On Tuesday, December 17, the sixth car bomb to be dispatched by the Syrian opposition into Lebanon detonated in the Bekaa Valley town of Labweh. The car bomb had come from Syria’s Qalamoun region, making its way into the town through the Syrian opposition’s “Lebanese strongholds” in the wilderness border regionssurrounding the Eastern Lebanon Mountains.
But the “preemptive” intelligence war that Hezbollah is waging against its enemies in the Syrian opposition – led by al-Qaeda affiliates the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and al-Nusra Front – has enabled it to thwart several terror plots. The biggest part of this war is playing out inside Syrian territory, where the Syrian army, together with Hezbollah, has been able to disrupt a number of routes used to move car bombs to Lebanon.
The villages of Qara and Nabk both acted as important staging points for the groups that send death-laden cars to Lebanon. As the two villages were liberated, two major routes for smuggling car bombs were severed, and thousands of rockets were stopped from reaching the Lebanese-Syrian border.
Driving out the militants from the Rima Farms near Yabroud has also disrupted a third route used for car bombs. But in the Qalamoun region, two routes remain active: one from Yabroud and another from Rankous. Sources on the ground confirm that the other villages and towns in the Qalamoun region, such as Karras al-Ayn, Asal al-Ward, and Falita, will not hold up in case the Syrian army liberates Yabroud and “contains” the relatively remote town of Rankous.
So far, the main anti-Hezbollah factions in the war are basing their operations in the Qalamoun region. For instance, ISIS imports cars obtained legally from Lebanon into Qalamoun, before sending them back rigged with explosives. Security officials believe that ISIS has so far refrained from preparing car bombs in Lebanon to avoid jeopardizing its freedom of movement in certain areas of Lebanon where the radical group has active cells.
According to sources on the ground, expelling the group and its allies in the Syrian opposition from Qalamoun would plug the main source of car bombs sent to Lebanon. Yet no security officials claim that if the opposition were successfully expelled it would completely stop it from carrying out terror attacks in Lebanon. However, the Syrian opposition would indeed have to find new staging grounds for its cross-border operations.
Until that happens, the Lebanese town of Ersal will remain the principal corridor for explosives coming from the Qalamoun Mountains.
The town is no longer under the control of Mayor Ali Houjeiri, thanks to the sway al-Nusra and ISIS, which have found supporters among the town’s residents and Syrian refugees. Naturally, we are not talking here about all Ersal residents, but about a strong and cohesive group clustered around a certain prominent figure in the town.
No one has yet stepped in to deter these people. The faction affiliated with the mayor in Ersal is powerless to stand up to al-Nusra’s supporters and does not want a conflagration to erupt in the town.
Hezbollah alone is trying to stop car bombs from traversing the Eastern Mountain Range. Over the past several months, Hezbollah quietly stopped several planned attacks from taking place, thwarting a terror plot in Maamoura and then Maqneh.
On Tuesday morning, a car blew up, but not where the terrorists intended, according to security officials. A long time will pass before the details of the operation come to light. Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s shadow war for deterrence will last for a longer time.
This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.