"This damn army …" Those are the first words pronounced by Nader Kabbara when asked about the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF). A 19-year-old student from Tripoli, he is standing next to Al-Salam mosque ready to clean the visible damage along with a dozen volunteers. Just 24 hours before, on Aug. 23 and right after the end of the Friday prayer, a car bomb exploded a few meters away from the mosque. A few minutes after, a second one blew up at another mosque a couple of kilometers from Al-Salam. The death toll has risen to 47, exceeding the previous week's attack in the Hezbollah stronghold of Dahiyeh, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, and making the double blast the deadliest attack since the end of the civil war in 1990.

"The problem is that the army works for only one part of the country," continues Nader, "everybody knows for who and we don't want them here."

Minutes after both blasts occurred, soldiers approached the sites of the explosions. They were stoned by residents, had to leave and limited their presence in the city to several checkpoints on the main avenues. The growing security breaches in Lebanon since the start of the Syrian conflict 2 1/2 years ago calls into question the role of the army and its ability to contend with escalating violence and impose stability. Many Lebanese doubt that LAF has the military capacity to do it, and they point to the 15 soldiers who died in Tripoli in different incidents last year as an example.

"The qualification and tradecraft are not the issue," says Aram Nerguizian, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and an expert on strategic and military dynamics in the region, "because the LAF’s overall training and readiness has increased exponentially since the army has been receiving external aid and training" from foreign countries. Others also acknowledge it's not an issue of professionalism. "The weakness of the army is not in terms of its capabilities," explains Bassel Sallouhk, an associate professor of Political Science at the Lebanese American University. "The weakness of the LAF is a consequence of the sectarianized environment in Lebanon and the paralysis on the political establishment."