Hezbollah has claimed its top military commander died as a result of artillery shelling by Islamists near Damascus airport this week – despite his death being initially linked to Israel.
The Lebanese Shia Muslim group announced Mustafa Badreddine’s death on Friday and a military funeral was held for him on the same day in the group’s stronghold in southern Beirut.
His death was originally linked to Israel, Hezbollah’s primary enemy, but the group claimed on Saturday the attack was launched by “takfiri groups” – a word used to refer to Sunni Islamist groups.
A statement said: “Investigations have showed that the explosion, which targeted one of our bases near Damascus international airport, and which led to the martyrdom of commander Mustafa Badreddine, was the result of artillery bombardment carried out by takfiri groups in the area.”
The statement continued: “The result of the investigation will increase our commitment and will and perseverance in continuing to battle these criminal gangs and defeat them, and this was the wish of our dear martyr Sayyed Zul Fikar [Badreddine’s nom de guerre] and his will to his mujahideen brothers.”
However, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said later on Saturday that there has been no rebel shelling of the Damascus airport area in the last few days, casting doubt on Hezbollah’s allocation of blame.
Blaming the attack that killed Badreddine on the rebels will have come as a major cause of relief for many in Lebanon and Israel. If the group had blamed Israel for the attack, it would have been obliged to respond in kind.
Hezbollah has still not avenged the assassination of its former military commander Imad Mughniyeh in a joint CIA-Mossad operation in the heart of Damascus in 2008, and blaming Badreddine’s death on the Israelis would have further highlighted the party’s inability to level retribution for the killings of its leaders.
That is one of the reasons why accusing Syrian rebels has been treated with scepticism. Hezbollah has sought to equate its fight against the Sunni-dominated opposition in Syria with its fight against Israel, as the party lost its former popularity fighting alongside the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
Those who had once saluted its fight against Israel have begun to see Hezbollah as another sectarian militia in the Syrian quagmire. Its statement on Saturday reaffirmed that claim, equating the takfiris in Syria with its arch-enemy Israel, and the US.
Hezbollah initially said it was intervening in Syria to protect Shia shrines, before moving on to claim that its intervention saved Lebanon from an influx of jihadis from Syria. Now it claims it is fighting to protect the Muslim world from extremists as well as Israel, which in their messaging are two sides of the same coin.
Badreddine was the most senior member of the organisation to have been killed since the death of his predecessor and brother-in-law, Mughniyeh, who was assassinated by a joint Mossad/CIA operation in the Syrian capital in February 2008.
He was born in 1961 in the southern Beirut suburb of Ghobeiry, and rose to greater prominence after Mughniyeh’s assassination. In the 1980s Badreddine was sentenced to death in Kuwait over a plot to blow up the American and French embassies and later escaped after Saddam Hussein’s army invaded the country and threw open its prisons.
Hezbollah claimed the military commander had gone on to be instrumental in the majority of the group’s activities since its inception. He and four other alleged members of Hezbollah remain on trial in absentia at The Hague.
In south Beirut posters of Badreddine, whose image has rarely been published, were hung from overpasses and lamp-posts following reports of his death.
HE IS LYING ABOUT WHO KILLED MUSTAFA BADREDDINE.....
MOST LIKELY IT WAS HIZBULLAH ITSELF WHO KILLED HIM, SINCE HE WAS WANTED BY THE ICC AND HE KNEW TOO MUCH THAT WOULD HAVE INCRIMINATED MANY PEOPLE AT THE TOP INCLUDING NASRALLAH HIMSELF AND ASSAD! THINK ABOUT IT, HOW COULD BADREDDINE HAVE BEEN KILLED ALONE BY WHAT HIZBULLAH ITSELF DESCRIBED AS "A HUGE EXPLOSION"? HE WAS IN A SECURE HIZBULLAH FACILITY IN A MOST SECURE AREA AT DAMASCUS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT. THE SYRIAN OPPOSITION IS AT LEAST 15 KM AWAY AND DOES NOT HAVE GUIDED MISSILES TO TARGET ONLY ONE INDIVIDUAL!
The horror of the conflict in Syria, which began in March 2011, can be measured with statistics: over 400,000 people dead; half the population displaced; the life expectancy of a newborn child dropping from 76 years in 2011 to under 56 years in 2016. But the grotesque absurdity of this revolution turned civil war is perhaps best captured by the fact that today Syrians are forced to crowdsource money online to rebuild and fortify bombed hospitals.
"In our worst dreams -- in our worst nightmares -- we never thought we would have to fortify hospitals."
"Now, thanks to this war, we are 10,000 years back and we dig hospitals in the mountains and in the ground," Zaidoun al-Zoabi, head of the Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organizations (UOSSM), told me. "In our worst dreams -- in our worst nightmares -- we never thought we would have to fortify hospitals," he said. "It's not humane. It's impossible to comprehend."
Zoabi, a 42-year-old father of three daughters, spoke to me from Berlin, where he fled two years ago. Originally from Daraa, where the initially peaceful uprising against the government of Bashar al-Assad began, he fled when he "couldn't stand anymore the brutality of the regime. Two times in jail was enough for me." Now, like 4.8 million other Syrians, he witnesses the brutality from abroad.
Today, Syria lacks many things, including the democracy Zoabi and thousands of others were arrested and tortured for demanding, but there is no shortage of atrocities.
On April 27, airstrikes on the rebel-held eastern half of Aleppo struck Al Quds hospital for at least the third time, killing at least 55 people, including one of the last qualified pediatricians in a city of 300,000 people. Before the strike, two barrel bombs were dropped outside, according to Pablo Marco, Middle East operations manager for Doctors Without Borders, which supported the facility. The third strike came after the victims of those bombs were brought in for treatment, Marco told PBS, suggesting the attack was "staged to provoke the maximum number of citizens killed."
Two days later, airstrikes hit Al-Marjah Primary Healthcare Center, which provided pediatric and gynecological care for residents of eastern Aleppo, Syria's largest city and, before the war, its economic hub. It was the fifth UOSSM-run health care center to be destroyed by the Syrian regime and its allies.
"It was leveled to the ground," Zoabi told me. "We lost two doctors that day. Two doctors means 4 percent of the doctors in eastern Aleppo. We only have 50 doctors inside Aleppo -- and not all at the same time."
I asked if he thought the destruction was on purpose or merely the product of an indiscriminate war where everyone and everything in territory controlled by the other side is fair game.
"There is nothing more systematic in Syria than bombing hospitals, at all, to cut the story short," he said. "When you have two hospitals being targeted [in] Aleppo in the span of one week, this cannot be collateral damage, especially when the bombing is so precise and destructive."
Rebuilding Is a Political Act
But Syrians have no choice: As the world watches from the sidelines -- or, increasingly, from the sky above, with an expanding number of major powers bombing the country as part of an indefinite war on non-state terror -- they must rebuild. But theirs is not the apolitical humanitarianism of an international nongovernmental organization: Building hospitals that are likely to be bombed again is as much an act of resistance as it is a humanitarian necessity, and an extension of the nonviolent activism with which the Syrian revolution began and which continues to exist despite a suffocating media obsession with the self-promoting butchers of ISIS (also known as Daesh).
That the money for such a project is being raised online is a commentary on the failures of our age and international system. It is striking that medical care for those suffering through the most devastating war of the 21st century is being funded by $5 donations from people on Twitter with far more empathy than politicians in Washington, Moscow or Brussels. Because of the time and red tape involved in applying for institutional sources of funding, Zoabi told me his organization had no choice but to turn to the internet. Waiting months for a grant would mean "many people will die."
The inspiring thing is people are not their governments: Seeing a tragedy, they are inspired to act. In under a week UOSSM raised more than $95,000 to rebuild both Al Quds hospital and Al-Marjah Primary Healthcare Center. Zoabi said it would have cost about $65,000 to rebuild both, but that's not an option anymore: If they are to be rebuilt, they must be fortified underground for the sake of those who will be working and treated there, raising the total cost to $100,000.
Abdulaziz Adel, a 50-year-old man from Aleppo, is one of the last surgeons who still works in the opposition-controlled part of the city. He told me the hospital where he spends most of his time has been attacked three times.
"When you have two hospitals being targeted [in] Aleppo in the span of one week, this cannot be collateral damage."
"The hospitals are hit more than military targets," he said, speaking from an airport in Turkey, where a child cried in the background. Ambulances are hit too. Indeed, whether it's a vehicle or a building, anything that's identifiable as providing medical care is ripe for an airstrike, so that staff have now taken to covering up any distinguishing characteristics. Even so, local residents are "always begging us to go away, take your hospital away from us or otherwise we'll be a target."
Adel thinks he knows why people like him are marked for death.
"Kill a doctor and you kill thousands," he said. "We have in Aleppo two or three pediatricians. Imagine that you kill one of them, in a city of more than 300,000. How many babies or children are in the city? One doctor will now have to care for all [of] them. This is a really difficult job, so of course mistakes will be made and patients will lose their lives. It's the same for all other specialties."
Doctors are the target, but the goal is to kill those they treat while making life unlivable for those who are left, or at least that's how the targeted see it.
"It's very simple and easy," Adel told me. "The Syrian people are paying the price of their freedom. This is a personal opinion, of course. Me, myself, I'm talking my own opinion. I'm not neutral anymore. I can't be neutral anymore. I'm sorry."
Like many medical professionals in opposition-controlled Aleppo, Adel goes to Turkey for a week or two each month for respite from the 15-hour workdays in a war zone, but Syria will always be his home.
"I'm very strange," he said when I asked why he keeps going back. "I would like to live and die in my country because it is my country. I hope I will die in my country. It is my duty as a doctor," he told me. "We hope that peace will come, but we will keep struggling until the last moment in time."
No One Is Innocent
No party to Syria's conflict has its hands clean when it comes to killing innocents, be it the Assad government, its Russian allies or the US-led coalition that has been bombing the country since September 2014. On May 3, for instance, three people at a maternity hospital in government-controlled western Aleppo were killed, according to the Guardian, when rebel mortars struck a military vehicle outside the hospital.
All hands are stained with blood, then -- but some are drenched in it. Non-state armed groups have attacked a total of 22 medical facilities in Syria, killing at least 25 medical personnel, according to Physicians for Human Rights. But non-state actors cannot hope to compete with the ghastly firepower of a state backed by a member of the UN Security Council. The Syrian government and its Russian partners have attacked no less than 326 medical facilities during the course of the war, killing 668 medical personnel and counting.
"All too often, attacks on health facilities and medical workers are not just isolated or incidental battlefield fallout," UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said earlier this month, "but rather the intended objective of the combatants. This is shameful and inexcusable."
His remarks came after the UN Security Council passed a resolution reiterating that what four out of five of its permanent members and their allies have done -- bomb hospitals, from Afghanistan to Syria to Yemen -- is a war crime, though the council took care not to suggest any of those crimes be punished by any of the relevant international bodies.
"Well, that's an achievement," Zoabi told me. "Listen, next time you kill a child, I will really, really shout at you. Shame on the world. That we see such bloodshed, such an ongoing massacre, is a shame on the world."
"It has to stop," he added. "For God's sake it has to stop or we will collapse."
"As the death toll in Syria’s five-year conflict reportedly reaches half a million people, we look at how Syrians are working at the local level to survive and organize in the midst of war—and to keep the revolutionary spirit of the 2011 Syrian uprising alive. We are joined by Yasser Munif, a Syrian scholar who specializes in grassroots movements in Syria, who describes the ongoing work of media activists, journalists, medical crews and rescue workers. "They don’t perceive the kind of work they are doing as humanitarian or relief work. They perceive it as the backbone of the revolution," Munif notes. "The revolution is still alive. It may be marginal, but if there is a ceasefire … it can come back. It is very much invisible and, for some, unthinkable." Munif is the co-founder of the Campaign for Global Solidarity with the Syrian Revolution....."
قالت جبهة النصرة، إحدى فصائل جيش الفتحالتابع للمعارضة السورية، إن أكثر من 150 عنصرا من المليشيات الإيرانية واللبنانية والأفغانية قتلوا خلال معارك خان طومان جنوب حلبالأسبوع الماضي.
وتعد هذه الحصيلة أكبر خسارة تمنى بها إيران منذ تدخلها عسكريا في سوريا, كما قالت تقارير إعلامية إن هذه الحصيلة من القتلى الإيرانيين بهذه المعارك هي أكبر خسارة في معركة خارج إيران منذ الحرب العراقية الإيرانية.
وقال مراسل الجزيرة عمرو حلبي إن الهجوم انطلق بمهاجمة مقاتل من جبهة النصرة غرفة عمليات مشتركة للحرس الثوري الإيراني وحزب الله اللبناني ومليشيات عراقية وأفغانية بسيارة مفخخة، مما أدى إلى تدميرها بالكامل ومقتل جميع من كان فيها.
وأضاف أن تفجير غرفة العمليات تلاه هجوم لمختلف فصائل جيش الفتح بالدبابات والأسلحة الثقيلة ليتم قصف مواقع المليشيات بعد أن تم قطع الاتصالات بينها وبين قياداتها.
وقال المراسل إن مقاتلي جيش الفتح تمكنوا من اقتحام البلدة والسيطرة عليها بشكل كامل وكذلك على نقاط في محيطها رغم الدعم الجوي الذي قدمه الطيران الروسي وطيران النظام السوري لمقاتلي المليشيات.
وأضاف أنه بالإضافة إلى مقتل 150 من عناصر المليشيات خلال يومين من المعارك بخان طومان، تمكن مقاتلو جيش الفتح من أسر عدد من عناصر المليشيات الإيرانية واللبنانية والعراقية والأفغانية
Analysis: How can Hizballah respond if Israel is involved in the killing of top commander Mustafa Badreddine? Given recent losses in Syria, their options appear limited.
With some of its most formidable assets bogged down in the Syrian civil war, it is not clear what options Hizballah has to respond to the assassination of one of its top commanders in Syria.
Mustafa Badreddine was killed in an explosion - believed to be an air raid - on Thursday night, with the chief culprit being Israel.
The fact that Badreddine - the number one man in the armed wing of the Lebanese powerful Shia Muslim party - was operating in Syria, is proof alone of the extent of Hizballah's involvement in the war far from the front with its stated enemy Israel.
Badreddine's roles are not confined to military and intelligence operations in Lebanon, Syria, Kuwait and beyond.
He has been the subject of much media attention. TheDaily Beast describes him as a pyromaniac playboy and he is also wanted by an international tribunal for his alleged involvement in the assassination of Lebanon's former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
It is still unclear how the shadowy figure was killed and by whom. However, Israeli press reports reacted by suggesting it stands to benefit greatly from the elimination of a key figure in Hizballah's command structure.
Israeli commentators said the death of the man thought to be in charge of Hizballah's military operations in Syria was a "fatal blow" to the party. They argued that he was an even bigger threat to Israel than Imad Mughniyeh, who is thought to have had been killed by the Israelis, possibly with the assistance of US intelligence.
Badreddine's death will be a huge blow because he was the de-facto commander of Hizballah's military wing, wrote Yossi Melman, intelligence and strategic affairs commentator in Israel. He described him as "Mughnieh's successor".
Badreddine's assassination follows the killing of Samir al-Kuntar, another Hizballah commander and former detainee in Israel five months ago. Again, Israel was widely viewed as the culprit.
Israel was also blamed for the assassination of Mughnieh's son in January 2015, along with other Hizballah operatives in Syria. In 2013, Hassan Lakkis, a senior Hizballah operative, was killed in Beirut by suspected Israeli agents.
The deaths were likely part of Israel's targeted killings policy, which aims at eliminating Palestinian, Lebanese and others deemed as a threat to Tel Aviv. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu recently hinted this policy would continue.
Israel has often maintained a plausible deniability stance vis-a-vis targeted killings
However, Israel has often maintained a plausible deniability stance vis-a-vis such targeted killings.
Moreover, Hizballah's enemies now also include a long list of states and entities - from the US and Gulf powers, to Syrian rebel factions - in both Syria and Iraq.
Hizballah said it would launch an investigation into Badreddine's death, and establish how he was killed. The explosion could be the result of an air raid, rocket strike or artillery shell, they say.
The statement did not explicitly blame Israel, but one Hizballah MP Nawar al-Sahili believes Tel Aviv is responsible.
"This is an open war, but we must not pre-empt the investigation," he added. "[The resistance] would carry out its duty in the right time," in reference to Hizballah's potential military response.
The heavy involvement of Russia, Israel's close friend and ally, in concert with Hizballah in Syria could alone force the Lebanese party to avoid escalation
Hizballah's options
Despite having lost a veteran commander, Hizballah has enough seasoned cadres - hardened by the wars in Lebanon and Syria - to replace Badreddine.
Yet the Lebanese party will feel under pressure to respond to boost morale in the ranks and act as a deterrence.
However, due to losses in the Syria war, Hizballah's options are limited, and previous threats have been empty.
Russia's involvement in the Syria war - a close friend of Israel - alongside Hizballah could force the Lebanese party to avoid escalation.
Hizballah has failed to set a red line, beyond attacking Israeli patrols in south Lebanon and the Golan Heights.
Hizballah's Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah has often threatened to a proportional response on Israeli targets, but so far has failed to do so.
Like in the aftermath of every such escalation in Lebanon, the question on everybody's lips in Beirut right now is whether there will be a new war with Hizballah
Will there be war?
What people in Beirut are asking now, is if war will break out between Hizballah and Israel, and will they be caught in the middle as they were in 2006?
But a number of considerations make a full-scale war unlikely, just as it is unlikely in Gaza.
Firstly, Hizballah's main priority remains securing the Syrian regime's power, at least for the time being.
It is likely Hizballah has the assets in Lebanon to hold off a sudden Israeli war - until reinforcements are brought in from Syria - the heavy losses it has suffered recently in southern Aleppo means it will want to avoid a new war. Hizballah has also reportedly lost thousands of fighters in Syria which means it would be unlikely to recruit many more Lebanese for a second front with Israel.
Hizballah's financial capabilities are also limited due to US and GCC sanctions and the political and media landscape in Lebanon and beyond is also hostile. Many in the Arab street have dropped their support and lost sympathy for the once-revered Lebanese resistance party, due to its support for Assad.
Secondly, with the conflict raging in Syria, Hizballah will calculate that a major response that would force Israel into a brutal escalation. This could cause a refugee crisis in Lebanon itself.
This time, however, there is nowhere for Lebanese refugees to go, unlike in 2006 when many fled Israeli bombing to Syria. (The roles have since been reversed, and Lebanon is host to millions of Syrian refugees).
Many in the Arab street have shed their support and sympathy for the once-revered Lebanese resistance party
Thirdly, with the Syrian regime significantly weakened, it is unable to supply Hizballah with the weapons and ammunition the Lebanese militia needs to fight Israel, as Damascus did in the 2006 war. A protracted conflict would deplete Hizballah's stockpiles without it being able to resupply easily.
Meanwhile, UN resolution 1701 passed to stop the 2006 war in Lebanon has established a strict security regime along the border with Israel. Thousands of international peacekeepers have been deployed there, making it logistically difficult for both Hizballah and Israel to go to war.
The post-war calm has largely been maintained, and both sides stand to gain from maintaining it. A ten year relative peace has spared Lebanese and Israeli lives and the destruction of more infrastucture in southern Lebanon.
Hizballah's options thus boil down to carrying out a limited response that would help it save face but would not cross Israel's red lines. In that case, Israel would respond in a limited way as well, since Hizballah's massive rocket arsenal remains a threat to northern Israeli settlements.
However, there is always a risk of miscalculation. Arguably, Hizballah miscalculated in 2006, when it captured two Israeli soldiers, triggering the 33-day Israeli war that killed thousands of Lebanese civilians and decimated much of the country's infrastructure.
Hezbollah commander will be mourned in Beirut, Damascus and Tehran but few tears will be shed in other Middle East capitals Ian Black Middle East editor Link
But what is certain is that he had acquired many enemies over a long and violent career. Israel tops the list, but Hezbollah’s backing for the Syrian president,Bashar al-Assad, widens the circle of suspects.
Sunni Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies loathe the Lebanese group as a proxy of Shia Iran, their bitter rival. Sunni rebel groups in Syria, such as the al-Qaida affiliateJabhat al-Nusra or less extreme Islamist outfits, would certainly have the motive and possibly the capability to strike a blow.
In a macabre way, Badreddine’s demise provides a useful prism through which to view the current crises of the Middle East. Syria’s five-year war is the centrepiece of this bloody turmoil – with regional powers ranged on opposing sides – though their competition extends as far afield as Iraq, Yemen and Bahrain.
His career spanned the dark underside of more than three decades: from his involvement in the bombing of the US and French embassies in Kuwait in 1983, through to Hezbollah’s role in the assassination of the Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri in 2005 – for which he was formally indicted by a UN-backed tribunal.
But Hezbollah’s intervention in Syria, at first clandestine and then open, has seen it play a crucial military role in support of the Assad regime, a diversion from its founding motivation as the “resistance” – as all Lebanese call it – whose original raison d’être was fighting Israel after the 1982 invasion. It is estimated to have lost up to 1,000 men since 2011.
There are striking parallels with the fate of Badreddine’s predecessor, Imad Mughniyeh. Haj Radwan, as he was known, was assassinated in a Damascus suburb in 2008 in a sophisticated car bombing that turned out – long after the event – to have been a joint operation by the CIA and Israel’s Mossad secret service.
Mourners carry the coffin of Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh in 2008 after he was killed in a car bombing. Photograph: Hussein Malla/AP
Israel’s refusal to comment on the latest killing was entirely predictable, though one senior former security official hailed it as “good news”, while adding: “Remember that those operating in Syria today have a lot of haters without Israel.”
Still, Israel has repeatedly targeted Hezbollah since the 2006 war, and has mounted repeated airstrikes against it in both Syria and Lebanon over the last five years, often targeting weapons convoys while insisting it was not involved in the conflict. It fears the opening of a new front on the occupied Golan Heights.
According to one report, rebels of the Jaish al-Sunna group claimed Badreddine was killed in an attack on a Hezbollah operations room in Khan Touman, near the northern city of Aleppo, the scene of recent heavy fighting. Whether true or not, that hints at the scale of Hezbollah’s presence in Syria.
The group’s latest martyr will be mourned and praised in Beirut, Damascus and Tehran, where the “axis of resistance” is celebrated. But there will be few tears in other Middle Eastern capitals, where Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary general, is loathed for his loyalty to Assad and his invective against Arab autocrats.
Saudi Arabia, for example, recently cut off financial aid to the eternally weak Lebanese government because of its tolerance of Hezbollah as an armed state within a state – and the foothold it gives Iran in the heart of the Levant.
“The killing of Badreddine is an indication of the sort of people they are,” said a senior Gulf official. “He was a hijacker and an assassin, and a commander ofHezbollah.”
