●Feltman testimony: "more than $500 million" since 2006 to reduce Hezbollah's appeal to youth

On 8 June 2010, before the Near East subcommittee of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in a hearing titled "Assessing the Strength of Hezbollah", the assistant secretary of state Jeffrey Feltman, the former ambassador in Beirut, said the United States provides aid in Lebanon that "works to create alternatives to extremism and reduce Hezbollah's appeal among Lebanon's youth", that it had "contributed more than 500 million dollars to this effort since 2006" through USAID and the "Middle East Partnership Initiative", and that total aid since 2006 exceeded a billion dollars.

Note: Funding local parties to achieve a declared internal political aim, such as reducing the popularity of a Lebanese party represented in parliament and government, lies at the heart of what the principle of non-intervention prohibits, and bypasses the state institutions through which aid is supposed to pass. Whatever the declared aims of the programmes, they create networks of loyalty and funding parallel to the state and weaken its ability to set its own social and media policies.