Cross-border clashes between Lebanese Shia clans and Syrian forces have continued for the fifth straight day over security and territorial concerns. The porous borderland, consisting of Syria’s Hawik district and Lebanon’s small Hermal region in the Beqaa Valley, is a source of anxiety for the new Syrian leadership. Since the beginning of clashes on Thursday, Syrian missiles have killed several in Lebanese border villages, including a Syrian refugee, and injured more.
Regional sources report on the developments:
On Saturday, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a Syrian rebel group turned ruling power in the wake of Assad’s fall, launched 50 shells towards Lebanese villages in Hermal. This is a part of a new “extensive campaign” against Lebanese Shia clans, often cited as facilitators of the cross-border crime that once buttressed Assad’s regime.
The clans—consisting of five prominent tribes, namely the Jaafar and Zaiter families—call the Hawik district home. They exercise control over the demarcation between the two countries to propagate lucrative businesses selling illegal weapons and drugs, as well as funnelling militia support to the long-standing Hezbollah presence in Syria. The cross-border market was a fixture of the now-defunct Assad regime. The often blurry link between the Lebanese clans and the ex-Syrian ruler’s decades-long governance came in the form of strategic military support to the regime. Border smuggling also included the trade of perhaps the most critical crop to various actors in the Levant, the stimulant drug Captagon—a market worth millions.
This week’s escalation of conflict led leaders of the Jaafar clan to point their families across the Lebanese border for refuge, where other members reside. Despite fleeing, some in the neighboring Lebanese villages of Jarmach and Qanafez were targeted by Syrian security forces. Leaders filmed an announcement declaring that they “withdrew our members to inside the Lebanese border, displacing them from their villages, but that did not help us, as our towns inside Lebanon were attacked with heavy weaponry.”
Members of the clans decried the new Lebanese government’s lack of response to Syrian fire into its territory. According to leaders from the families in the Beqaa Valley, citizens at the border were disconcerted by a “total and unjustified abandonment” by the government in Beirut. However, the newly-appointed Lebanese President Joseph Aoun agreed with de-facto HTS leader and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa to “coordinate efforts to control the situation and prevent attacks on civilians.” On Saturday, President Aoun was able to reach a temporary calm along the border, though low-level fighting persists.
Skirmishes are likely to continue. On Monday, Syrian Lt. Col. Moayed Al-Salama announced through the government’s official news agency that Syrian officials plan to work in ridding the Lebanese border areas of criminality. Under al-Assad, he claimed, this is an area that became “corridors for the drug trade in cooperation with Hezbollah militia,” a vestige of the toppled regime’s clandestine ties with Lebanese militias and tribal crime rings.
(Banner image: Freedom House)