In the south of Lebanon, the seat of the Hezbollah’s republic, cookies are being distributed.
Banners are up all over the place celebrating the victory of destroying Qusayr and driving out the people of this Syrian town. Yet the women and children running for life out of the inferno of fighting and gruesome destruction were a testimony to a tragedy that is no less ugly.
Nothing like the story of Qusayr has inflamed people in the past 20 years. It is a story of heroism and steadfastness of 40,000 people, mainly women and children, in the face of a savage military machine and a war waged by an enemy who failed to fight the people face-to-face and therefore began wantonly bombing the town with artillery and rockets.
Twenty days of fighting, rampaging and carnage are all well-documented on video and people’s testimonies have laid bare the savagery and tyranny of Hezbollah and exposed its false and phony history.
Having failed in face-to-face fighting, Hezbollah took over the town after demolishing it with scud missiles with the help of Assad’s airstrikes, which made more than 80 strikes on that small town.
So the invaders were able to “cleanse” Qusayr and drive its people out. This is certainly a glorious victory for Hezbollah.
The loss of Qusayr was inevitable. Anyone with scant knowledge of the geography of the area will know that. It is just 15 km away from the Lebanese border, where Hezbollah’s militias are stationed, always armed to the teeth and always trained for such an eventuality. For Assad’s forces, it became a moral issue, and especially for Hezbollah, after suffering continuous defeat last year.
They destroyed Qusayr and drove its people out, but Hezbollah and Iran will pay a much heavier price. The Arab street will now completely rewrite its political notions. The enemy is now Hezbollah and Iran. People are now more determined than ever to liberate Syria from the regime and from the supporting forces from Iran, Iraq, and Hezbollah.
If Hezbollah thinks it did Assad a favor by helping to send the Syrian delegation to Geneva with a strong card for the Qusayr “victory,” there is another story being told.
The savage and brutal victory in the way it was witnessed by the masses, the distribution of cookies to celebrate that victory and the drums beating victory in Tehran have all served to weaken the voices that used to accept the trip to Geneva or a political solution.
Does the fall of Qusayr mean the survival of Assad and the end of the Syrian revolution?
Not at all. The Syrian fighters are not foreign forces that must leave the country one day. These are the very people of the country. Where will 15 million Syrians go? Since when does the vast majority of people of any country leave their country? How can Hezbollah terminate them all? Indeed, Hezbollah itself lost hundreds and spent three weeks just to take over a town like Qusayr.
This is not a political war between regional and global powers, even though they have representative proxies fighting for them on Syrian soil. This is a true people’s war. It can be compared only to the war of the Algerians against the French and the Palestinians against the Israelis. Or maybe Hezbollah and Iran have in mind the occupation of Syria and staying there, but for how long?
Assad’s regime is living on borrowed time, propped up by the Iranian Jerusalem Force, the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Iraqi militias. Are these forces willing to fight for Assad until the last Syrian town and for how long? Syria will become a magnet, attracting fighters from all walks of life.
The tragedy of Qusayr will be an inspiration to all the furious and outraged souls found all over the Arab world.
