Syria After the Uprisings by Joseph Daher

Author:Joseph Daher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Haymarket Books

Hezbollah

Hezbollah has long had a close relationship with the Syrian regime, an alliance that strengthened over time, especially following the death of Hafez al-Assad. Hafez al-Assad treated Hezbollah as a useful tool for strengthening Syria’s relations with the IRI, while also exploiting the group’s attacks to pressure Israel during peace negotiations. The situation changed under Bashar al-Assad, especially following the withdrawal of Syrian armed forces from Lebanon in 2005 and the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. The Syrian regime increasingly viewed the relationship with Hezbollah not as a tactical and temporary alliance, as it had been under Hafez, but as a deep strategic alliance. Bashar deepened Syria’s collaboration with the group, both politically and militarily (Blanford 2011: 337).

The eruption of the Syrian uprising in March 2011, as well as the subsequent military intervention by Hezbollah in support of the Assad regime, demonstrated that the relationship between the two actors had become strategic. In May 2011, during Hassan Nasrallah’s first speech on Syria, he characterized the Assad regime as “the spine of the resistance” in Syria, its overthrow being a strategic objective favored by U.S. and Israeli interests (al-Muqâwama al-Islâmiyya 2011). In addition, Nasrallah claimed that Hezbollah’s support for the Syrian regime was not only in the interests of the party and the Shi’a, but also for the sake of Lebanon and all its various religious communities, against the threats of Takfiri terrorist forces (al-Manar 2012). Since mid-2011, Hezbollah began training thousands of Lebanese and Syrian youths in combat camps (Itani 2014). Hezbollah’s presence was confirmed with the first so-called martyrs in Syria as early as June 2012 (Ashkar H. 2014). In November 2013, Hassan Nasrallah finally publicly acknowledged Hezbollah’s presence in Syria (al-Manar 2013).

Hezbollah’s role in Syria took various forms, ranging from veteran fighters commandeering squads of Syrian soldiers, who essentially acted as noncommissioned officers, to the less experienced Syrian regular troops in street fighting (Blanford 2013). They took care of training some of the proregime militias, including NDF units (Nakhoul 2013) and some of the new recruits in the SAA (AFP and Orient le Jour 2014a). Hezbollah also participated in various military offensives alongside pro-regime forces throughout the country, including the offensive of Eastern Aleppo in late 2016 and in Dar’a Province in mid-2018.

Later on in the war, Hezbollah established several militias in Syria. Quwat al-Ridha was considered the strategic nucleus for Hezbollah in Syria, operating militarily under the leadership and supervision of the party. The new group was composed of native Syrian young fighters, mostly Shi’as from Homs Province, but also Alawis and Sunni, and the majority came from various countryside areas (Homs, Aleppo, Dar’a, and Damascus countryside) (al-Hadath News 2014). Hezbollah also participated in the establishment of smaller Shi’a militias such as Liwa al-Imam Zain al-Abidain, active in Deir ez-Zor (Al-Tamimi 2016b), and Jaysh al-Imam al-Mahdi al-Muqawama al-Watani al-Aqaidiya fi Suriya (Army of Imam al-Mahdi, the National Ideological Resistance in Syria) (Smyth 2015: 47). The Lebanese Islamic movement was responsible for organizing, training, and equipping between

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