Hezbollah and Syria: from regime proxy to regime savior.

• Author: Slim, Randa
• Position: COMMENTARY - Essay

On April 8, 2014, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's Secretary-General, gave an extended interview to Assafir, a Lebanese daily. He was asked whether there are geographical limits or red lines to Hezbollah's presence in Syria, to which he answered: "We exist where we should exist." He specifically mentioned three areas in Syria where Hezbollah fighters are present in which, according to Nasrallah, they were obliged to enter--Al Qoseir, Qalamoun and Damascus--apart from what he refers to as "... Hizbullah's participation next to the Syrian troops." In an April 16th article in Al Monitor, Edward Dark, a pseudonym for a journalist based in Syria, reveals the presence of about 250 Hezbollah fighters in the Zahra front in West Aleppo.

Hezbollah's Initial Reading of the Syrian Conflict Proved to be Mostly True

In late April 2011, two months after the start of the protests in Syria, when the uprising was still a civil, nonviolent movement, I had informal, off-the-record conversations with Hezbollah officials to hear their perspectives about the developments in Syria. I wrote about these conversations in a May 3 Foreign Policy post.

My Hezbollah interlocutors argued at the time that regime change in Syria would not unfold easily or peacefully. They asserted that the Assad regime and its wide base of support would fight back and would use force to deal with the protests. There would be no negotiation between the regime and the protest movement. If Bashar Al Assad failed to rein in the protests quickly, the most likely scenario would be a protracted civil war that would engulf Syria, spill over into Lebanon--especially its northern part--and destabilize the region, including Turkey and Iraq. They argued that the millions of Alawites who reside in Turkey would not stand idly by if their fellow co-religionists in Syria were fighting for their survival. A protracted civil war in Syria would eventually lead to a breakup of Syria into a number of mini-states divided among the country's three major religious and ethnic groups: Alawites, Sunnis, and Kurds.

Despite this serious challenge to the Assad regime, they predicted that the Syrian president would stay put. Unlike Hosni Mubarak or Zein ElAbidine Ben Ali, they argued that As sad enjoyed a wide base of support, especially in major cities like Damascus and Aleppo. Moreover, Alawites and Christians would not abandon Assad. Both communities feared the consequences of a Sunni takeover to their physical and material well-being. My interlocutors noted that the critical factor in Egypt and Tunisia was the neutral role played by the army. In Syria, they expected the army to stand by the regime. When I asked about the possibility of an internal coup d'etat led by an Alawite army official, they discounted such a scenario.

Three years later, their assessment of the situation in Syria holds mostly true. Assad remains in power. Brute force, which led to the killing of more than 150,000 Syrians, has been the Assad regime's tool of choice. Despite the tens of thousands of military defectors, the top military brass and a large portion of the Syrian armed forces stuck with the regime. The majority of Alawites and Christians have not abandoned Assad. Violent spillover from Syria is a reality with which Lebanon and Iraq are contending on a daily basis. Syria is engulfed in a protracted war that will likely last years.

In his April 8th Assafir interview, Nasrallah argued that the threat of partitioning Syria has now receded. As he put it, "I believe that we overcame the danger of partition. When we say that we overcame the threat of toppling the regime, we are also, more precisely, saying that we overcame the danger of dividing Syria." According to Nasrallah, the regime opponents can no longer topple the regime. At best, "they can wage a war of attrition." What Nasrallah failed to mention is that these dangers...