US-Based Weekly: Hezbollah Is The Real Winner Of Aleppo Liberation
MEP: Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement is the real winner of war against terrorist and militant groups in Syria’s Aleppo, the US-based Newsweek weekly says.
Syrian army supported by Hezbollah fighters and Russian airstrikes, declared victory over militant groups in Aleppo on 22 December, the report said.
The article says although the war is not over in Syria, “Hezbollah has emerged triumphant. Hezbollah has solidified its standing as the most powerful force in Lebanon. Once dependent on Assad for its survival, the group is now stronger than he is”.
The American weekly goes on to quote a Hezbollah commander as saying “we didn’t feel like it was a local battle. There was a lot of international influence in Aleppo. The terrorists are well-armed. They have lots of money and guns that have made their way through Turkey, but you name the country, they’re helping [the militants].”
The article narrates the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights as saying that Hezbollah has lost as many as 1,387 fighters in Syria, saying “members of the party feel their sacrifices in Syria have finally paid off, not just by keeping Assad in power but because winning in Syria has solidified Hezbollah’s standing in its own country”.
The article mentions the victory of Michel Aoun as Lebanese president a sign for Hezbollah’s empowerment and claims that Hezbollah’s “involvement in the Syrian war initially hurt its popularity, as the rebels became increasingly radicalized, many began to see groups like ISIS as the bigger threat. Hezbollah morphed from needless aggressor to the only entity standing between Lebanon and a fundamentalist” terrorist group.
“On a political level, the war helped Hezbollah secure a position as strong as ever on the domestic scene,” says Aurelie Daher, a scholar at the University of Oxford who studies the Lebanese movement. “The election of Aoun to the presidency and the ministers chosen for the new government are good illustrations of that.”
