Dominic Evans
By Dominic Evans
Two rockets fired at Hezbollah-controlled southern Beirut bring Syria’s escalating civil war deeper into the heart of Lebanon and closer to unrestrained regional conflict.
The two-year-old conflict in Syria has tumbled into Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, exploding into deadly street fighting in its northern city of Tripoli and driven half a million refugees across the porous border to escape the bloodshed.
But Sunday’s rocket attack, which wounded five people in a Shia neighbourhood of Beirut, marked the first apparent targeting of Hezbollah’s stronghold in the south of the capital and raised memories of years of civil war in the city.
The rockets struck hours after a defiant Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah vowed that his guerrilla group, waging war alongside President Bashar Al Assad against rebels, was fighting for victory whatever the cost.
Both events were milestones in the creeping contagion of a conflict which has killed 80,000 people within Syria’s borders and fuelled sectarian tension from Beirut to Baghdad. It has sucked in regional rivals Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Iraq and Israel and polarised major powers — the US and Europe siding with the opposition and Russia and China with Assad.
“It is hugely alarming. It points to the fact that there are a decreasing number of brakes that can be applied to this situation,” said Julien Barnes-Dacey, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
“It’s spiralling out of control, moving deeper and deeper within Syria but now across Lebanon and the region.”
No one claimed responsibility for Sunday’s attack but it was widely assumed to be a response to Nasrallah’s speech by Syrian rebels or their sympathisers.
One Syrian rebel described it as a warning to Lebanese authorities to rein in the Iranian-backed Shia group, armed and financed by Iran, or face consequences.
By dropping any ambiguity about Hezbollah’s determination to keep Assad in power, Nasrallah may have been laying down a marker to the Syrian leader’s Western and Arab foes that any increase in support for rebels would be futile.
The EU has lifted its arms embargo on Syrian rebels and a US Senate panel voted last week to arm them — though it is not clear if any such bill could get through Congress.
“The message Hezbollah is trying to send is a signal that Iran and Hezbollah are willing to match any increase in support to rebel groups,” said Ayham Kamel, Middle East analyst at the consultancy Eurasia Group. “If the conflict is expanded, Hezbollah and Iran are willing to support the regime no matter where it leads”.
Nasrallah’s comments follow weeks of counter-offensives by Assad’s forces around the capital, in the southern province of Deraa and around the town of Qusair on the Lebanese border, which have strengthened Assad’s hand ahead of planned peace talks which Damascus is ready to attend in principle.
Kamel said Hezbollah’s impact on the civil war was not as dramatic as believed in some Western capitals and reorganising Assad’s armed forces, most likely on the advice of his international allies, to confront the rebels had been a greater factor behind his recent battlefield gains.
“There has been a strategic plan to restructure the Syrian military and its divisions to make them more effective for urban warfare and establish new forces,” he said, referring to units formed out of local militias and added up to additional forces of tens of thousands.
“The restructuring is important... the additional forces have been important, and I’d put Hezbollah third on that list. All are indispensable for the regime, but there are different levels,” Kamel said.
The number of Hezbollah fighters in Syria was likely to be in the “low thousands”, Barnes-Dacey said, with plenty more in reserve. Nasrallah said on Saturday Hezbollah could summon “tens of thousands” with a couple of words.
“I don’t think Hezbollah would leave themselves exposed in their backyard to secure Assad, but they have a significant fighting force and could increase what they are sending to Syria to quite a large degree before they have to make those choices,” Barnes-Dacey said.
Assad’s Western foes are reluctant to commit to intervention or military support for the rebels, who include Al Qaeda-linked groups equally hostile to the US and Europe as they are to the Syrian president.
Closer to Syria, Assad’s enemies are less constrained. Sunnis from the Lebanese port of Tripoli cross into Syria to fight Assad while their city has endured a week of fighting in which 25 people have been killed, showing how Syria’s neighbours can simultaneously suffer from the spread of the conflict and fuel the fighting within its borders.
“When Hezbollah sent fighters to Syria and occupied Sunni villages, that provoked the Sunnis,” said Sunni preacher Sheikh Salem Rafei, referring to the area around Qusair where Hezbollah fighters and the Syrian army are waging a week-long assault to drive out rebels.
“Our brothers in Qusair appealed for our help, so it was our duty to call on those who could do so to perform jihad to support them,” Rafei said in Tripoli.
Banners in a Tripoli square celebrating the “martyrdom” of local fighter Ahmad Al Shihab in Qusair highlight how the two towns are effectively twin battlegrounds in the same war. “There’s no doubt that what is happening in Tripoli is an echo of what is happening in Syria, especially Qusair,” Rafei said.
Rafei and Nasrallah urged Lebanese fighters to keep their battle within Syria, reflecting near universal anxiety in Lebanon to avoid a repeat of its ruinous 1975-1990 civil war.
“Those who want victory for the Syrian regime and those who want victory for the opposition should go and fight in Syria instead. Leave Tripoli to itself,” Nasrallah said.
Lebanon, a Mediterranean state of four million people, made up of Christians, Sunnis and Shias, is struggling to cope with an estimated million Syrians including refugees, labourers and their families.
Still saddled with a heavy debt burden from its post-war reconstruction and suffering a sharp slowdown in economic growth, Lebanon is also in political limbo after the resignation of Prime Minister Najib Mikati two months ago.
Mikati’s successor, Tammam Salam, has so far failed to form a new government and squabbling over a parliamentary electoral law means next month’s election will be delayed — threatening the country with political vacuum.
Druze leader Walid Jumblatt said parliament should be extended for at least a year, since political stability was a priority if Lebanon was to overcome its security challenges.
“There is still some minimal level of commitment by the mainstream Sunni, Shia and Christian parties not to let Lebanon become a battleground,” Kamel said. “But this has become a regional conflict, so the risk of uncalculated scenarios has gone up.”
For now, Hezbollah’s unquestioned military ascendancy in Lebanon itself means that the group which fought Israel to a standstill in a 34-day war seven years ago is unlikely to face a sustained challenge from domestic rivals.
But its deepening war in Syria may prove more challenging than anything it faced in three decades fighting Israeli troops, said Peter Harling of the International Crisis Group.
Reuters
By Dominic Evans
Two rockets fired at Hezbollah-controlled southern Beirut bring Syria’s escalating civil war deeper into the heart of Lebanon and closer to unrestrained regional conflict.
The two-year-old conflict in Syria has tumbled into Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, exploding into deadly street fighting in its northern city of Tripoli and driven half a million refugees across the porous border to escape the bloodshed.
But Sunday’s rocket attack, which wounded five people in a Shia neighbourhood of Beirut, marked the first apparent targeting of Hezbollah’s stronghold in the south of the capital and raised memories of years of civil war in the city.
The rockets struck hours after a defiant Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah vowed that his guerrilla group, waging war alongside President Bashar Al Assad against rebels, was fighting for victory whatever the cost.
Both events were milestones in the creeping contagion of a conflict which has killed 80,000 people within Syria’s borders and fuelled sectarian tension from Beirut to Baghdad. It has sucked in regional rivals Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Iraq and Israel and polarised major powers — the US and Europe siding with the opposition and Russia and China with Assad.
“It is hugely alarming. It points to the fact that there are a decreasing number of brakes that can be applied to this situation,” said Julien Barnes-Dacey, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
“It’s spiralling out of control, moving deeper and deeper within Syria but now across Lebanon and the region.”
No one claimed responsibility for Sunday’s attack but it was widely assumed to be a response to Nasrallah’s speech by Syrian rebels or their sympathisers.
One Syrian rebel described it as a warning to Lebanese authorities to rein in the Iranian-backed Shia group, armed and financed by Iran, or face consequences.
By dropping any ambiguity about Hezbollah’s determination to keep Assad in power, Nasrallah may have been laying down a marker to the Syrian leader’s Western and Arab foes that any increase in support for rebels would be futile.
The EU has lifted its arms embargo on Syrian rebels and a US Senate panel voted last week to arm them — though it is not clear if any such bill could get through Congress.
“The message Hezbollah is trying to send is a signal that Iran and Hezbollah are willing to match any increase in support to rebel groups,” said Ayham Kamel, Middle East analyst at the consultancy Eurasia Group. “If the conflict is expanded, Hezbollah and Iran are willing to support the regime no matter where it leads”.
Nasrallah’s comments follow weeks of counter-offensives by Assad’s forces around the capital, in the southern province of Deraa and around the town of Qusair on the Lebanese border, which have strengthened Assad’s hand ahead of planned peace talks which Damascus is ready to attend in principle.
Kamel said Hezbollah’s impact on the civil war was not as dramatic as believed in some Western capitals and reorganising Assad’s armed forces, most likely on the advice of his international allies, to confront the rebels had been a greater factor behind his recent battlefield gains.
“There has been a strategic plan to restructure the Syrian military and its divisions to make them more effective for urban warfare and establish new forces,” he said, referring to units formed out of local militias and added up to additional forces of tens of thousands.
“The restructuring is important... the additional forces have been important, and I’d put Hezbollah third on that list. All are indispensable for the regime, but there are different levels,” Kamel said.
The number of Hezbollah fighters in Syria was likely to be in the “low thousands”, Barnes-Dacey said, with plenty more in reserve. Nasrallah said on Saturday Hezbollah could summon “tens of thousands” with a couple of words.
“I don’t think Hezbollah would leave themselves exposed in their backyard to secure Assad, but they have a significant fighting force and could increase what they are sending to Syria to quite a large degree before they have to make those choices,” Barnes-Dacey said.
Assad’s Western foes are reluctant to commit to intervention or military support for the rebels, who include Al Qaeda-linked groups equally hostile to the US and Europe as they are to the Syrian president.
Closer to Syria, Assad’s enemies are less constrained. Sunnis from the Lebanese port of Tripoli cross into Syria to fight Assad while their city has endured a week of fighting in which 25 people have been killed, showing how Syria’s neighbours can simultaneously suffer from the spread of the conflict and fuel the fighting within its borders.
“When Hezbollah sent fighters to Syria and occupied Sunni villages, that provoked the Sunnis,” said Sunni preacher Sheikh Salem Rafei, referring to the area around Qusair where Hezbollah fighters and the Syrian army are waging a week-long assault to drive out rebels.
“Our brothers in Qusair appealed for our help, so it was our duty to call on those who could do so to perform jihad to support them,” Rafei said in Tripoli.
Banners in a Tripoli square celebrating the “martyrdom” of local fighter Ahmad Al Shihab in Qusair highlight how the two towns are effectively twin battlegrounds in the same war. “There’s no doubt that what is happening in Tripoli is an echo of what is happening in Syria, especially Qusair,” Rafei said.
Rafei and Nasrallah urged Lebanese fighters to keep their battle within Syria, reflecting near universal anxiety in Lebanon to avoid a repeat of its ruinous 1975-1990 civil war.
“Those who want victory for the Syrian regime and those who want victory for the opposition should go and fight in Syria instead. Leave Tripoli to itself,” Nasrallah said.
Lebanon, a Mediterranean state of four million people, made up of Christians, Sunnis and Shias, is struggling to cope with an estimated million Syrians including refugees, labourers and their families.
Still saddled with a heavy debt burden from its post-war reconstruction and suffering a sharp slowdown in economic growth, Lebanon is also in political limbo after the resignation of Prime Minister Najib Mikati two months ago.
Mikati’s successor, Tammam Salam, has so far failed to form a new government and squabbling over a parliamentary electoral law means next month’s election will be delayed — threatening the country with political vacuum.
Druze leader Walid Jumblatt said parliament should be extended for at least a year, since political stability was a priority if Lebanon was to overcome its security challenges.
“There is still some minimal level of commitment by the mainstream Sunni, Shia and Christian parties not to let Lebanon become a battleground,” Kamel said. “But this has become a regional conflict, so the risk of uncalculated scenarios has gone up.”
For now, Hezbollah’s unquestioned military ascendancy in Lebanon itself means that the group which fought Israel to a standstill in a 34-day war seven years ago is unlikely to face a sustained challenge from domestic rivals.
But its deepening war in Syria may prove more challenging than anything it faced in three decades fighting Israeli troops, said Peter Harling of the International Crisis Group.
Reuters
