(Zaman Al Wasl)- Social media activists surfaced photos for a 16-year-old boy said it had been killed fighting with Lebanese Hezbollah militia in Syria.
One of the photos was a letter copy from Mohammad Mahdi's family, addressing Hezbollah leadership, citing religious expressions urging for Jihad.
The family said their child is the only gift and the precious sacrifice they can afford to meet God in the resurrection day gratefully.
Since early days of Syrian revolution in 2011, the Shiite militia has fought in Syria on Iran’s behalf to secure the survival of Bashar al-Assad’s regime and thereby maintain its own overland corridor to Tehran.
According to Newsweek, a total of 1048 Hezbollah fighters were killed in combat in Syria from September 30, 2012 to April 10, 2017, or almost half of the total Shia combat fatalities.
This number however, must be treated as an absolute minimum, since the Hezbollah leadership has every reason to downplay losses. Giving full information on number of killed would increase domestic (Lebanese) resistance to Hezbollah’s involvement and reveal more information about its forces to its adversaries, Ali Alfouneh writes in Newsweek.
The non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council says Hezbollah is facing domestic opposition in Lebanon. The end of the civil war in Lebanon did not translate into disarmament of the involved parties and militias, and significant weakening of Hezbollah forces could tempt other armed militias in Lebanon to challenge the Shiite militia’s dominating position in that country.
While stabilization of the Bashar regime demonstrates the capacity of Hezbollah as a useful proxy for Iran, the fragile balance of power within Lebanon, Hezbollah vulnerabilities when facing Israel and the need for larger scale deployment of IRGC and allied Shia militias in Syria clearly show the limits of Hezbollah’s capabilities.
Comments About This Article
Please fill the fields below.