How far will the Syrian war spread? Sign showing the distance between Jerusalem and Lebanese capital city. Illustrative. By Joshua Spurlock
The fight between the Syrian regime and rebels continued on Thursday…. in Lebanon. For months, violence has been spreading from Syria’s civil war to its neighbor. Bombings, shootings and rocket attacks all linked to Syria’s civil war have rocked Lebanon, and on Thursday the back and forth involved an assassination and sniper fire.
The Syrian battle has spread to Lebanon because the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah has joined the Syrian civil war to fight on behalf of the regime. In response, terrorists and other rebels fighting the Syrian regime have attacked targets in Lebanon. In addition, there are many different political and religious groups in Lebanon and the views on Syria are a key point of contention and even violence. It’s like Republicans and Democrats using bullets instead of commercials to make their point.
On Thursday, The Daily Star reported that a Lebanese official with a political group that supports the Syrian regime was assassinated in a wave of gunfire on his car. In response, snipers from his group opened fire on nearby neighborhoods known to hold different political views, killing two men.
Finally, the Lebanese army had to stop the back-and-forth by firing at the snipers.
Making the shootings even more serious is that the assassination appears to be revenge for a bombing that killed dozens last year. The pro-Syrian official that was shot and killed on Thursday was the father of a suspect in the bombings.
Thursday’s gun violence follows a bombing attack the day before on the Iranian Cultural Center in Lebanon’s capital of Beirut.
Beyond the tragedy of the innocents being murdered alongside the not-so-innocent ones in Lebanon, the spread of the Syrian civil war underscores the broader risk of that war.
The Middle East is fragile and explosive, and already it appears that a quasi-civil war has erupted in one Syrian neighbor because of the fighting there.
That could lead to a broader regional war including Israel or Turkey, or it could turn into a recruitment zone and training center for terrorists. The US intelligence community has warned that terrorists in Syria want to attack outside the Middle East, possibly even in the United States.
The Syrian violence is spreading like wildfire in Lebanon. Here’s hoping someone finds a way to put the fire out soon.
(By Joshua Spurlock, www.themideastupdate.com, February 20, 2014)