Yabrud, a Syrian border town that has long been a stronghold of the rebels seeking to bring down the regime led by Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, was this week retaken by government forces assisted by fighters from the Lebanese Shia group Hizbullah. But the recapture of Yabrud, over which Hizbullah rejoiced, may be just a Pyrrhic victory. As Syrian troops pushed the rebels out of the border town, many fled into Lebanon with vengeance on their minds. Within hours of the fall of Yabrud, a suicide car-bomber struck a group of Hizbullah fighters in the village of Al-Nabi Othman in the Beqaa Valley, killing two and wounding ten. Another car bomb, perhaps one destined for a similar attack, was found by the Lebanese army and defused the next day. Rather than being knee-jerk reactions to the rebels' misfortune, these bombs may turn out to be the beginning of a new trend. Lebanon's fragile sectarian fabric has been stretched almost beyond endurance by the Syrian civil war, and Hizbullah's involvement across the border has led to confrontations between Sunni and Shiite areas in the Beqaa Valley and other parts of the country. Observers fear that gunmen escaping from Syrian troops may now infiltrate across the porous borders, fomenting political and sectarian strife in Lebanon. According to one report, about 1,000 fighters who have fled from Syria may now have taken refuge in the mountainous areas surrounding the predominantly Sunni town of Arsal in the Beqaa Valley. Lebanese officials have dismissed the report as untrue, but admitted that it is hard to confirm the exact situation in the region. Hizbullah parliamentarian Walid Sokkariya, himself from the Beqaa region, said that not all the rebel fighters who had escaped from the Syrian army had been forced to come to Lebanon and that many had gone to other rebel-held areas in Syria. But the road between the border and the town of Arsal was fairly easy to traverse, Sokkariya admitted. The celebratory mood of Hizbullah has irked many politicians in Lebanon. Samir Jaajaa, leader of the Lebanese forces, said that Hizbullah had no right to celebrate a “victory over the Syrian people.” As a precaution against gunmen infiltrating the country, the Lebanese army is patrolling mountain roads close to the border to try to stop or reduce the influx of Syrian rebel fighters. The army is also policing the areas separating Shiite from Sunni villages in the Beqaa Valley, where the inhabitants have been trading accusations over the past few weeks. The inhabitants of Arsal, for example, say that Hizbullah fighters have been blockading their town, but the Shiite inhabitants of nearby villages say that Arsal has been serving as a transit point for fighters, car bombs and weapons smuggled from Syria. The retaking of Yabrud may have been a victory for the Syrian regime and its supporters in Iran and Lebanon, but it could also be a watershed for Lebanon. Sparks sent out from this town across the border could be just what are needed to ignite a fully-fledged sectarian conflict in Lebanon. Meanwhile, the fighters whom the Syrian troops and their Shiite supporters have sent packing from Yabrud are now going to settle elsewhere. If a sufficient number of them decide to make Lebanon their second home, the repercussions of the victory may have terrible consequences for all the Lebanese, Sunni and Shiite alike.
