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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Free Syrian Army wants to whack Hezbollah -- in Beirut
2012-10-11
Oh please, oh please, oh please, oh please...
BEIRUT: Syrian rebels said they have detained 13 Hezbollah members and threatened to take the fight to HezbollahÂ’s stronghold in BeirutÂ’s southern suburbs unless the party ends its support for President Bashar AssadÂ’s regime.

“We [vow] to take the battle in Syria to the heart of the [Beirut] southern suburbs if [Hezbollah] does not stop supporting the killer-Syrian regime,” Free Syrian Army spokesman Fahd al-Masri told media outlets Tuesday.

He said the FSA is holding 13 Hezbollah members in a village near Homs for their involvement in the Syria conflict.

“They [the Hezbollah detainees] have confessed to killing and slaughtering [people] in Syria,” Masri said, indicating that most of the captives come from Baalbek and Hermel in the Bekaa Valley.

Masri stressed that Hezbollah is “deeply involved” in the fighting in Syria and said that the fate of the 13 detained men was “in the hands of [FSA] field commanders.”

Hezbollah “is involved in the killing of the Syrian people and in suppressing the revolution, particularly in Damascus and Homs,” Masri said.

“Hezbollah focuses [its operations] on Damascus’ Zabadani area given that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has a military base there,” he said. “They also have a huge presence in Qusayr and Talbiseh.”

Responding to MasriÂ’s comments, Hezbollah bloc MP Kamel Rifai denied that members of the resistance group were being sent to fight alongside the Syrian army.
"Lies! All lies!"
“The party has a basic rule that forbids fighting anyone other than Israel and thus it bans its elements from fighting in Syria,” Rifai told The Daily Star Tuesday. “There are Shiites living in Syria, but that does not make them Hezbollah [fighters]."
"Wudn't us."
In an apparent response to Rifai, Masri told the Lebanese MTV channel later Tuesday that the 13 Hezbollah men were arrested in their military uniforms.

“They were armed and in military uniform when they were captured in Homs’ countryside,” Masri said. “They were not pilgrims and not on a tour.”
Perhaps they were just heavily-armed pilgrims who were lost...
He held Hezbollah fully responsible and said the Shiite group “must not drag Lebanon into lost battles.”

“Funerals were held for four Hezbollah members who died at a military training camp as well as three others who passed away in the Nabi Sheet explosion,” Rifai said. “None of them were involved in the Syrian fighting as has been rumored.”
"We're perfectly capable of killing them here in Lebanon!"
Last week, Hezbollah said three of its fighters were killed in an explosion at a munitions depot in Nabi Sheet in east Lebanon.
That was a warning shot blast...
Hezbollah buried Monday one its fighters who a security source said was killed in the border area with Syria. Hussein Abdel Ghani al-Nimr, 35, died “performing his jihadist duty,” a Hezbollah spokesman said.
And now he's dead. Perhaps his mother loved him...
NimrÂ’s death comes less than a week after a senior Hezbollah commander, whom Syrian rebels said was killed in Syria, was buried in the Bekaa.
Posted by:Steve White

#12  ...Syria and Turkey are about to go at it hammer and tongs

I'm calling for the whole region to go up in flames. Everyone has little proxy armies in their neighbor's countries and/or designs on a patch of land just across the border. The whole mess is just one archduke away from being a mini-WWI. Only this time the Great Powers (can we even say that now?) won't be involved since they either don't really give a flip or can't afford to get involved.

A little in-depth from Spengler here.
From the final 'graph: The bad news is that none of the major countries in the region can be kept from falling, and once fallen, they cannot be put back together again. The good news is that the bad news is not so bad. As long as the calamity is restricted to the region, and prospective malefactors are prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons, the impact on the rest of the world will be surprisingly small.
Posted by: SteveS   2012-10-11 19:49  

#11  FSA is dreaming. Syria will be gone soon.
Posted by: Raider   2012-10-11 15:29  

#10  You know, if the Syrian Rebs can't get the Madaya supply depot there's another way to take care of it. And on that note, I join Steve: Oh please, oh please, oh please, oh please...
Posted by: Charles   2012-10-11 11:50  

#9  Perhaps his mother loved him... She could have been just jivin'
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418   2012-10-11 11:23  

#8  Looking at this with the context of the Turkey thread as well (not to mention the nuke issues) and wondering how much overt action there will be? Covert is a given and known but the permutations and combinations of ethnic and religious enmity in that region just boggle my mind.
Posted by: AlanC   2012-10-11 11:03  

#7  #5 And Iran joins in when?

Iranian munitions were turning up in Afghanistan at least two years ago, possibly long before.
Posted by: Besoeker   2012-10-11 10:22  

#6  AlanC

Iran has forces in Syria and some have already been killed. The Iran role will be constrained somewhat because of the language problem and because Iran is a bit concerned that if (or when) they have a heavy presence in Syria, it will result in some conflict (possibly some red on red deadly force) between Hezbollah and the Iranian forces (since Arabs don't like taking personal orders from Persians among other things). Its better for Iran if the Mullahs give orders to Hezbollah HQ and Hezbollah orders their forces.

Lots of different types of popcorn.
Posted by: lord garth   2012-10-11 10:18  

#5  And Iran joins in when?
Posted by: AlanC   2012-10-11 10:02  

#4  Hezbollah has a big supply depot near Madaya very near Lebanon. There are FSA forces in the vicinity and they've come close to capturing the supply depot a few times.

Latest rumor is that Hezbollah is now providing personal security for Assad since there have been some defections and a few people were 'discharged' for suspected rebel sympathy.
Posted by: lord garth   2012-10-11 10:00  

#3  SteveS, the chief foreign correspondent of The Telegraph believes Syria and Turkey are about to go at it hammer and tongs:

If anyone believed that SyriaÂ’s bloodshed would stay inside the countryÂ’s borders, the events of the last week should have put them right. IÂ’m in southern Turkey, near the frontier with Syria, and this area feels like the new front line of the battle against Bashar al-AssadÂ’s regime. Convoys of Turkish army vehicles ply the roads down to the border and, quietly, civilians are trickling away to safer areas.

The reason is simple: cross-border artillery and mortar bombardments have become daily events.
...
If another family dies in similar circumstances, the Turkish government will come under immense popular pressure to respond with full force. If the Akçakale killings were to be repeated, I would not be surprised if Turkey retaliated with a strike by troops as well as artillery, possibly accompanied with air power. The country’s parliament has authorised the government to do exactly that if necessary. In other words, Turkey and Syria are close to war. The two countries have been waging a covert, undeclared war since the onset of the uprising against Assad, with Turkey supplying the Syrian rebels and Damascus hitting back by fuelling the Kurdish insurgency inside its neighbour. But we could be close to the moment when this shadow war becomes a formal, cross-border conflict.
Posted by: trailing wife   2012-10-11 08:18  

#2  Don't get your hopes high just yet ...

Total war throughout the region, down to the last man standing. It would leave us one drone-zap away from peace in the Middle East, something that hasn't happened since... I dunno, the Pleistocene. Sure, it's fantasy. But a man can dream!
Posted by: SteveS   2012-10-11 03:29  

#1  Don't get your hopes high just yet ...

A reminder ...

* FREEREPUBLIC [old] > REBEL "FREE SYRIA ARMY" DECLARES JIHAD WILL RAISE ISLAMIC FLAG [Islamic-Sharia State] OVER THE WHITE HOUSE, + BTW also SSSSSHHHHHH ... CCCCCCCCCC above Secular Syria.
Posted by: JosephMendiola   2012-10-11 00:36  

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