Posted on 01/03/2015 3:54:34 PM PST by DeaconBenjamin
Damascus, Jan 3 (IANS) Intense clashes were raging since Saturday morning between the Syrian troops backed by the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front militants in Lebanon.
According to the anti-government Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), violent clashes flared up in the area of Flaita, in the western part of al-Qalamoun, in Lebanon, Xinhua reported.
Meanwhile, al-Mayadeen TV denied reports that the Nusra fighters managed to storm a Hezbollah position in Flaita, adding that the clashes raged on. No reports of losses, however, have yet emerged.
Syrian government troops have been fighting rebel groups and militants since 2013 in the western part of al-Qalamoun, managing to cut the rebels' main supply line from neighbouring Lebanon.
However, several militant groups have, for months, been assembling in the eastern part of al-Qalamoun to fight both government troops and the Sunni militant organisation, the Islamic State (IS).
Battles in the eastern part of al-Qalamoun have raged on over the past two months between the IS and the Nusra Front.
According to reports, the battles in that region are important for the IS, which, if victorious, would besiege rival extremist groups in some pockets in the western part of al-Qalamoun and force them to pledge allegiance to it.
Hezbollah has battled alongside the Syrian government troops over the past two years, as the Syrian administration had supported the Shia militia against the Israeli attack on Lebanon in 2006.
Hezbollah leader, Sheikh Hasan Nasrallah, has said that his troops were fighting in Syria also to prevent extremist groups from finding their way into Lebanon, which is not far from the raging violence next door.
I guess one can hope both sides fight to the last man.
Most of the Lebanese people are modern, educated, intelligent people who want no part of the “uprisings.”
Here’s a recent article on Lebanon politics. Note the people sitting in the audience. Could be a crowd from Des Moines. No burqas, no veils. http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/12/lebanon-saudi-arabia-hezbollah-hariri-dialogue.html
The Sunni-Shia proxy war that entered Syria with the public debut of the “Syrian opposition” has been spreading to Lebanon for some time. Before it is all over Syria-Lebanon will be one whole theater of war with multiple groups involved. Everyone can thank U.S. long-term “regime change” plans against Assad, executed jointly covertly and overtly with certain Middle East “friends”, for initiating events that led to the destabilization of Syria and introduction of Sunni Islamists as “partners” with the so called “Syrian opposition”.
Prior to the public debut of the so called “Syrian opposition”, Assad represented a manageable security issue easily watched over and contained as needed.
And, in spite of the Syrian alliance of convenience with the government in Tehran, Assad was no tool of Iran and has never given up any control to Tehran. Unlike most of the Arab dictators (some call themselves kings and some call themselves emirs), the Syrian government was secular, with no state religion and everyone enjoyed freedom of religion (which irked alot of the Arab so-called “friends” of the U.S.) Under the Syrian constitution the Syrian president is not even required to be a Muslim.
Assad is surely no “good guy”, and neither is most of the leaders in the Arab Middle East with the exception of in Israel. Assad was not opposed by our so called friends in the Middle East because he is a dictator. He was opposed by many Arab and Sunni Muslim regimes BECAUSE he was not a Muslim of the Sunni fundamentalist mold. In fact, the Muslim sect that Assad is part of - the Alawites - is considered an apostate sect to many Sunni Muslims.
Regime change against Assad was like Afghanistan of the 1980s - a U.S. international security agenda ran locally by Sunni Islamists who knowingly engaged their most radical friends to provide troops and local organization for the effort.
That the whole mess would engulf Lebanon eventually was to me only a matter of time.
Intense clashes were raging since Saturday morning between the Syrian troops backed by the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front militants in Lebanon. Syrian government troops have been fighting rebel groups and militants since 2013 in the western part of al-Qalamoun... several militant groups have, for months, been assembling in the eastern part of al-Qalamoun to fight both government troops and the Sunni militant organisation, the Islamic State (IS). Battles in the eastern part of al-Qalamoun have raged on over the past two months between the IS and the Nusra Front.The Nusra Front has been staging for a fight against Assad and ISIS. Assad's troops and Iran's proxy thugs attack them.
and BTW, there is no such thing as the Lebanese Hezbollah -- Hezbollah is an Iranian occupation force that has been there for decades. It is not Lebanese.
Exactly. I have no idea why the US is backing those that destabilized a reasonably OK regime. Well, yes I do know why. Nasty, isn't it, the way Obama is caliphate-izing the entire Middle East.
Most peculiar. Do you have any idea why that policy exists? And who put it place? And who benefits?
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