As the Syrian opposition swept through the Homs province last week, hours before they ousted President Bashar al-Assad, focus shifted to the Qusayr region, the Lebanese Hezbollah party’s stronghold in Syria.
Observers expected a fierce battle between the opposition and Hezbollah over the region, but instead the regime forces abandoned their posts, leaving the party fighters to fend off the advancing forces on their own. Instead of putting up a fight, the fighters retreated to Lebanon and Qusayr was seized by the opposition.
The residents of Qusayr have waited 11 years to learn what happened to their homes from which they were forced out of by Hezbollah and the regime. Entire villages in the region have been razed to the ground.
A source from the Syrian opposition told Asharq Al-Awsat that the regime and Hezbollah effectively surrendered Qusayr.
“The fighters who advanced on the region hail from Qusayr. The operation to seize the region didn’t take more than two hours,” it added, saying no one put up a fight because the majority of the Hezbollah fighters who were deployed there either fled to Lebanon or surrendered to the revolutionaries.
Little news has emerged about the thousands of Hezbollah fighters who had taken up base in Qusayr and its countryside. The region was the backbone for Hezbollah’s weapons’ smuggling to Lebanon.
In recordings circulated on social media, Hezbollah fighters could be heard saying that the Damascus regime has “betrayed and abandoned them on the field.”
Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Qassem had declared on Friday that the party “would not allow the fall of Syria in the hands of armed factions again,” adding that it was ready to support and defend it.
The opposition source revealed that hundreds of Hezbollah fighters had indeed headed to Qusayr to defend it as the anti-regime fighters advanced in Homs, but they were forced to flee.
“The influence of Hezbollah and all of Iran’s militias in Syria is over,” declared the source.
After Assad’s downfall, thousands of Syrians from Homs and Qusayr who were displaced to Lebanon, headed back to their hometowns to check on their properties.
A source close to Hezbollah told Asharq Al-Awsat that the party “had fought alongside the Syrian state and people.”
“If what happened falls in the favor the Syrian people, then so be it, that is their choice. The party was never at war with or the enemy of the Syrian people. Rather, it was fighting terrorist and takfiri groups that were terrorizing the Syrians,” it charged.
