broadly. All of the patterns that Tony described in terms of socioeconomics in Syria, patterns which frankly exist across the region in one way, shape or form, exist in Lebanon as well. And they impact most critically Northern Lebanon. You have twice the national average at 52.57% when it comes to poverty rates in North Lebanon. The North is, as I mentioned, heavily Sunni and there is a predominant anti-Assad worldview. In every way that matters, North Lebanon today is the South Lebanon of 30 years ago. It has all of the underlying socioeconomic and demographic pressures. And unlike urban Sunnis in places like Beirut, the North has a history of tribalism, trafficking and smuggling. And it is potentially fertile ground for militant and anti-Hezbollah recruitment. You'll see that the numbers tracked from 2005, 2004 through to 2011. There is no sign that this pattern is either abating or reversing. And beyond this, one has to also be very careful about the assumptions we make when it comes to Sunni militancy and the threat it faces. And also the potential risks to groups like Hezbollah that are aligned with Assad. Lebanon Sunnis have only marginal or limited martial tradition in terms of combat and militias during the Civil War. And that hasn't translated well in the post-war period. You also have the reality that there's such a thing as lead time in building up military capability even within a militia or an asymmetric force. In that regard, Hezbollah has a 30 year real world advantage. There is also the absence of serious long-term patrons at the international and regional level who are willing to support military development tied more directly to the Sunni community in Lebanon. You also have the very real threat to potential militant groups when it comes to urban and rural Sunni dividing lines on what the long-term end state is in Lebanon. Certainly mainstream factions supported the Arab uprisings and they support the opposition and they continue to do so, but at very real risk in terms of what that does to create militancy they can't control within their own communities. At the end of the day, in the long term, they remain at cross purposes. The mainly Sunni future movement led by former Prime Minister Saad Haridi would face great difficulty in accommodating a more radical Sunni narrative in Lebanon despite the impact of Hezbollah's role in Syria. Radical and Salafi Sunni groups also are hobbled by their inability and in some cases their unwillingness to play the game and replicate Lebanese patronage networks that are so essential to public support. However, the longer term Hezbollah forces in Syria will have to think about what this does in terms of traction for the existing militant and fringe groups. You do have the very real threat that mainstream Sunni forces over time will become marginalized and will have a diminishing role in domestic affairs. There's the risk that you might have new centers of communal power as a result that do pose a threat to Hezbollah's role, not only in Lebanon, but in the region. You do have the absence of central government and socioeconomic patronage systems, but that can be compensated for over time and they can play a growing role. You also have the very real threat of the proliferation and triply the refugee camps where you have Palestinian populations and areas around Ersal and North Baikal when it comes to militant groups. Groups like Jabhat al-Nusra in Lebanon and others pose as much a threat to mainstream Sunni factions as Hezbollah and the Shia. Let's just run through these and look at some of the initial impact in terms of vulnerability in Lebanon. Lebanon is critically vulnerable to the socioeconomic impacts of all of the patterns of Sunni-Shia competition within Lebanon and how that plays out in Syria. You've had an influx of nearly 900,000 Syrian refugees, which is the equivalent to an increase in Lebanon's population by 21.7%. With the exception of Jordan, no other country recipient of refugees has a comparable refugee to population ratio. Concentrations of large Syrian refugee population groups include some of Lebanon's poorest districts. So when you look at the concentration in terms of demographics, with the red zone signifying where you have the largest population centers, contrast that with this slide where you have key patterns tied to poverty. Many of the core concentrations are in areas where you have densely packed urban and rural communities that are on the margins of economic activity in Lebanon. Beyond this, you also have an impact in terms of increased crime rates. Lebanon has seen a steady increase from 2012 to 2014 when it comes to kidnapping, petty crime, and this is something that might not strike many overseas as being unusual, but Lebanon is not a country known for its traditional crime rate as opposed to political crimes. You have a poorest border and a very limited state presence in the North, and this has resulted in as many as 15,000 Syrian rebel fighters and sympathizers of the opposition finding breathing room in places near and around Ersal and the North. Meanwhile, Hezbollah's growing commitments in Syria, its role in Kusair, and the threat to cut-off rebels in Syria has triggered a wave of attacks by Sunni militants, and some of the more hard-line jihadi groups. Lebanon will continue to see a wave of tit-for-tat violence that will create instability, but will not lead to a conventional or traditional civil war. Beyond this, there are also heightened chances of not only Sunni Shi'ite, but Sunni Sunni tension and violence as mainstream groups increasingly feel the threat posed by some of the more radical elements. And with all of this, the role of the LAF and security forces will become increasingly critical, yet complicated by the optics of focusing on containing Sunni rather than Shi'ite violence in the short term. And this brings us to one of the other core aspects of not only my trip to the region, but also this presentation. You have a LAF that is acutely conscious of the threat and that has changed quietly its force doctrine to deal with the pressures tied to Syria. What matters today is that the core national security priorities of the LAF are tied to containing Syria, managing the blue line, and focusing on internal stability operations. You have at present 24,000 to 30,000 LAF troops deployed across the country with an additional 7,200 troops maintained and reserved from within the special forces. When one looks at the big picture in the North, in terms of the security posture of the LAF, what you see is a military that is gradually building up its ability to manage a porous and uncertain border region. You did not have a security regime between Lebanon and Syria. You did not have a Syrian willingness to demarcate the border. The red zones you see on this map and on the next one, and we'll come back to this one, are areas that are contested by Syria and Lebanon, regardless of which regime is in power in Damascus. But regardless of that, you have had a drive starting in 2013 to build up a structure of security that leads from Da'aridah crossing to Wadi Khaled and that gradually will make its way south. You have currently four, if you see the hexagonal shapes, fixed observation posts that have already been brought online by the end of 2013. The objective is to have a total of 12. And if you see this winding line, they will extend south all the way through to Masna. The idea is to have two fully equipped 600 man regiments which are already stood up and equipped to do the job of maintaining some degree of predictability and stability along the, what we call the green line, the line that demarcates or tries to demarcate Lebanon and Syria. In addition to the four fixed posts, you will have an additional eight that will come online through 2014. This is an effort that is supported by the US and by the British and the British have played an increasingly critical role. And frankly, I have not seen any country do more dollar for dollar in terms of making limited funding play out into a real deliverable structure. These fixed observation posts are hardened and defended and they have the ability to peer into Syria at a range of 30 kilometers and have day and night electro-optical surveillance capability. You will also have a number of mobile observation posts which I am not at liberty to disclose at this time. So what you basically have over time as you look at these two graphics is an LAF that is building up its border force structure heading down south. In parallel to that, you have a Hezbollah presence in places like Zabadani, Husser, and down in Al-Qalamun. And for all those of you who know it more about me than in terms of the structure of opposition forces in Al-Qalamun, forgive me for using more generic acronyms to describe the units. But basically you have a gradual shift to building some kind of stability along a frontier that has never seen any real demarcation or structure. This brings us to efforts to actually support and build up the LAF which in reality are not a 2015 effort but more of a 2030 effort at best. So far you've had a level of aid at the international level on par with about $1.1 billion. The US has played the most critical role in this providing about 71% of the LAF's real world acquisition and procurement budget. The next critical country is the UAE. It doesn't show in this graphic because it dates back to mid-2013 but the British also now rank as one of the key players in terms of military development. Saudi Arabia has some support for the LAF historically but only limited in scope and France has not been a major player. The US pattern of course is one that started out with a need to build up dramatic short-term capability in terms of fighting groups like Fatah al-Islam in 2007 and then stabilized a level that is reflective of economic and congressional constraints during a protracted crisis here in the US and have stabilized at around $70 million per year. The level of aid from one country is not enough to support the broader effort in terms of military development and even the $3 billion that the Saudis may or may not be providing ties into only one small part of this. The graphic you see here is a breakdown of the officially allocated portion of the Lebanese capabilities development plan which is valued at about $1.6 billion. In addition to that, you have somewhere around an additional $2.6 billion in unobligated, unfunded planning and there's also an additional level that is not even included in any of the annexes of the CDP reflecting the reality that this is a long-term effort. To talk a little bit about the Saudi grant and its implications, it is still really too soon and too early to tell whether the $3 billion that have been allocated to France and then will be allocated to provide military equipment to the LAF is going to be a golden opportunity for military development or a poison chalice or both. Neither the LAF nor any of the key partners in country were consulted before the initial public announcement that there would be a $3 billion grant. What that means is the command structure had a sense of this but was not actively engaged directly and none of the core missions including the UK, the US and others were part of the planning. Even the French mission in country was largely in the dark. Neither the LAF nor key partners can look at this and disregard the impact of FMF and US support. There is a need to maintain as much transparency as possible across partnership when it comes to building up the force in order to maintain as much visibility on the long-term effort. And the lack of consultations here in the US threatens to hurt a critical aspect of FMF which frankly ties to a US-Lebanese and mil-to-mil relationship, military-to-military. In every way that matters, the Lebanese-US relationship has become a military one. Tied to counter-terrorism and synergy on intelligence share. And there are a set of dangerous assumptions in the Gulf about what that means. So for example, US intelligence was critical to the capture of Majid al-Majid, the emir of the Abdullah-Azambergades, a group that is affiliated with al-Qaeda. That created a perception that, at least in the minds of some local and regional players, that the US was working with its, with Gulf opponents in the region to deal a blow to Sunni militancy. So this idea is largely derived from perception, not any clear policy position. There is no such thing as a Iran-US partnership on counter-terrorism. It just so happens that in the case of Lebanon and in some ways Syria, the threats do converge. The danger here to Saudi is that it will fail if it tries to oppose an LAF development effort tied to the US, the UK and other donor countries that focuses on border management, forced development and counter-terrorism when it comes to Sunni-Jihadi and militant groups. The LAF and the US also want to see the Saudi aid in a context where it doesn't impact the long-term relationship with countries like France and others. For all of the acrimony and confusion, the US position is to view the grant and its long-term implications as being a glass half full. This idea that the French can play a positive role and that Saudi Arabia can play a positive role on key areas. And we can certainly talk about that in greater detail during the question and answer period. I don't want to focus too much on this aspect. I know there are many questions and many slides you'll want to see again. So I think I'll stop there and we'll start taking your questions. Thank you very much, Erum. Ladies and gentlemen, a couple of favors. If you look around, you'll see how many people are here. So I would be more than happy to take questions, but a question generally has one part and strangely enough ends in a question mark. It rarely is a speech. So if I could ask you to keep your questions questions and keep them focused, I think Erum will be able to deal with the volume of information and what you really need to hear or want to hear. So with that, who would like to begin by asking the first question? Let me, the lady there. Wait for the microphones, please. And if you'd indicate what your organization is or. Hi, my name is Miriam and I'm with the Syrian American Medical Society. So I wanted to ask about the Saudi gift to the LAF, especially in terms of these allegations or rumors you hear in Lebanon that the Saudis are funding the Salafis. So how do you reconcile these two? What are we supposed to think? Well, look, any attempt to make this a clear and transparent issue. And by that, I mean aspects of Gulf Iran competition in places like Lebanon and Syria and to divorce what's really a shadow war from something that's supposed to be transparent, which is military aid, I think is very difficult to do. I mean, you have countries like Saudi, like Qatar that have an active role in supporting clients and allies in places like Lebanon. This is not a new pattern. This has been ongoing at least for the last three to four decades, if not ranging back to pre-independence. What you have to look at this and say is, how does the aid fit into broader Saudi strategy? So far, the initial implications of this are an effort to rebalance the board in Lebanon, to regain influence against Iran, to change the narrative on military dynamics when it comes to the blue line, when it comes to security internally. But most of the other countries that support the LAF and the LAF itself don't ignore your initial point, this idea that what are the strings that are attached and what are the other implications of Saudi policy of supporting armed elements in Syria and potentially diversifying the support to include militant groups in places like Lebanon. Well, the overall picture is one where the LAF and its partners are taking a wait and see approach. The US has already been very clear. This can be a very positive effort if it ties in to the capability's development plan and the LAF's own vision for itself for 2025, 2030. If this were a year ago when you didn't have a document like the CDP, you wouldn't have a buffer to manage the potential politics tied to aid. But today you do have that and you have an ability not only by the LAF, but even countries like France, which are implicated in this, to make this a real partnership and not one where Lebanese are basically junior partners in a Franco-Saudi deal on aid and funding. It remains to be seen how any of this plays out. We talk about aid as being something that can be instantaneous with effect in the short term. But even if it's grant aid from a country like Saudi Arabia, we have very few expectations of seeing any of this materialized in real terms in ways that impact the LAF's readiness and forces in 2014, at least for the first half of the year. I may just make a broader point. I think we need to be exceptionally careful about the way we characterize what's happening in Syria. The State Department at one point was issuing an unclassified map, trying to show the various factions, and in the map it says that there were 70 more, 70 rebel factions, and that they could not characterize the actual number. They could not locate them. I think there are recent very accurate press reports that U.S., British, and French intelligence cannot characterize what is happening in the rebel areas, dividing them as often as the case into two or three groups, basically has no relation to what is actually happening there. The actual figures on the money going into these groups have no known source. People are quoting figures for which there is actually no way to generate the number. And that's particularly true when you ask about government funding versus private funding versus actual self-funding of the movement. So all I can say is be very careful about this. The other thing is there is a lot of evidence of very substantial private funding. A lot of this comes from outside Saudi Arabia, from Kuwait, from the UAE, and Qatar, but no one can track the flows. And I would wish that we had more media reporting on how little people know about the rebel factions rather than dividing it up into two or three groups. The next question, please. A gentleman over there, and again, if I may ask you to wait for the microphone. Ken Mayercourt, or WorldX. Mr. Courtsman has stated his belief that this crisis is going to last quite a while. There's a presidential election coming up in Syria in May. If Mr. Assad chose not to run or was defeated in the election, would that have dramatic consequences on Mr. Courtsman's prediction? We have a tendency to look at these contests and put way too much influence and impact on anyone individual. Assad, much like Hezbollah, is not the only component of the problem. It's more of a symptom. The bigger issue here is you have a structure in Syria that has lasted at least four decades with baggage in terms of socioeconomics and demographics tracking back better part of a century. Regardless of who's in charge, how this gets renegotiated whether through violence or politics is the real issue, not whether or not Assad stands for reelection. What I mean by this is at the end of the day, the Alawites are not concerned primarily with whether or not Assad is present. What they're concerned about is not repeating what they view to be the political tragedy of the Maronites of Lebanon or the Iraqi Sunnis, which is to say an irreversible loss of clout, credibility, and influence. And all of this ties back to a pattern of regional competition that you can also not just limit to a cycle of elections. Countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran are not playing this in order to achieve just some narrow sets of objectives. In the short term, this is viewed as an existential zero sum contest. One hopes that that view softens and creates the kind of space that frankly will move a political discussion forward, but again without resolving any of the century old demographic and economic pressures. Whether or not Assad has empowered when you do have an end to this, you're looking at decades of efforts in terms of trying to keep a bandaid on a post war structure that will be at war with itself and will require constant regulation and support by countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, the U.S. and others. So if Assad wants to stand for election, he can certainly try. It does not change any of the geopolitical stakes or what happens vis-à-vis the Alawites, the Sunni majority, and regional competition. I think- You're going from a one party state to a multi party. You're asking the wrong question for the wrong country. This is not a country where you have traditional party politics. Even with the narrative of Ba'athie politics and competition and the emergence of new groups, we're looking at a long trajectory. One hopes that you have these sorts of groups eventually, but if you look at all of the countries in the post Ottoman space where you've had at least some structure tied to communal identity and politics. Parties exist usually in name alone. One hope that changes, but I'm not holding my breath. I think you also need to remember we have no historical examples ever anywhere in the world which have had this many people displaced or made refugees where you can go back to what you were. It isn't a matter of culture, political system, or economy. It is simply too many people displaced, moved, polarized. You can't alter the fact that you have impoverished and failed to educate that many people. And this is only the people who have not been affected indirectly. And the problems that build up in Syria were very well documented in the Arab Development Reports as Aram points out, more than a decade before this crisis began. And to try to decouple what is happening in Syria today from the legacy of those demographic and economic issues is simply to assign a value to politics which can't physically happen given the backlog of economic and just demographic pressures. Next question, please. In the back there. My name is Jeff Aranson and I'm with the Foundation for Middle East Peace. Oh, Foundation for Middle East Peace here in Washington. Aram, I was wondering if you could speak a bit about the capacity of the LAF to continue operating in a unified, cohesive manner given its own checkered history in this regard and the challenges that it may be facing as we move to the future. Thank you. This was a year ago, Jeff. I would have been very concerned about the ability of the LAF to manage any of this. One key graphic that I think illustrates this well, assuming any of this even works. Can you hear me now? So if you look at the command structure of the LAF, you have an institution called the Military Council. It doesn't exist in the traditional force structure of the LAF. It's an extra military apparatus that basically manages sectarian pressures in the country. So you have a Maronite, the Army Commander. You have a Chief of Staff who's Druze and then you have a Greek Orthodox, a Shiite, a Sunni and a Catholic and four other posts so that you have a quorum of the core communities. Basically you have no Military Council in Lebanon today. You have the Army Commander whose tenure has been promulgated, the Chief of Staff as well. But basically you have all the other members of the core retired in 2013. When this happened, many of us who followed the LAF were concerned that this will create an inability to act and an inability, an inability or unwillingness to take preemptive action. But what we've seen, especially in places like Abra and in some of the counter-terrorism efforts like the one linked to the Abdullah-Azambergades, Majd al-Majd. And frankly the broader effort in terms of building up the fixed observation points, all of these decisions certainly existed in consultation with the President, as Michelle Slayman and the Council of Ministers and Parliament to a point. But let's be realistic here. You don't really have a functioning executive structure with legitimacy. And in my interactions with the LAF, I sense a growing aptitude within real boundaries to do things that they wouldn't have done a year ago. They are operating in a space where you have both autonomy and risk. But they are doing along the border, for example, building up what they call the Sanger observation posts. That will eventually pose real problems not only for Hezbollah because paradoxically the Syrian crisis is actually leading to border, at least the limitation and control, but also to a lot of the groups that are tied to the Syrian uprising. And that in some ways have at least rhetorical support among mainstream Sunni factions in Lebanon. You will have a moment either of crisis or of real decision. I mean the preference of the LAF, for example in places like Ersal, where you have a gradual shift and build up of forces is to not fall into a confrontation with the local population regardless of political support, either for the regime or against it. Certainly Hezbollah would prefer to see a direct confrontation in a place like Ersal that mirrors at least some aspects of what happened in Abra near Saida. And I take that point, but you have ability within the LAF to look at this, see the parallels, learn from experience, and manage in this executive vacuum and try and avoid the confrontation everyone's predicting. Right now the core threat beyond the threat of IEDs, suicide bombings and the like in places like Dahiyeh and Beirut is here. This is the next major flash point. It's tied to Khalamun, but it's also tied to the geopolitics of competition in Lebanon, Saudi and Iranian objectives. And an LAF that's trying to navigate all of this is doing a good job when you compare it to the broader history, a mediocre job to those who don't know the LAF well. And frankly, it's gonna remain like this for the foreseeable future regardless of who's in charge of the force. And when you do have an effective and functioning military council, it'll just continue from there. I hope that answers your question. Hey gentlemen, on the other. Hello, my name is Marvin Fernandez. I'm with the Japan International Cooperation Agency. Jack understands that since the resignation of the former prime minister and the dissolution of the cabinet in March of 2013, the government of Lebanon is vacant in this context who is playing the role of the government in Lebanon. And more importantly, with whom should donors have discussions or support for host communities in Lebanon impacted by the Syrian refugee crisis? One of the paradox, one of the paradox of the Syrians withdrawing in 2005 is that the centrality of extra governmental forces in politics resumed. What that means is whereas before you had the Syrians regulating politics, civil military relations, some aspects of the economy, now you have the competing factions on either side of the dividing lines playing that role. They are the ones impacting institutions, the LAF, internal security forces, and so on. In the absence of an executive government, you have some inability to take critical decisions. For example, you have no real legitimate top cover for counterterrorism operations that go beyond the kinds of operations that have been conducted so far by the LAF. But at the same time, the absence of those executive structures have not precluded the LAF's ability to go directly to the source, to go to the competing factions, whether they are Hezbollah, the future movement, Christian factions on either side, and basically back channel a lot of their priorities. And this is true of most institutions in Lebanon. Is it the ideal way to run a country? Absolutely not. Does it work in a country that never defaulted on a loan payment during a civil war with massive gaps of executive power? Yes, it's just that kind of place. You can have at least some modicum of bizarre predictability because at the end of the day, the executive structures in Lebanon are basically like the UN. They are places where the different delegates meet. The delegates have the real power. And the security council, so to speak, are the major Sunni, Shiite, Maronite, other factions. So even if there's no convening of the executive structure, a lot of this gets managed either way. Gentleman there. Second row, please wait for the microphone. Thank you. Faisal Itani, I'm a fellow at the Atlantic Council. But I want to contextualize what the LAF is doing within Lebanese sectarian and social politics rather than treat it as a sort of institution in its own right, which it is to a certain extent, but in Lebanon, nothing is that completely. What it's doing on the border area in any normal country would be laudable in the context of what's happening in Lebanon and Syria, it's effectively a counterinsurgency campaign. And the optics vis-a-vis the Sunnis are a lot worse than just a complicating factor. I see this as actually a sort of disaster in making. They must know this. So how are they planning around it and how are their respective foreign patrons trying to deal with that problem? Well, first, you don't have the LAF repeating some of the core faux pas it made in 2012 in places like Tripoli, when it went for a, frankly, a somewhat crass ad campaign that indirectly ended up targeting mainstream Sunnis. This is one of the core issues that the LAF continues to face. It has a real problem with strategic communications. It's orientation director at the Taouji could really use some of the core fundamentals of communication as an art beyond just the ideologies of the directorate. What you have is an LAF that over two years has on the one hand learned to be much more careful in how it manages its interaction with the Sunni community. So for example, in places like Ursa where you have a detachment of the Air Assault Regiment, they are going to extreme lengths to win hearts and minds. Is it tied to the fact that they see that at some point that border will be closed or could close and they have to deal with, frankly, their own citizens? Yes. Do they want that to escalate in ways where they further marginalized both Northern Sunnis and themselves vis-a-vis the Sunni community? No. In all of this, you also have to keep in mind that 42% of the LAF is Sunni. This is not, again, perception, unfortunately drives a lot of the reality or at least what people think passes off for reality. There is no Maronite Shiite army in the strict sense. Do Shiites and Maronites and other sects have a better understanding at the communal level of what their place is in the institution? Maybe it's partly driven by the fact that they were there at the founding moment and the Sunni community more broadly has frankly like in Syria as much avoided military service until some of the socioeconomics shifted. Today you have these little random blurbs about Sunni soldiers or NCOs who wanna defect from the LAF, go fight in Syria. And when I raised this issue to a Sunni officer in Tripoli, his response was, let them, we have 17,000 Sunnis who wanna join. So you basically have on the one hand, the reality that for all of the socioeconomics tied to wages, retirements, benefits, you have a nucleus of potential Sunni recruits in terms of enlisted personnel, NCOs, and the officer corps. That's not going away, especially from the North. It's the exact same pattern that the Shiites went through in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. Except that now, because they are more affluent as a community, you have similar levels of enrollment as you would see in some of the Christian communities, which is a decline. So this has to be managed, but one also has to bear in mind that for all the reasons you described, separate from the institutional narratives of the LAF, it's part and parcel of the fabric of the country. And that 42% it matters, it impacts every single faction and force in the country and it really does tie into every unit in the LAF. And so far, for all the acrimony, the officers that matter within the Sunni officer corps do not see an alternative to the LAF. How you can shift that into a way that becomes negative depends on the set of circumstances, and we can always talk about that later. Gentlemen, third row there. Micah Harris, and I work with the Non-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. I have a question for you this broad though. Can you talk about the functioning of the Lebanese economy writ large? I think you've described a very donor funded security apparatus on several different angles, but I wanted to know how well it's anchored in the Lebanese economy and if that's going to last. Thanks. Do you mean from the standpoint of the LAF and budgeting constraints tied to budgeting or more broadly the Lebanese economy? Both, but almost more like is Lebanon economically sustainable? Is it on a trajectory that's going to feed a lot of discontent and potentially radicalism into all of these organizations, or is it on a level that can hold and perhaps even improve as time goes by? Those of us who study actively Lebanon and any country in the region, if we could make that kind of definitive assessment, I think we'd be rewarded handsomely for it. The realities are that you've had very real negative effects in terms of wages and structures tied to wage hours in construction, in services and agriculture. You have to remember these are sectors of the economy that were at best shaky before the Arab uprisings. Even in places where you have support for the opposition, whether it's at the rhetorical level or deeply rooted, if you look at places like Arsal again, there is a very real impact of having 900,000 people in country who are willing to work at far reduced cost and with ours that frankly with the guy on most who joined the labor force from the Lebanese population. There's an excellent report that tackles with the bulk of the issues that you're interested in put out by the World Bank a couple of months ago in September, it's about 198 pages long. I made it a point to leave those slides out of this presentation. But it does tackle most of the issues, but as Tony and I were discussing this before the talk, all of these are ballpark estimates based on metrics from 2010, 2011, and only a preliminary assessment of what the economic impact really is. Do you have some initial indicators that matter? Yes, during the entire Lebanese Civil War, you never once had a real reduction in overland trade with Syria. That's an issue. Have there also been shifts in the positive direction of the trade to Syria despite all of the pressures on the Assad regime? Yes, there are some basic commodities that are being exported from Lebanon that otherwise would not be imported by Syria in any real terms. The other side of this is that you have the political economy of a civil war in Syria. And while there is a tendency by many Lebanese to look at this and say, glumen doom is coming, you also have a degree of, frankly, entrepreneurship about the idea that the Lebanese can be at the forefront of reconstruction, the cement industry, medical care, and so on, once things not so much stabilize and reach a peaceful outcome, but when you have any kind of contiguous space along the border with Lebanon where you have at least some freedom of movement. So it's a really strange, uncertain picture. It's not strange to ask the question, but we're at the very beginning of a pattern. We're already seeing real negatives in terms of the economy and IMF predictions, but I'd be very careful about qualifying those in the short term. I would just add that in general, one of the problems we have throughout this region is about 20% of the population is between age 14 and 24. To the extent we know anything about that population, we have pretty good indices through the art development report and other sources. It is not able to get the jobs it wants. It has extraordinarily high real world unemployment or disguised unemployment. Figure is 25% or more average outside the Gulf oil states. You have some crude indices of income. Can people afford to marry, which is a critical indication. Can they afford to have their own house versus live with the family? Those measures to the extent we know them indicate that there are tremendous pressures almost throughout the region on that key group and that assumes that women are not competing with men, which is an increasingly unrealistic picture throughout the region. But we do not have any systematic effort to measure these causes of instability beyond some sampling work done by the UNDP and similar groups. And that is one of the critical factors we have because when we talk about cell office or insurgents or all the rest, there's a much broader set of underlying causes here. Let's see, I think we have time for one more question. Let me, the gentleman on the edge far back. Jake Giselle, thank you, Aaron, for a very thorough presentation. I look forward to reading your report next week. Your map illustrates a very robust deployment by the LAF. Historically, the thinking was the size of the LAF, if the end strength was adequate for Lebanon's needs. Does the CTB contemplate growing that end strength and by how much? Well, frankly, the end strength of the LAF has already shifted dramatically over the last couple of years. I mean, this PowerPoint will just cooperate. It won't be much happier. So if you look at the structure now, 2014, and this is where I think a lot of the estimates from IISS, Jains, and others become frankly somewhat dated. The LAF is nowhere near the assumption of a 57,000 strong force. It is already a 65,000 plus strong force. It's already making some of the difficult shifts. For most, when you see this number of the Navy of 2,400, it doesn't jump to you, but if you follow the LAF, that's double the estimate from two years ago. You have an LAF that needs manpower. Frankly, if it could accommodate more, it would. The CDP is not a cure for the LAF's developmental problems. It is an exercise by an emerging military to think strategically for the first time in its history. So we need to take the CDP with a grain of salt. The pros and the language are commendable. They do focus on an LAF five years out, but the core thinking within the force about the future isn't tied to 2015, 2017. It's 2030, 2035, and all the impacts of generational divides within the force on budgeting manpower. You still have about 89% of the annual defense budget that goes to sustaining wages, compensation structures, and so on. And that's in no rapid risk of ameliorated. To the contrary, we're just adding to the burden. The only benefit of the CDP is that it really crystallizes for the first time an effort by the LAF not to say, we need this, we need this. More matter of, this is the end state we want to reach. This is the structure in terms of manpower that is ideal to face these threats. This is what we assume given card market forces would be the costs, but it's an estimate at the absolute. Even the 1.6 billion figure is just that, an estimate. So all of these things I think you have to be very careful about when you consider what the CDP is. The real focus, if I had to put it down in one sentence, would be the LAF wants to be a force that is quote-unquote fit for purpose. That purpose is managing the blue line and keeping escalation to a minimum, maintaining and stabilizing command control over the border with Syria, and really unfortunately conducting the kinds of internal security operations that even it would prefer to see relegated to the police force. Ladies and gentlemen, before I ask you to thank Aaron in the usual manner, let me again say that his report should be on the CSIS website early next week, and I hope that will answer the questions that still remain. But Aaron, thank you very much.