Low-profile war on Islamic State gaining ground
ARSAL, Lebanon — In a remote corner of Lebanon near the border with Syria, Lebanese troops have been quietly making steady progress, fighting against Islamic extremists holed up in the rugged mountains.
It is a fight less visible than the U.S.-led war against the Islamic State group in Syria, Iraq and Libya. But hardly a day passes without army artillery stationed on the edge of this restive eastern Lebanese town pounding nearby militant positions.
Aided directly by the United States and Britain — and indirectly by the Syrian army and its Lebanese militant Hezbollah allies working on the other side of the border — the underequipped Lebanese military has registered steady successes against the militants.
In recent months, Lebanese armed forces have clawed back significant territory once held by the Islamic State and al Qaeda’s branch in Syria, known as the Al-Nusra Front, and have killed and detained hundreds of extremists, forcing many others to flee. According to the army, the militants still hold about 19 square miles of land in the border area, compared with 20 times this size in the months after Syria’s conflict began.
On a tour of the area with the army this week, reporters saw army positions set up every few hundred yards. Tanks and armored personnel carriers with heavy machine guns could be seen pointing toward the extremists’ positions.
Most of the activity is around the border town of Arsal, which the militants briefly took over in August 2014. After five days of deadly fighting, the military pushed them out to the town’s outskirts and into the surrounding mountains and has been battling them ever since.
Nearly 5,000 troops are now deployed in and around Arsal. They keep a close eye on any suspicious activity by the extremists who avoid movement during the day. Giant observation towers as well as many fortifications have been erected. U.S.-provided drones feed information to the army command near Beirut. Dozens of Lebanese troops have been killed or wounded over the months of fighting.
The Lebanese military, generally seen as a unifying force in a country divided along political and sectarian lines, has received support and military assistance from the West. Eager to support the army as opposed to the better equipped Iranian-backed Hezbollah, the U.S. and Britain have supplied the military with helicopters, antitank missiles, artillery and radars, as well as training. The American Embassy says the U.S. has provided Lebanon over $1.4 billion in security assistance since 2005.
“The American assistance has been the most serious and most effective,” said Hisham Jaber, a retired army general who heads the Middle East Center for Studies and Political Research in Beirut.