"Hezbollah's Role in the Bloody Syrian War Comes at a Price" PBS Newshour 6/3/2013
Excerpt
MARGARET WARNER (Newshour): High in the Bekaa Valley town of Machgara, Lebanon's Shiite Party of God, Hezbollah, celebrated its resistance and liberation day, complete with martial music, youth scouts, flags, and posters of iconic Shiite figures from Lebanon and Iran, the occasion, the 13th anniversary of Israel's withdrawal from Southern Lebanon after nearly two decades of occupation.
The thousands who gathered here in the Bekaa today came to celebrate Hezbollah's founding ideal, resistance against Israel. But they also heard their leader make the case for why Hezbollah is now adding another front to its long war, that new front, defense of one of its chief allies, the regime of Bashar al-Assad in neighboring Syria, where a brutal civil war has killed more than 80,000 and displaced four million.
Hezbollah troops have helped turn the tide for the Assad regime in the current battle for the strategic town of Qusayr. They have also added to the conflict's ominous sectarian bent, as Assad's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, confronts a mostly Sunni rebellion bolstered by a fervent jihadist core.
Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah, speaking by videotape, touted his fighters' role across the border, saying they were defending all of Lebanon, Shiites, Sunnis, and Christians, against the fundamentalist al-Qaida-like Sunnis within the Syrian opposition.
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