(Funeral of Hezbolah fighter killed in Syria. )
The war in Syria is bleeding Hezbollah’s military capabilities. It has reportedly lost between 500-1000 fighters, many of whom were their elite units. Most of the loses have been done by the Al Qaeda linked Al Nusra Front, who are using Hezbollah’s tactics against them. As the war progresses, Hezbollah will be faced with a dilemma. It has a smaller recruiting pool than Nusra or the FSA, whom can call upon not just Syrian Sunnis, but throughout the Islamic world. The war has also shattered Hezbollah’s image in the Arab world and in many cases, they are now hated more than the Israelis.
Hezbollah’s large-scale involvement in Syria is eroding its military resources, though the extent of the damage it is incurring remains a closely guarded secret.
The Lebanese terrorist organization’s Shi’ite fighters, who were deployed to Syria to fight on behalf of Syrian President Bashar Assad at Iran’s orders, tipped the balance in favor of Assad at the battle of Qusair in recent weeks. But Israeli security analysts said on Sunday the victory came at a heavy price for Hezbollah that is set to rise the longer the organization remains engaged in Syria.
[….]
It is likely that Hezbollah sent some of its quality units based in south Lebanon, originally designated for combat with the IDF, to the battlefields of Syria, Schweitzer said. “They’re suffering casualties as they fight irregular bands of rebels.”
In Syria, Hezbollah is struggling to deal with the same tactics it itself employed in the past against the IDF. A report in The Lebanese Daily Star published last month quoted one Hezbollah fighter as saying that the tactics of the jihadi Jabhat Al-Nusra Front in Syria had “a kind of irritating familiarity.”
This conflict is a god send to the Non Islamic world. May these terrorists continue to kill each other and leave us alone.
UPDATE- by Speranza
12 Lebanese soldiers killed in clashes with Sunnis
Lebanese soldiers fought Sunni Muslim gunmen in the southern city of Sidon on Monday in one of the deadliest outbreaks of violence fueled by sectarian divisions over the civil war in neighboring Syria.
The army said 12 soldiers had been killed in clashes which broke out on Sunday after security forces detained a follower of the hardline Sunni Muslim cleric Sheikh Ahmed al-Assir. His supporters retaliated by opening fire on an army checkpoint.
Security sources put the army death toll at 15, with 60 wounded. They said at least two gunmen were also killed in the clashes but soldiers were surrounding the mosque where Assir’s supporters were based, making it difficult to verify details.
The mosque showed signs of heavy damage from 24 hours of ferocious exchanges of rocket and gunfire.
Sidon had been on edge since violence erupted last week between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslim fighters, at odds over the Syrian conflict which pits mainly Sunni rebels against President Bashar Assad, an Alawite from an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam.
Tensions escalated further when the Lebanese Shi’ite militant group Hezbollah sent fighters into Syria to lead the recapture of a strategic border town by Assad’s forces.
“The army has tried for months to keep Lebanon away from the problems of Syria, and it ignored repeated requests for it to clamp down on Sheikh Ahmed al-Assir’s group,” the military command said in a statement on Sunday.
“But what has happened today has gone beyond all expectations. The army was attacked in cold blood in an attempt to light the fuse in Sidon, just as was done in 1975,” it said, referring to the year that Lebanon’s own civil war began.
Assir, whose supporters accuse the army of giving cover to Hezbollah gunmen, called for people across the country to join him and demanded that “honorable” soldiers defect.
