Hezbollah caught in Syria mire

Aynata (Lebanon) - Hezbollah's involvement in Syria has also changed the public discourse around the group in the Arab world in general and at home in Lebanon.

 In front-line villages of south Lebanon, the posters of Hezbollah members killed fighting Israel 10 years ago still stand, but have faded. Now rising up around them is a new generation of posters, bearing the faces of young fighters from the militant group killed in Syria.
They reflect the group's radical shift from decades fighting Israel, a cause that at one time earned it soaring popularity across the Arab and Muslim world, to the far less popular role fighting fellow Arabs in defence of Syria's president, Bashar Assad.
It is a venture that is proving costly. The war in neighbouring Syria is bleeding Hezbollah of fighters and experienced military commanders, and has left the group more vulnerable to accusations of complete subservience to Iran, which rallied Hezbollah to intervene in the war. So far, more than a thousand of the group's fighters, including several founding members, have been killed in Syria, a toll higher than the one incurred by the group in nearly two decades of fighting Israeli occupation forces.
Hezbollah's involvement in Syria has also changed the public discourse around the group in the Arab world in general and at home in Lebanon.
"I think that we're seeing rumblings of discontent. I mean some families obviously aren't happy. We've heard a lot of stories about families saying why are our kids dying in Syria, we can understand them dying in the fight against Israel but why are they dying in the fight in Syria," said Maha Yahya, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.
"Syria has been the worst imaginable piece of news for Hezbollah. A challenge that has transformed the party into something it does not want: the perception of a Sunni killer," said Bilal Saab, a senior fellow for Middle East Security at the Atlantic Council.
It is difficult to measure sentiment within Hezbollah, a highly secretive and disciplined organisation. On the 10th anniversary of the 2006 war with Israel, an Associated Press team gained rare access into the homes of slain fighters in south Lebanon, where relatives grieved but said they supported the group's justifications for fighting in Syria. In one home, the socks and boots stained with the blood of a Hezbollah fighter killed in 2006 are on display in the sitting room of his parents' house. In another, the military uniform worn by a fighter killed in Syria lay on his bed, laid out carefully by his grieving mother. "Khalil was my soul but I won't hide my son and say, let other people send their children," said Hanan Ibrahim, whose son Khalil was killed near Damascus on Dec. 27, 2013. "He should go (fight in Syria), and my other son too and if I had a third son I would also send him," she said, speaking in her living room, decorated with a giant picture of her son Khalil on a front line in Syria.
Hezbollah's popularity had taken a major hit beginning in 2005, when it was accused by some of being behind the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri with a massive bombing in Beirut. Hezbollah's involvement in the Syrian war has, according to its critics, left the group looking even more like an Iranian tool fighting for its own self-interest.
It is a far cry from when Hezbollah was celebrated across much of the Arab world.

• MENA