A few weeks ago, Saleh Al-Sabbagh, from Sayroub in Saidon, joined the ranks of fighters in Al-Qusair, the strategic border town which — for two weeks now — has been witnessing the fiercest battles between the Syrian army supported by Hizbullah and armed opposition groups. Sabbagh, who died last week during clashes, was a Hizbullah fighter. The story could very well end there. Sabbagh with some 30 other Hizbullah fighters — according to official figures released by militant group — all lost their lives during the battle for Al-Qusair. What makes his story a little different is that Sabbagh was a Sunni fighting under Hizbullah's banner. Another fighter from Al-Jazzar family — a Sunni family also from Saidon — joined Hizbullah ranks during the fighting in Al-Qusair. The two fighters were members of Saraya Al-Muqawma Al-Lubnanyia (the Lebanese Resistance Battalion), a fringe movement trained and armed by Hizbullah. Its membership consists mainly of Lebanese Sunnis and Palestinians. As the battle in Al-Quasar enters its third week, the Islamic resistance movement's entry into the fighting alongside the Syrian army stirred wide controversy among party supporters and opponents. Opponents viewed it as sectarian-motivated, arguing that the party chose to join the fight against “the Sunnis of Syria” and that “Al-Qusair is not Al-Quds,” as one commander of the Free Syrian Army put it. More important, however, was the argument that by being party to the battle in Syria, Hizbullah was adding fuel to the Sunni-Shia divide. Hizbullah's long-time policy of shrouding in ambiguity its role in Syria added to the sea of speculation and rumour surrounding the issue. Hizbullah did not even try to provide answers for the many questions regarding its role in Syria when confronted by a Saudi-financed media campaign aimed at demonising the party and tarnishing its image in the minds of millions of supporters and sympathisers across the Muslim and Arab world. Hizbullah's secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, in his speech last Saturday acknowledged that he was “one and a half years” late in putting things into perspective regarding the party's role in the Syrian crisis. One high-ranking party source explained to Al-Ahram Weekly: “There is a litany of sensitivities the party has taken into consideration in keeping silent on what it is doing in Syria.” At no time was the resistance movement so clear about the motives behind joining the battle in Syria as was Nasrallah during his last speech. One Lebanese analyst described it as “Nasrallah taking off the gloves”. Nasrallah dated Hizbullah's intervention to the beginning of the crisis, disclosing that he “worked with President Bashar Al-Assad and Syrian opposition figures to reach a political settlement.” But it stopped there, as Nasrallah pointed out: “We did not intervene until a few months ago.” Nasrallah cleared the dust surrounding the motives behind his party's role. First, Hizbullah thinks that what is going on in Syria is no longer a popular revolution against an oppressive regime; rather Syria has turned into a battlefield to impose a political project led by the US and its stooges in the Gulf region. Second, Syria is the resistance's backyard and the party cannot stay hand-tied while Syria is falling in the orbit of the axis of American-Israeli-takfiri (infidel) groups. The dire consequences resulting from this would be to besiege the resistance and bring Lebanon back to the “Israeli epoch”. Sources close to Hizbullah cite a number of reasons that forced the party to intervene physically in the Syria battle. Growing evidence of an Israeli presence has been cited as the number one factor for the change in mode of intervention, from backing a political process to military assistance. This has two aspects: one has to do with resistance arms, while the other has to do with the Syrian regime facing what Hizbullah deem “an existential threat”. Sources added that the party has a clear goal and that it will not permit the threats to come from outside Syria's borders. Nasrallah was precise when he said that both Israel and takfiri groups were viewed by the party as posing an existential threat not only to the Shia population and the resistance, but to the Lebanese state, and all Lebanese, Muslims and Christians. While some, like Christian leader Suleiman Frangieh, defended the move, viewing it as a natural outcome of Hizbullah being part of the resistance axis, and that in defending the Syrian state it was actually defending itself, others saw the move as ushering in a crucial transformation in the Arab Mashreq — one that would transcend geographical boundaries. Analyst Wafiq Qansouh, an expert on Israeli affairs in the daily Al-Akhbar, explained that the fighting in Syria should be understood within the context of safeguarding the resistance and its strategic depth. “It no longer is a case of protecting the Lebanese population to the West of Al-Asi River, or protecting Muslim shrines in Syria, although both have come under real threat... It [is] now existential and there are more reasons for Hizbullah and Lebanon than for Syria and the Bashar Al-Assad regime,” Qansouh said. Hizbullah sources told the Weekly earlier this week that the party intervened in self-defence and that the resistance has been monitoring the Israelis for well over 20 years, gathered evidence of an Israeli presence in the border areas — the closest they can get to Hizbullah's hinterland. “There is hard evidence of a project aimed to encircle Hizbullah and its areas of influence in the Shia populated areas,” said the source. The main aim of this project, added the source, was to cut the communication lines between the North Beqaa Valley and the Syrian hinterland, which in other words means cutting the lifeline of Hizbullah's arms supplies through Syria. The high-ranking source explained that Al-Qusair had strategic importance because if it falls this is likely to crucially change the course of the conflict in Syria. The town is located on the road leading to the nerve centres of the central state where 75 per cent of the economic system of the regime is located and almost two thirds of its base population is located. This road is considered the main passageway for supplying the regime with arms through seaports. Lebanese commentators view Hizbullah's intervention in the fighting as pre-emptive, because once takfiri groups take over Syria — or even the governorate adjacent to Lebanon — the threats will maximise. Jordanian writer Nahed Hattar agrees. He described Hizbullah fighting in Al-Qusair as “a defensive mission”. “From the north there is attack by the takfiri army in alliance with the American-Israeli [axis] and Gulf, and in the south Israel is... [baring] its teeth for another war on Lebanon. The battle against terrorists in Homs is the exact battle against the Israelis in the south. In Al-Qusair, Hizbullah is fighting in defence of Maroon Al-Ras.” Talal Salman, As-Safir editor, seconds this view, saying that Al-Qusair is as much a Lebanese front as a Syrian front, and that it is a battle of self-defence more than a battle in support of the regime in Syria. “In reality, Hizbullah came late to the battle compared to all other ‘Islamist' groupings which joined early on and continue to recruit hundreds of young men to join jihad against the ‘kufar' [infidels] in Syria,” Salman wrote. One of the key motivations for Hizbullah's silence over its role in Syria, the Hizbullah source told the Weekly, was precisely not to add fuel to the Sunni-Shia divide. Hizbullah was forced to intervene in combat operations in border towns, however. There have been several incidents that the party did not report of the slaughter of many Shia — the source put the number at 200 Shia killed at the hands of opposition groups. Also: “We kept receiving death threats that when they are finished with Al-Assad, our turn was coming,” said the source. Three attempts at reaching a truce were made between the party and Syrian opposition groups, but they failed. “This is not a question of Shia fighting Sunnis,” insisted the source — otherwise, he added, Hizbullah could have made a fuss about Shia killings, which were sectarian. “What could unite a secular regime like the Syrian regime with a religious movement?” he asked. “It is all about politics, not sectarian affiliation.” Nasrallah talked at length about the issue in his speech, emphasising: “We don't approach the issue from a Sunni or a Shia perspective as some charge; rather, all Muslims and Christians are facing an existential threat.” He said that some of the extremist groups in Syria are an extension of the Islamic State of Iraq group that appeared in Iraq and “killed more Sunnis than anyone else”. Nasrallah also questioned why when hundreds of fighters from across the globe came to participate in the fighting in Syria, the world turned a blind eye, and “when Hizbullah sent a few fighters” it was considered foreign intervention. The Hizbullah source said that fighters belonging to at least 28 nationalities have been flocking to Syria since two years. On Sunday, 12 Chechens were killed in Hama during clashes with the Syrian army. Analysts argue that Hizbullah's intervention in the Syrian battlefield will not be cost-free and that Lebanon is bound to pay a price. Signs of this have appeared clearly in Tripoli, where clashes between Bab Al-Tebana and Jabel Mehsen left 31 people dead and more than 250 injured, in the two rockets fired on a southern suburb of Beirut (an area known to be under the influence of the Amal Movement, not Hizbullah, though sending a clear message), in the rockets fired on Hermel in the West Beqaa Valley (a village with a majority Shia population from across the Syrian borders) that killed a woman and injured several others, and in the tense situation in Saidon between the Salafi Sheikh Ahmed Al-Asir and pro-Hizbullah Sunni figures. All are developments that should be viewed as consequences of engaging in battle in Syria. But according to one analyst close to Hizbullah, what Nasrallah did not say in his last speech is that Hizbullah's role has a ceiling or limit. Aiming to soothe fears, the analyst said that its role could even disappear, depending on the course of developments in Syria.
