By Dominic Evans
BEIRUT, May 27 (Reuters) – 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 already tumbled into
Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, exploded into deadly street fighting in
its northern city of Tripoli and driven half a million refugees
across the same porous border to escape the bloodshed.
But Sunday’s rocket attack, which wounded five people in a
Shi’ite 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 Syrian rebels,
was fighting for victory whatever the cost.
Both events were milestones in the creeping contagion of a
conflict which has already 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 U.S. 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 clearly 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 Shi’ite Muslim group,
which is armed and financed by Iran, or face further
consequences.
WARNING TO REBEL BACKERS
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 European Union is considering whether to amend sanctions
on Syria to allow EU states to send weapons to the rebels and a
U.S. Senate panel voted last week to arm them – though it is not
clear whether any such bill could ever get through Congress.
“The message Hezbollah is trying to send is a signal that
both 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 also 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 says in principle it is ready to attend.
Kamel said Hezbollah’s impact on the Syria’s civil war was
not as dramatic as believed in some Western capitals and that
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 to establish new forces,” he said referring to units
which had been formed out of local militias and which together
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 so far was likely
to be in the “low thousands”, Barnes-Dacey said, with plenty
more in reserve. Nasrallah himself 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 own backyard to secure Assad, but clearly 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 already reluctant to commit to
intervention in Syria or military support for the rebels, who
include al Qaeda-linked groups equally hostile to the United
States and Europe as they are to the Syrian president.
Closer to Syria, Assad’s enemies are less constrained.
Sunni Muslims from the Lebanese port of Tripoli cross into
Syria to fight Assad while their city itself 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
its conflict and further fuel the fighting within its borders.
“When Hezbollah sent fighters to Syria and occupied Sunni
villages, that provoked the Sunnis,” said Sunni Muslim preacher
Sheikh Salem Rafei, referring to the area around the Syrian
border town of 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 told Reuters 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.
LEAVE LEBANON OUT
Both 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 on Saturday.
Lebanon, a Mediterranean state of 4 million people, made up
of a mosaic of Christian, Sunni and Shi’ite Muslim sects, 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 on Sunday 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 Muslim, Shi’ite Muslim 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.
“Hezbollah will soon realise that this conflict is far
bloodier than anything it has seen before. This is a very deadly
conflict. If they go all in, they will have huge losses”.
(Editing by Giles Elgood)
