My comment is not only based on Lebanon but on my experience doing research in conflict-affected states and fragile states. I can attest to the fact that a lot of the leaders involved in the conflict or not involved in the conflict, in the government or outside the government tend to use local civil society organizations to improve their legitimacy and to improve their power. A lot of these organizations are connected to these people, but there are also many that are not connected.
The problem we have is that if we were to work with organizations that were connected with these people, we would then contribute to this whole fight of power and legitimacy, and we would end up undermining either democratic development or good governance, whatever initiatives we or our partners are doing with our programs there. However, again, there are local organizations that are not affiliated with any of these, and we can definitely work with them.
As for your question as to what we can do, I refer to what I said earlier. Canada has the mechanisms to figure out who is on the ground and who is not on the ground.
When I was working for the government, we used to use our partners to also figure out who is affiliated and who is not affiliated. It's not that we don't have the capacity; it's just I'm not sure that we have the willingness to take the risk to start doing it that way.
I think what ends up happening is we end up being too comfortable with large organizations and just fall back on them for security purposes and not—