Qatar donates $20m to Lebanon's army for soldier salaries

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Qatar has given Lebanon's army $20 million in a continuation of a $60 million aid package from Doha to the military, announced in 2022, to boost soldiers' salaries.

The Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) said the funds would be distributed equally among military personnel.

The average salary of low-ranking soldiers has plummeted to less than $100 a month after the onset of Lebanon's economic crisis in 2019. The national currency has lost about 98 per cent of its value against the US dollar on the parallel market, while inflation soared.

The military has unofficially tolerated soldiers taking additional jobs, such as driving taxis, to boost their income.

Lebanon is facing the prospect of a full-blown war with Israel as the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah engages in near-daily exchanges of cross-border fire with the Israeli military.

The LAF is not engaged in the conflict but it has a presence in the south and a soldier was killed by Israeli shelling in December.

Lebanon and Israel do not have diplomatic relations and are technically in a state of war, although the government in Beirut has said it does not want another conflict.

The cross-border fire has run in parallel to Israel's war on Gaza, where nearly 38,000 Palestinians have been killed since Hamas, a Hezbollah ally, triggered the conflict on October 7 with attacks that killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel.

Hezbollah has said it will cease its attacks once the war in Gaza ends. However, with a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip proving elusive, the exchanges of fire across the Lebanon-Israel border have been expanding in scope and intensity.

One suggestion to alleviate tensions and defuse a potential broader conflict has been to deploy more LAF soldiers to south Lebanon.

Last year the US announced it would give $72 million in cash assistance to the Lebanese government to support the salaries of soldiers and the police.

Washington is a key donor of the LAF and its 80,000 members, providing more than $3 billion in military aid since 2006.