Nusra fights to establish supply lines

BEIRUT: The Nusra Front was seeking to drain Hezbollah’s resources and secure supply lines in its brazen attack on Hezbollah outposts over the weekend, experts say.

“The Nusra Front is specifically seeking to bleed Hezbollah as much as possible, create new supply lines, and regain control of Arsal and adjacent areas to recreate a command center that would be used to target Hezbollah’s interests across the country,” said Bilal Saab, a senior fellow for Middle East Security at the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcraft Center on International Security.

For weeks, battles have raged along the porous border between forces loyal to the Syrian regime, including Hezbollah, and various Syrian opposition factions. The calm of West Bekaa towns is not infrequently punctuated by the distant echoes of blasts, which residents say come from border clashes.

But skirmishes early Sunday morning, which resulted in the deaths of eight Hezbollah fighters and 14 Nusra militants, took place on the mountainous outskirts of Brital in the East Bekaa, where Hezbollah enjoys wide popular support and holds strategic military positions.

The militants, estimated to be in the hundreds, briefly surrounded three Hezbollah outposts within Lebanese territories, before being overrun and sustaining heavy losses.

“It was a tactical battle for them to show their readiness and willingness” to fight Hezbollah in Lebanon, according to Mario Abou Zeid, a research analyst at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.

“They succeeded and caught Hezbollah forces by surprise.”

As winter approaches, several analysts have said the Nusra Front is urgently trying to establish supply lines between its positions in Qalamoun, Syria, and in Lebanon. Various Syrian opposition groups previously used the northeast Bekaa town of Arsal as a conduit for supplies and fighters. For several weeks, however, the Lebanese Army has effectively closed the checkpoint that links the town of Arsal to its barren outskirts, where fighters, and some civilians, have taken refuge.

“These guys are desperate. They want a lifeline before the beginning of the winter,” said Hilal Khashan, a political sciences professor at the American University of Beirut.

The attacks over the weekend, Khashan said, were an attempt to “break the stranglehold” that the Syrian opposition groups in the Qalamoun region are experiencing.

Many analysts said the Nusra Front was not seeking to hold territory in Lebanon.

“I don’t see them trying to take territory inside Lebanon,” said Aaron Zelin, founder of Jihadology.net, a website providing primary source information on jihadist movements.

“They’re very much focused on the battle for Damascus.”

Tony Badran, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that the attack was a successful “hit-and-run ambush,” which caused significant Hezbollah casualties.

While Syrian opposition groups have the potential to recruit large numbers of young men, particularly desperate refugees, Hezbollah “does not have an endless reservoir” of fighters, Badran stressed.

Bernard Haykel, professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, said that while Hezbollah’s swift repulsion of the Nusra fighters is not a major development, there could be security fallout from continued fighting along Lebanon’s borders.

Continued fighting between Hezbollah and Syrian opposition groups could draw in a fresh crop of young recruits from among the Lebanese Sunni population, but also from the Syrian refugees, who feel powerless and disenfranchised, Haykel said. “The Sunnis have to come to terms with where they stand with respect to Nusra and ISIS. That hasn’t been resolved.”

Analysts suggested that increased fighting along the Lebanese-Syrian border was likely.

“It’s possible that things could heat up even more going forward, because the American airstrikes in the northern parts of Syria is pushing a lot of Nusra assets and fighters South toward Qalamoun,” Zelin said.

Nusra attacks on strategic Hezbollah positions “will definitely continue,” agreed Abou Zeid. “Now it’s more like an open confrontation,” he added.

It remains unclear what effect, if any, the weekend clashes will have on negotiations to free the captive Lebanese security forces. ISIS and Nusra are holding at least 21 soldiers and members of the ISF, and have already executed three.

“The fate of those soldiers might have been sealed a while ago, regardless of the clashes. However, battlefield outcomes could have a say too, but I am not sure how rational or flexible the Nusra Front’s hostage-taking approach is,” Saab said. “Is the Nusra Front risk prone or risk averse? I don’t know.”

“At this point the negotiations have almost deteriorated,” said Abou Zeid. As winter approaches, the Nusra Front will use whatever means necessary to gain access to Lebanese soil and supplies, he added.