The Lebanese army is developing new security and intelligence arrangements alongside its deployment in southern Lebanon to help identify Hezbollah weapons sites and storage facilities, Lebanese military sources told Erem News.

The effort includes intelligence-sharing with the U.S.-led coordination mechanism, as well as Western technical and intelligence support, with the army seeking to build a field database of suspected weapons locations before expanding its deployment into additional areas.

The sources said U.S. Gen. Joseph Clearfield’s visit to Beirut in August included discussions with the army command and military intelligence on ways to support the military in implementing security arrangements linked to the framework agreement, particularly in southern Lebanon.

The Lebanese army said at the time that Clearfield’s meetings with its commander, Gen. Rodolph Haykal, focused on developments on the ground, security arrangements, continued coordination and support for the army’s missions.

One element of the cooperation involves intelligence that can help the army during deployment and verification operations, the sources said. The army is also receiving information from residents of southern Lebanon, some of whom military officials describe as “agents of the nation,” who provide information about sites suspected of being used to store weapons inside homes and other buildings in heavily damaged villages.

Building a field database

The sources said the army’s goal is to establish a “target bank” or field database identifying suspected weapons sites before troops enter certain areas.

That information would allow the army to conduct inspections and verification operations more precisely as new deployment phases begin, they said.

Lebanon has maintained that it has no direct intelligence cooperation with Israel on the issue. Beirut instead wants the Mechanism committee or another neutral international body to oversee verification related to implementation of the agreement, rather than allowing Israeli personnel to operate directly in areas under Lebanese army control.

An earlier phase of the framework agreement involved the establishment of pilot zones, but subsequent stages have stalled amid disagreements over the sequencing of steps and the mechanism for verifying compliance. The next round of negotiations is expected in October after a September round was delayed, according to recent reports.

U.S., Western intelligence support

A Lebanese military source said cooperation with the Mechanism committee, along with intelligence that could be provided by the United States and Western agencies, would be among the army’s most important sources of intelligence support in the next phase.

The army is not relying on a single source, the source said. Instead, it is combining information from military intelligence, local residents and international partners with data gathered through technical surveillance and reconnaissance systems.

The objective is not only to locate weapons sites but also to reduce the risks faced by troops as they deploy in areas that have remained outside the state’s full operational control for long periods, the source said.

Information from local residents is being treated as preliminary and must be checked against other sources before the army acts on it, the source added.

That is particularly important in villages that have suffered extensive destruction, where it can be difficult to distinguish civilian buildings from facilities or storage sites that may have been used to hold weapons.

Army seeks advanced equipment

The sources said the effectiveness of the intelligence effort will also depend on military support programs being discussed with friendly countries.

The army is seeking more advanced surveillance, inspection and reconnaissance equipment, including sensors and detection systems, bomb-disposal equipment, radar, communications systems, thermal-imaging cameras and drones.

Such equipment would strengthen the military’s ability to identify suspicious locations and detect weapons storage facilities, the sources said.

Challenges in south, Beirut suburbs

Lebanese affairs expert Nayef Azar said the army already has an extensive intelligence apparatus but faces particular challenges in southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs because of Hezbollah’s decades-long organizational and security presence there.

The density of Hezbollah’s infrastructure makes it harder for the army to obtain a complete picture of its activities, Azar told Erem News, increasing the importance of Western intelligence cooperation to fill gaps in information gathered locally.

He said security cooperation between Lebanon and the United States was not new, noting that the Lebanese army had previously benefited from U.S. intelligence in efforts to combat Islamic State and track its cells.

Azar also linked the stalled pilot-zone process to disagreements over how compliance should be verified following an Israeli withdrawal and the deployment of Lebanese troops.

Israel wants guarantees that Hezbollah personnel and weapons will not return to areas from which Israeli forces withdraw, while Lebanon rejects any Israeli verification operation inside areas controlled by the Lebanese army, he said.

The Mechanism could provide a compromise by assigning verification to an international or U.S. body rather than Israel, Azar said. Such an arrangement, he added, could preserve Lebanese sovereignty while allowing compliance with the agreement to be monitored.