Hezbollah’s popularity in the Arab and Muslim world – already crumbling due to its critical role in helping the Bashar al-Assad regime expel rebels from the strategically critical city of Qusayr – is at risk of further erosion as Hezbollah-backed Syrian forces prepare to mount an offensive against Syria’s largest city, Allepo:
Hezbollah is likely to expand its military operations in Syria by continuing to fight rebels in select key cities, alongside the Syrian army, after the fall of Qusair Wednesday, analysts said. “I think it [Hezbollah] will continue [fighting]. It will move now to fight in Aleppo and the suburbs of Damascus,” Hisham Jaber, a retired Army general, told The Daily Star.
“Hezbollah will fight anywhere in Syria that requires guerrilla warfare tactics. It fought in Qusair because street battles were required there, and I do not rule out the possibility that it will join more street battles in Aleppo as well,” Jaber said. “The Syrian army is incapable of fighting street battles.”… “I expected Nasrallah to say in the speech that once Qusair falls, Hezbollah fighters would pull out from Syria. But he was clear; he said all of Syria is the backbone of the resistance and that he would fight takfiri groups wherever they are.”
The Iran-backed terror group was instrumental in allowing the Syrian army to retake the strategic town of Qusyar this week, consolidating what is considered a critical victory that has swung the momentum of the conflict in the regime’s direction. Lebanese media sources reported that the sons of two high-ranking Hezbollah officials were involved and wounded in the fighting around the city. This morning brought reports that masses of Hezbollah fighters were crossing the Lebanese border into Syria for further fighting.
The expectation that Hezbollah will continue participating in the Syrian fighting has triggered terse warnings from Lebanese army officials…
“The army command… calls on citizens to be wary of plots aimed at taking Lebanon backwards and dragging it into an absurd war,” a [Lebanese army] statement said, adding that it would give an “armed response to any armed action.”
… and angry rejoinders from Lebanese politicians:
Hezbollah’s leadership is having to address accusations that it is serving a foreign agenda, helping keep Mr. Assad in power at the behest of his and Hezbollah’s biggest backer, Iran. Anti-Syrian parliamentarian Nadim Gemayel said Hezbollah had changed from “an Islamic resistance movement in Lebanon to an Iranian mercenary in Syria.”
The Lebanon-based, Iran-backed terror group has also come under international censure, particular from the Arab world, for potentially dragging Lebanon into war. A a columnist for the London based Asharq al Awsat summed up the current sentiments:
The “resistance project”, which many have found to be nothing more than a label used for public relations purposes, is preoccupied with achieving sectarian religious dominance by force. After the truth has been exposed about the Syrian regime’s “secularism,” “Arabism” and, of course, its “socialism,” we now see how Iraqi prime minister Nuri Al-Maliki behaves with the ethnic and sectarian components of Iraq, and how Hezbollah proves that it is an occupying force in Lebanon, in precisely the same manner that it is a “rapid intervention force” in Syria to support Bashar Al-Assad’s rule.
[Photo: Freedom House / Flickr]