Omar Sanadiki/Reuters
Daily Beast: Hezbollah Fighters Are Fed Up With Fighting Syria’s War
The Assad regime in Damascus has depended on Lebanon’s Army of God to shore up its weakened troops. But now many Lebanese fighters are refusing to serve.
BEKAA VALLEY, Lebanon — They joined to fight Israel in Lebanon, but after multiple combat tours in the Syrian cities of Aleppo, Idlib, Latakia and around Damascus, Hezbollah reservists tell The Daily Beast that they are no longer willing to die in Syria’s unending, bloody civil war.
As a result of their refusal to continue volunteering to prop up the embattled government of Bashar al-Assad, they say that the Shia Party of God has cut off the money they were accustomed to receive: reservist paychecks and permanent family benefits packages. What other consequences there may be remain to be seen.
Imad, as we’ll call him, crouched over a heating stove in a small Bekaa valley farmhouse surrounded by the barren fields where his recently harvested crop of marijuana grew. He declined to give his real name because of his illegal trade and fear of reprisal for speaking out, but he said he decided to stop fighting after losing faith in the Syrian war six months ago.
Update: Analysis: Syrian civil war and its consequences for Hezbollah -- Ya Liban
WNU Editor: The Syrian conflict is a war that is probably going to go on for a very long time. In such an environment .... unless you are really dedicated to the cause, I doubt that most non-Syrians (Hezbollah fighters included) would feel compel to defend the Assad regime. On top of everything else, Hezbollah relations with Israel are also worsening .... Nasrallah and Netanyahu exchange threats over Hezbollah commander's death in Damascus (Rudaw) .... and I would not be surprise if most Hezbollah fighters would prefer to be on that front-line instead of Aleppo.
2 comments:
I agree with WNU Editor that the Hezbollah foot soldiers would prefer to fight Israel. But the foot soldiers can't control what Hezbollah's leaders do; the most a foot soldier can do is to refuse to serve, as detailed by the articles. (More on that later).
As a group, Hezbollah is beholden to its Iranian sponsors. Hezbollah will fight in Syria as long as Iran requires them to do so. Iran will make its requirements clear to Hezbollah's leadership. For Hezbollah to defy Iran would result in Hezbollah collectively being in the same financial position as those of its soldiers who refuse to deploy to Syria: cut off and penniless.
Note that every former Hezbollah soldier interviewed was too afraid to use his real name. That fear, plus Hezbollah's ability to cut off financial support, will keep most of Hezbollah's soldiers in Syria.
Neither article noted that ISIS and al-Qaida see Shia Moslems as apostates who deserve immediate death. If the Hezbollah soldiers who want to sit out the Syrian fight have forgotten ISIS's plans for them, ISIS has not. In this sense, Assad's defeat would also be a defeat for Hezbollah. The Hezbollah soldiers who are refusing to fight in Syria will eventually realize that if they do not fight ISIS in Syria, they will fight ISIS in Lebanon.
Publius
1) Concur
2) Thank G-d you posted and not Don Bacon.
Post a Comment