Assad’s Final Destruction: weapons pour into northern Lebanon
As the Assad regime in Syria fell within the first week of December, 2024, the Syrian army abandoned a myriad of military weaponry. The result was a proliferation of illegal arms trading in Syria where an AK-47 can be bought for as little as $25, according to The National News.
Quoting a political source, The National News reported on December 18, 2024, “the Lebanese market has flooded with Syrian firearms, as many dealers are travelling to Syria to purchase weapons and smuggle them into Lebanon. The northern region of the country is now full of Syrian arms”.
Lebanon shares its northern and eastern border with Syria, with the Assad regime maintaining strong influence on the domestic affairs of their neighbour. Syria invaded Lebanon in 1976, during the Lebanese civil war, and maintained a military occupation until they were forced out in 2005.
Hezbollah, a proxy force of Iran, was born out of 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and has served as a security force on the southern border with Israel and a dominant political player. However, its war with Israel since October 2023, has decimated the group with the deaths of its senior leaders, including Hassan Nasrallah and the wide-scale pager attacks in September 2024.
Read: Why we should be skeptical about Lebanon ceasefire
Assad’s regime provided a vital route for arms trafficking from Iran, through Iraq and Syria, to Hezbollah. However, Reuters have reported that on December 6, 2024, anti-Assad rebels seized the border with Iraq, cutting the supply chain between Iran and an already weakened Hezbollah. At the same time, the proliferation of black-market weapons to armed groups in northern Lebanon poses grave concern for the security of the Lebanese state.
Read: Faisal J. Abbas: Is civil war now inevitable in Lebanon?
The capabilities of these armed groups and their motives to capitalize on a weakened Hezbollah appear to be unclear. However, it is without doubt that the arming of multiple groups will inevitability challenge the existing status quo, creating anxieties over the possibility of another civil war in a country that has already seen such extensive and debilitating conflict.
The National
