Hezbollah’s efforts on behalf of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria are threatening to drag Lebanon into the conflict, with the Al Qaeda-linked Syrian rebel group Jabhat al-Nusra declaring that confronting the Iran-backed terror group is now a top priority.
This came after Hezbollah’s secretary general Hassan Nasrallah declared last week that Hezbollah will stand by Syria and help it become a state of resistance. He announced that Hezbollah is ready to receive any sort of qualitative weapons even if it is going to disrupt the regional balance.
For the Syrian rebels, al-Nusra and others, this is a declaration of war against them, knowing that what Nasrallah really means is that Hezbollah is now in charge of Syria, upon Iran’s decision. Hezbollah and Iran are running the show and if the Syrian rebels want to prevail, they need to target Hezbollah, not Assad or the Syrian regime.
Lebanon experts credit the shift in the rebel camp to events on the ground in Syria: With Hezbollah having functionally supplanted the Syrian army as the dominant military force battling on behalf of the regime, opposition groups have altered their focus appropriately.
What’s happening is that the Lebanese Sunni-Shiite civil war is already taking place, but in Syria. It is only a matter of time before it moves to Lebanon. These fighters will return to Lebanon with increased hatred toward each other; hatred rigged with blood and a desire for revenge.
Al-Nusra are not organized enough to fight against Hezbollah in a conventional war, but they could cause great damage by organizing bomb attacks and suicide bombers against Hezbollah’s bases and public squares in the southern suburbs of Beirut or the South.
Their fighting tactics are usually based on bomb attacks, not bombing cities with rockets. They are an al-Qaeda-affiliated group, and they don’t usually dissociate between a militant and a civilian. They just target a place aiming at the maximum damage. Therefore, Hezbollah’s supporters and the Shiite community in general will be in danger.
The dynamic seems set to engulf Lebanon, where al-Nusra can conduct terrorist attacks and inflame Sunni-Shiite battles.
[Photo: mtv.com.lb]