After a year of siege and weeks of battles, the town of Al-Qusair in Syria has fallen to the dual assault of the Syrian army and Hizbullah combatants. The rifles of the defenders were no match for the regime's tanks, and the exhausted rebel soldiers were no match for the fresh troops sent by Hizbullah. The Syrian regime led by President Bashar Al-Assad has claimed that the fall of Al-Qusair is the beginning of the end for the revolution and a battle that will open the way to the regime's recapturing the territories it has lost over the two-year conflict. But this may not be the case. The town's fall will have consequences, since it controls the supply route from the coastal town of Tartus to the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon, the latter being controlled by Hizbullah. From a sectarian point of view, it is also vital due to its proximity to Alawite villages known for their support of the Syrian regime. Hours after the fall of Al-Qusair, websites affiliated with Hizbullah and the Syrian regime posted video clips on the Internet showing Shia combatants celebrating their victory and chanting sectarian slogans. Similar scenes were reported at Hizbullah's powerbase in Beirut's southern suburbs. But the fighting continues in dozens of locations across Syria, and the conflict has now spilled over into areas that had been calm so far. The most lasting consequence of battle for Al-Qusair is likely to be that the Iranian-backed Hizbullah group has now become unabashedly involved in the Syrian conflict, making it a clear accomplice in the ongoing slaughter. Hizbullah's involvement has prompted the Syrian opposition, which was thinking of attending the Geneva II Conference jointly organised by the Americans and Russians, to announce its refusal to attend unless the international community forces Hizbullah out of Syria. The group's secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, once hailed as a hero of the resistance to Israel, has now become a villain in the eyes of most Syrians and a stooge of the Iranians and the regime. According to Georges Sabra, leader of the Syrian Opposition Coalition, the fall of Al-Qusair “closes the door in the face of a peaceful solution”. Hizbullah and its allies in Syria were “destroying the political, social, cultural and humanitarian fabric of the region”, he said, and their actions would trigger sectarian reactions. Hadi Al-Abdallah, spokesman for the General Agency of the Syrian Revolution, told Al-Ahram Weekly that the battle of Al-Qusair was about the regime's wanting to secure the supply of Russian weapons to Damascus and of Iranian weapons to Hizbullah. It had destroyed the town and its surroundings in the hope of creating an Alawite mini-state spanning Homs and the coastal areas, Al-Abdallah said. There have been steps to turn Homs into the capital of such a mini-state, this being populated by the regime's Shia and Alawite supporters from the Syrian coastal areas and Lebanon, he added. The intervention of Hizbullah in the Syrian conflict has in turn set off heated debate in Lebanon, with the Lebanese being afraid that their country will now be dragged into a sectarian war and the Syrians convinced that Nasrallah did not sacrifice hundreds of his fighters just to keep Al-Assad in power. What Nasrallah wants, they argue, is to trigger a Sunni-Shia confrontation and to drag the whole region into sectarian conflict. The Syrian opposition and some of its backers warn of a scheme to turn the Syrian conflict into sectarian strife between Sunnis and Shias in the Middle East, with the “Shia axis” of Iran, Hizbullah and Al-Assad's supporters wanting to set the region on fire, they claim. Now that Hizbullah has thrown itself into the thick of battle, the ensuing strife may destroy both countries, setting off a sectarian chain reaction, they warn. Remarks made by Nasrallah in a speech just days before the fall of Al-Qusair lend credence to this view. Speaking of a “resistance axis” that includes Hizbullah, the Syrian regime and Iran, Nasrallah lashed out at what he called the “godless allies of Israel and America”, a not-so-subtle reference to Syrian and Lebanese Sunnis and their supporters in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Lebanese commentator Hazem Al-Amin said that the Syrian regime was set on capturing Al-Qusair in order to strengthen its hand at the negotiating table. The battle “will have little outcome other than a sectarian one,” he said, and Hizbullah will not be able to stretch itself more thinly in Syria. “Hizbullah's involvement in Syria will undermine the chances of rebuilding the country, as it will become harder to find common ground,” Al-Amin said. Over the past year, Syria has been becoming an arena for regional conflict, with the rebel movements attracting fighters from both near and far. Meanwhile, the regime has also brought in fighters from across the country's borders. Everyone wants to have a finger in the sectarian cake, with little regard for the consequences. Syria is thus poised to become a battlefield between Sunnis and Shias, a playground for jihadists, and a political nightmare for the entire region. This is the prospect that worries the international community, which had been hoping to keep the conflict localised. According to some commentators, the defeat of the revolutionaries in Al-Qusair was a sign of their weakness and internal divisions, and this could discourage Western nations from arming the Syrian opposition. Burhan Ghalyun, former leader of the opposition Syrian National Council, dismissed this view, however. “The withdrawal [from Al-Qusair] was necessary to avoid more losses. The regime has scored a tactical victory, but on the strategic level nothing has changed. The regime is not going to be able to recapture the land it has lost elsewhere,” he said. According to Ghalyun, the revolutionaries had had to abandon their positions because the war had turned into a regional and international one. “The revolutionaries cannot muster the resources needed to confront Russia and Iran unless help comes from our friends,” he added. The revolutionaries should not try to defend their positions in the face of superior forces. “They can fight better if they fan out and launch hit-and-run attacks on the enemy. We cannot fight a symmetrical war with light weaponry. Over the next few weeks, the strategy of the Syrian revolution will be altered as a result of the Iranian-Iraqi-Lebanese intervention backed by the Russians,” he added. There is no denying that the Al-Qusair battle was a military setback for the Syrian revolution, but it is also unlikely to bring the victory the regime claims within its reach. To achieve that, the regime would have to regain control of Homs, Aleppo, Deraa, Idlib, the outskirts of Damascus, and other areas currently outside its control, and this would not be an easy task. Some commentators now expect the loss of Al-Qusair to force the revolutionaries to put together a command structure capable of coordinating the overall conflict, something that Western countries have been pushing for. Should this happen, the odds may change once again in their favour.
