Tag Archives: War

Lebanese army, Hezbollah announce offensives against Islamic State on Syrian border

Lebanese army helicopters are pictured from the town of Ras Baalbek, Lebanon August 19, 2017. REUTERS/ Ali Hashisho

By Tom Perry and Angus McDowall

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The Lebanese army launched an offensive on Saturday against an Islamic State enclave on the northeastern border with Syria, as the Lebanese Shi’ite group Hezbollah announced an assault on the militants from the Syrian side of the frontier.

The Lebanese army operation got underway at 5 a.m. (0200 GMT), targeting Islamic State positions near the town of Ras Baalbek with rockets, artillery and helicopters, a Lebanese security source said. The area is the last part of the Lebanese-Syrian frontier under insurgent control.

A security source said the offensive was making advances with several hills taken in the push against the militants entrenched on fortified high ground, in outposts and in caves.

The operation by Hezbollah and the Syrian army targeted the area across the border in the western Qalamoun region of Syria.

Hezbollah-run al-Manar TV said that its fighters were ascending a series of strategic heights known as the Mosul Mountains that overlook several unofficial border crossings used by the militants.

A Hezbollah statement said the group was meeting its pledge to “remove the terrorist threat at the borders of the nation” and was fighting “side by side” with the Syrian army.

It made no mention of the Lebanese army operation.

The Lebanese army said it was not coordinating the assault with Hezbollah or the Syrian army.

SENSITIVE

Any joint operation between the Lebanese army on the one hand and Hezbollah and the Syrian army on the other would be politically sensitive in Lebanon and could jeopardize the sizeable U.S. military aid the country receives.

Washington classifies the Iran-backed Hezbollah as a terrorist group.

“There is no coordination, not with Hezbollah or the Syrian army,” General Ali Kanso said in a televised news conference, adding that the army had started to tighten a siege of IS in the area two weeks ago.

“It’s the most difficult battle so far waged by the Lebanese army against terrorist groups – the nature of the terrain and the enemy,” he said, characterizing the 600 Islamic State fighters in the area as 600 “suicide bombers”.

In a recent speech, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the Lebanese army would attack Islamic State from its side of the border, while Hezbollah and the Syrian army would simultaneously assault from the other side.

A commander in the military alliance fighting in support of President Bashar al-Assad said that “naturally” there was coordination between the operations.

Last month, Hezbollah forced Nusra Front militants and Syrian rebels to leave nearby border strongholds in a joint operation with the Syrian army.

The Lebanese army did not take part in the July operation, but it has been gearing up to assault the Islamic State pocket in the same mountainous region.

Footage broadcast by Hezbollah-run al-Manar TV showed the group’s fighters armed with assault rifles climbing a steep hill in the western Qalamoun.

The Lebanese Shi’ite group has had a strong presence there since 2015 after it defeated Syrian Sunni rebels who had controlled local villages and towns.

Many rebels, alongside thousands of Sunni refugees fleeing violence and Hezbollah’s control over their towns, took shelter on the Lebanese side of the border strip.

Hezbollah has provided critical military support to President Bashar al-Assad during Syria’s six-year-long war. Its Lebanese critics oppose Hezbollah’s role in the Syrian war.

Northeastern Lebanon was the scene of one of the worst spillovers of Syria’s war into Lebanon in 2014, when Islamic State and Nusra Front militants attacked the town of Arsal.

The fate of nine Lebanese soldiers taken captive by Islamic State in 2014 remains unknown.

Hezbollah and its allies have been pressing the Lebanese state to normalize relations with Damascus, challenging Lebanon’s official policy of neutrality towards the conflict next door.

(Additional reporting by Laila Bassam in Beirut, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman and Mostafa Hashem in Cairo; Editing by Richard Pullin and Andrew Bolton)

Iraq seeks international help to investigate Islamic State crimes

FILE PHOTO: Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari speaks to reporters during a news conference in Baghdad, Iraq July 19, 2017. REUTERS/Khalid al Mousily

By Riham Alkousaa

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Iraq asked for international help on Wednesday to collect and preserve evidence of crimes by Islamic State militants and said it is working with Britain to draft a United Nations Security Council resolution to establish the investigation.

Britain, international human rights lawyer Amal Clooney and Nadia Murad, a woman from the Yazidi religious minority who was enslaved and raped by Islamic State fighters in Mosul, have been pushing Iraq to allow a U.N. inquiry.

The 15-member Security Council could have established an inquiry without Iraq’s consent, but Britain wanted Iraq’s approval in a letter formally making the request. Iraq sent the letter, seen by Reuters, on Monday.

“We request assistance of the international community to get benefited from international expertise to criminalize Daesh terrorist entity,” wrote Iraq’s foreign minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari in the letter, which was translated from Arabic.

Daesh is another name for Islamic State, which is also known as ISIS.

Britain’s mission to the United Nations said on Twitter that it was working with Iraq on a draft resolution. It was not immediately clear when it could be put to a vote in the council.

Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate effectively collapsed last month, when U.S.-backed Iraqi forces completed the recapture of Mosul, the militants’ capital in northern Iraq, after a nine-month campaign.

Parts of Iraq and Syria remain under Islamic State control, especially along the border.

“I hope that the Iraqi government’s letter will mark the beginning of the end of impunity for genocide and other crimes that ISIS is committing in Iraq and around the world,” Clooney said in a statement.

“Yazidis and other ISIS victims want justice in a court of law, and they deserve nothing less,” Clooney said.

The Yazidis beliefs combine elements of several ancient Middle Eastern religions. Islamic State militants consider the Yazidis to be devil-worshippers.

U.N. experts said in June last year that Islamic State was committing genocide against the Yazidis in Syria and Iraq to destroy them through killings, sexual slavery and other crimes.

The Iraqi government said in the letter that it was important to bring Islamic State militants to justice in Iraqi courts.

 

(Reporting By Riham Alkousaa; editing by Grant McCool)

 

Iraq acknowledges abuses committed against civilians in Mosul campaign

A member of Iraqi federal police patrols in the destroyed Old City of Mosul, Iraq August 7, 2017. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s office said on Thursday a unit of the security forces committed “abuses” against civilians during the offensive to oust Islamic State (IS) insurgents from the city of Mosul.

His government began an investigation in May into a report by German newsmagazine Der Spiegel that included images of apparent torture taken by a freelance photographer embedded with the Interior Ministry’s elite Emergency Response Division (ERD).

“The committee has concluded … that clear abuses and violations were committed by members of the ERD,” a statement from Abadi’s office said. It added that the perpetrators would be prosecuted.

Spiegel’s photos showed detainees accused of affiliation with Islamic State hanging from a ceiling with their arms bent behind them, and the journalist wrote of prisoners being tortured to death, raped and stabbed with knives.

The ERD was one of several government security forces backed by a U.S.-led coalition that drove IS out of Mosul, the northern city the jihadists seized in 2014 and proclaimed their “capital”, in a nine-month campaign that ended in July.

The ERD initially denied the Spiegel report and accused the German weekly of publishing “fabricated and unreal images”.

The photographer said he had initially intended to document the heroism of Iraqi forces fighting Islamic State but that a darker side of the war had gradually been revealed to him.

The soldiers with whom he was embedded allowed him to witness and photograph the alleged torture scenes, he said. He has now fled Iraq with his family, fearing for his safety

Islamic State’s self-proclaimed “caliphate” effectively collapsed with the fall of Mosul but parts of Iraq and Syria remain however under its control, especially in border areas.

(Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Two killed on Gaza-Egypt border in confrontation between Hamas and rival Islamist militants

Two killed on Gaza-Egypt border in confrontation between Hamas and rival Islamist militants

GAZA (Reuters) – A Hamas security man and a member of a rival Islamist militant group were killed on Thursday in a confrontation in the Gaza Strip near the Palestinian enclave’s border with Egypt, security sources said.

Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, has stepped up patrols in the border area with the declared aim of preventing the movement of so-called Jihadist Salafis between the territory and the Sinai peninsula, where Islamic State has been battling Egyptian troops for years.

“A security force stopped two persons who approached the border. One of them blew himself up and was killed. The other was wounded,” the Hamas-run Interior Ministry said in a statement.

It said several Hamas security men were hurt, and hospital officials told reporters that one of them died of his wounds.

Security sources said the militant killed in the blast was a member of a Salafi group.

Hamas has been pursuing improved relations with Egypt, which keeps its border crossing with Gaza largely shut and has accused the group in the past of aiding militants in the Sinai. Hamas has denied those allegations.

Gaza’s Salafis are proponents of global holy war endorsed by Islamic State and al Qaeda. Hamas, which seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 from forces loyal to Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, has shown little tolerance for Salafi movements, detaining many of their members and raiding homes in searches for weapons.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Editing by Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem and Sandra Maler)

New life amid the ruins of Mosul’s maternity hospital

New life amid the ruins of Mosul's maternity hospital

By Raya Jalabi

MOSUL (Reuters) – As yet unnamed twin babies lie in an incubator in a run-down room in Mosul’s main maternity hospital. Less than two weeks old, they are two of seven newborns crammed into a makeshift premature baby ward.

Born just three weeks after Iraqi forces declared that they had finally recaptured the last part of the city from Islamic State, the twins won’t know what it’s like to grow up under the jihadists’ draconian rule. But they are lucky in more ways than one – had they been born months earlier, their chances of survival would have been slim as the hospital’s neo-natal wings had been burned down by the militants.

Al-Khansa Hospital in East Mosul may be a shell of its former self but it is still the city’s main government-run maternity facility. Last month alone, despite severe shortages of medicines and equipment, it delivered nearly 1,400 babies.

When Islamic State took over Mosul in 2014, the hospital stayed open – but residents were only allowed to use a quarter of it.

“We had all these fighters and their wives coming in and giving birth here,” said hospital administrator Dr Aziz, adding that he had lost count of the number of militants’ babies delivered in his facility. “Mosul’s local residents always came second.”

As Iraqi Forces began their campaign to liberate the city from Islamic State control last year, the militants took over al-Khansa, kicking out patients and sometimes shooting at staff to make them leave.

“We kept it open as long as we could,” Aziz said.

Islamic State turned the hospital into a warehouse to store medical supplies – mainly glucose injections and cough syrup. As their defeat looked imminent, they started fires and detonated explosives throughout the hospital.

“They knew exactly what to blow up and how to do the most damage,” Aziz said, walking through the charred remains of the operating theaters.

SHORTAGES OF EVERYTHING

Al-Khansa reopened just weeks after East Mosul was cleared of militants in January. But its needs are still dire.

“We have shortages of everything,” said the hospital’s director, Dr Jamal Younis. “Beds, equipment, medicines.”

At present, the hospital can only handle births and deaths, Younis said. For anything in between, patients have to travel to facilities miles away – an impossible expense for most.

In a hot and crowded room, Um Mohammad sat with her grandson, only a few months old and barely able to move. She said she had been waiting there for 15 days, trying to find $25 to pay for blood tests.

She has been living in a camp since an air strike flattened her house in West Mosul, killing her daughter and five of her grandchildren.

“I can’t take him back to the camp without treatment or a diagnosis,” she said, “but I don’t have the money.”

Al-Khansa has yet to receive funds for reconstruction from the Health Ministry. Instead it had been relying on NGOs and donations from residents and staff – most of whom have not been paid for more than two years, since Baghdad cut salaries to choke off funding to Islamic State.

“When the city was under Isis control, we were forced to come into work every day or they would punish us – seize our houses, beat us, threaten our families,” said Aziz.

“But now, even though we’re still unpaid and the walls have fallen down, we’re happy to come in every day to help our community.”

(Reporting by Raya Jalabi; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Colombia’s FARC rebels turned in more than 8,000 weapons: U.N.

Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos greets a driver carrying the last container with surrendered weapons delivered by FARC rebels to a UN observer in La Guajira, Colombia August 15, 2017. Colombian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS

BOGOTA (Reuters) – Colombia’s Marxist FARC rebel group handed in more than 8,000 weapons and nearly 1.3 million pieces of ammunition as it demobilized after a peace deal with the government, the United Nations said.

The disarmament process officially concluded on Tuesday as the UN, which was supervising the hand-in, removed the final shipment of weapons from a demobilization camp in Fonseca, La Guajira province, one of more than two dozen zones where the FARC have been living since the start of the year.

“Our mission has, up to today, gathered 8,112 arms in these containers and destroyed almost 1.3 million cartridges,” UN mission chief for Colombia Jean Arnault said at an event to mark the shipment.

That is more weapons than the 7,132 the UN had originally reported in June.

The weapons will be used to make three monuments celebrating the peace accord, agreed last year between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the government of President Juan Manuel Santos.

Roughly 7,000 FARC fighters have demobilized under the accord, which allows the group 10 unelected seats in Congress through 2026 and grants amnesty to the majority of ex-fighters. Rebels convicted by special courts of human rights violations will avoid traditional prison sentences, instead performing reparations work such as removing landmines.

(Reporting by Luis Jaime Acosta; Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by James Dalgleish)

Pace of airstrikes, clashes in Yemen sharply higher in 2017: report

People gather at the site of a Saudi-led air strike on an outskirt of the northwestern city of Saada, Yemen August 4, 2017. REUTERS/Naif Rahma

By Sami Aboudi

DUBAI (Reuters) – Yemen suffered more airstrikes in the first half of this year than in the whole of 2016, increasing the number of civilian deaths and forcing more people to flee their homes, according to a report by international aid agencies.

The pace of clashes on the ground has also intensified this year, especially around Yemen’s third largest city, Taiz, which is besieged by the Iran-aligned Houthis, said the report.

The number of airstrikes in the first six months of 2017 totaled 5,676, according to the report by the Protection Cluster in Yemen, which is led by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), up from 3,936 for all 2016.

Average monthly clashes between the warring sides have increased by 56 percent from last year, the figures also showed.

“(We are concerned by) the increasing impact on the civilian population, particularly in terms of civilian casualties, fresh displacement and deteriorating conditions,” said Shabia Mantoo, UNHCR spokesperson for Yemen.

Yemen’s nearly 30-month-old civil war pits President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s Saudi-backed government, which controls south and eastern Yemen, against the Houthis, who control the more populated north and eastern parts of the country.

The conflict shows no sign of ending and U.N.-sponsored peace efforts remain deadlocked.

The report did not identify any party as being responsible for the airstrikes, but the Saudi-led coalition backing Hadi has controlled Yemeni airspace since the war began in March 2015.

U.S. forces have also conducted occasional airstrikes or raids using drones.

A coalition spokesman declined to comment on the report.

CIVILIAN CASUALTIES

Most clashes and air strikes have been concentrated in frontline provinces, including Taiz, Saada, Hajjah, Sanaa, al-Jawf and Marib, the report said.

The United Nations has put the death toll since the war began in March 2015 at more than 10,000.

Figures released in a periodic update issued in August by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), with input from other aid agencies in Yemen, estimated the civilian death toll as of April 2017 at 8,053, with more than 45,000 injured, but the real figures could be much higher.

“(The figures are considered) to significantly undercount the true extent of the casualties, considering the diminished reporting capacity at health facilities and people’s difficulties accessing healthcare,” the OCHA said.

The war has destroyed much Yemeni infrastructure, including the main Hodeidah port, as well as hospitals, schools and roads, pushing the country to the verge of famine and causing a cholera epidemic that has killed some 2,000 people since April.

The number of displaced people stands at two million, while 946,000 people are internally displaced returnees, so more than 10 percent of Yemen’s 27 million population are either displaced or facing the immediate challenges of return, the OCHA said.

“Ongoing hostilities in Yemen, compounded by cholera and widespread food insecurity, continue to increase the humanitarian needs of an already vulnerable population,” said UNHCR’s Mantoo.

(Reporting by Sami Aboudi; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Syrian army comes closer to encircling Islamic State in central Syria desert

Syrian army comes closer to encircling Islamic State in central Syria desert

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The Syrian army and its allies advanced in the central Syrian desert on Monday and could soon encircle an Islamic State pocket, part of a multi-pronged thrust into eastern areas held by the jihadist group.

A Syrian military source said the Syrian army and its allies had taken a number of villages around the town of al-Koum in northeastern Homs province.

This leaves a gap held by Islamic State of around only 25 km (15 miles) between al-Koum and the town of al-Sukhna to its south, which was taken by the Syrian government on Saturday.

If the army, supported by Russian air power and Iran-backed militias, closes this gap they will encircle Islamic State fighters to their west in an area of land around 8,000 km square, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Russian Defence Ministry said on Monday that it had contributed to this advance by advising on an airborne landing of pro-government troops north of al-Koum on Saturday.

The operation allowed them to take the al-Qadeer area from Islamic State militants before proceeding to al-Koum, Russia’s TASS news agency reported.

Islamic State has lost swathes of Syrian territory to separate campaigns being waged by Syrian government forces backed by Russia and Iran, and by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic (SDF) Forces, which is dominated by the Kurdish YPG militia. The SDF is currently focused on capturing Raqqa city from Islamic State.

Syrian government forces advancing from the west have recently crossed into Deir al-Zor province from southern areas of Raqqa province.

Islamic State controls nearly all of Deir al-Zor province, which is bordered to the east by Iraq. The Syrian government still controls a pocket of territory in Deir al-Zor city, and a nearby military base.

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Korea tensions ease slightly as U.S. officials play down war risks

A South Korean soldier stands guard at a guard post near the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas in Paju, South Korea, August 14, 2017.

By Christine Kim and Ben Blanchard

SEOUL/BEIJING (Reuters) – Tension on the Korean peninsula eased slightly on Monday as South Korea’s president said resolving North Korea’s nuclear ambitions must be done peacefully and U.S. officials played down the risk of an imminent war.

Concern that North Korea is close to achieving its goal of putting the mainland United States within range of a nuclear weapon has caused tension to spike in recent months.

U.S. President Donald Trump warned last week that the U.S. military was “locked and loaded” if North Korea acted unwisely after threatening to land missiles in the sea near the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam.

“There must be no more war on the Korean peninsula. Whatever ups and downs we face, the North Korean nuclear situation must be resolved peacefully,” South Korean President Moon Jae-in told a meeting with senior aides and advisers.

“I am certain the United States will respond to the current situation calmly and responsibly in a stance that is equal to ours,” he said.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sent a conciliatory message to North Korea in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal on Sunday.

“The U.S. has no interest in regime change or accelerated reunification of Korea. We do not seek an excuse to garrison U.S. troops north of the Demilitarized Zone,” the officials said, addressing some of Pyongyang’s fears that Washington ultimately intends to replace the reclusive country’s leadership.

The article took a softer tone on North Korea than the president, who warned Pyongyang last week of “fire and fury” if it launched an attack.

Mattis and Tillerson underlined that the United States aims “to achieve the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and a dismantling of the regime’s ballistic-missile programs.”

“While diplomacy is our preferred means of changing North Korea’s course of action, it is backed by military options,” they said.

The United States is adopting a policy of “strategic accountability” towards North Korea, the officials wrote, but it is not clear how this significantly differs from the “strategic patience” Korea policy of former President Barack Obama.

A global index of stocks rose, after fears of a U.S.-North Korea nuclear standoff had driven it to the biggest weekly losses of 2017, while the dollar also strengthened.

U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un might conduct another missile test but talk of being on the cusp of a nuclear war was overstating the risk.

“I’ve seen no intelligence that would indicate that we’re in that place today,” Pompeo told “Fox News Sunday”.

However, North Korea reiterated its threats, with its official KCNA news agency saying “war cannot be blocked by any power if sparks fly due to a small, random incident that was unintentional”.

“Any second Korean War would have no choice but to spread into a nuclear war,” it said in a commentary.

The United States and South Korea remain technically still at war with North Korea after the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended with a truce, not a peace treaty.

MISSILE DOUBTS

South Korean Vice Defence Minister Suh Choo-suk agreed North Korea was likely to continue provocations, including nuclear tests, but did not see a big risk of the North engaging in actual military conflict.

Suh again highlighted doubts about North Korea’s claims about its military capability.

“Both the United States and South Korea do not believe North Korea has yet completely gained re-entry technology in material engineering terms,” Suh said in remarks televised on Sunday for a Korea Broadcasting System show.

Ukraine denied on Monday that it had supplied defense technology to North Korea, responding to an article in the New York Times that said North Korea may have purchased rocket engines from Ukrainian factory Yuzhmash.

Tension in the region has risen since North Korea carried out two nuclear bomb tests last year and two intercontinental ballistic missile tests in July, tests it often conducts to coincide with important national dates.

Tuesday marks the anniversary of Japan’s expulsion from the Korean peninsula, a rare holiday celebrated by both the North and the South. Moon and Kim, who has not been seen publicly for several days, are both expected to make addresses on their respective sides of the heavily militarised border.

Trump has urged China, the North’s main ally and trading partner, to do more to rein in its neighbor, often linking Beijing’s efforts to comments around U.S.-China trade. China strenuously rejects linking the two issues.

Trump will issue an order later on Monday to determine whether to investigate Chinese trade practices that force U.S. firms operating in China to turn over intellectual property, senior administration officials said on Saturday.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said that Beijing has said many times the essence of China-U.S. trade and business ties is mutual benefit and that there is no future in any trade war between China and the United States.

“The (Korean) peninsula issue and trade and business issues are in a different category from each other,” Hua added. “On these two issues, China and the United States should respect each other and increase cooperation. Using one issue as a tool for exerting pressure on another is clearly inappropriate.”

China’s Commerce Ministry issued an order on Monday banning imports of coal, iron ore, lead concentrates and ore, lead and sea food from North Korea, effective from Tuesday.

The move followed the announcement of U.N. sanctions against North Korea this month which have to be enforced within 30 days by member states.

U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford told South Korea’s Moon in a meeting on Monday that U.S. military options being prepared against North Korea would be for when diplomatic and economic sanctions failed, according to Moon’s office.

(Writing by Lincoln Feast and Alistair Bell; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and James Dalgleish)

 

Hezbollah steers Lebanon closer to Syria, straining efforts to stay neutral

Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri holds a cabinet meeting at the governmental palace in Beirut, Lebanon August 9, 2017. Picture taken August 9, 2017. Dalati Nohra/Handout via REUTERS

By Lisa Barrington

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Hezbollah and its allies are pressing the Lebanese state to normalize relations with President Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria, testing Lebanon’s policy of “dissociation” from the Syrian conflict and igniting a political row.

Calls for closer ties with the Syrian government, including on refugee returns and military operations on the Lebanon-Syria border, come as Assad regains control of more territory from insurgents and seeks to recover his international standing.

The Lebanese policy of “dissociation”, agreed in 2012, has aimed to keep the deeply divided state out of regional conflicts such as Syria even as Iran-backed Hezbollah became heavily involved there, sending fighters to help Assad, who is also allied to Iran.

The policy has helped rival groups to coexist in governments bringing together Hezbollah, classified as a terrorist group by the United States, with politicians allied to Iran’s foe Saudi Arabia, underpinning a degree of political entente amid the regional turmoil.

While Lebanon never severed diplomatic or trade ties with Syria, the government has avoided dealing with the Syrian government in an official capacity and the collapse of the policy would be a boost a political boost to Assad.

It would also underline Iran’s ascendancy in Lebanon, where the role of Saudi Arabia has diminished in recent years when it has focused on confronting Tehran in the Gulf instead.

Assad’s powerful Lebanese Shi’ite allies want the government to cooperate with Syria on issues such as the fight against jihadists at their shared border and securing the return of the 1.5 million Syrians currently taking refuge in Lebanon.

“Everybody recognizes (the dissociation policy) as a farce to some extent, but at least it contained the conflict and prevented Lebanon from being dragged even further into what is going on in Syria,” said Maha Yahya, director of the Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut.

“(A normalization of relations) would be viewed as a victory, if using sectarian terms, of Shi’ites versus the Sunnis and will just inflame tensions even more.”

ROAD TO DAMASCUS

Lebanon’s relationship with Syria has for decades set rival Lebanese against each other. Syria dominated its smaller neighbor from the end of its 1975-90 civil war until 2005.

A row erupted this week because of plans by government ministers from Hezbollah and the Shi’ite Amal party to visit Damascus next week.

Although the government has refused to sanction the visit as official business – citing the dissociation policy – Industry Minister Hussein Hajj Hassan, a Hezbollah member, has insisted they will be in Damascus as government representatives.

“We will meet Syrian ministers in our ministerial capacity, we will hold talks over some economic issues in our ministerial capacity, and we will return in our ministerial capacity to follow up on these matters,” Hassan told al-Manar TV.

Samir Geagea, a leading Lebanese Christian politician and longstanding opponent of Hezbollah and Syrian influence in Lebanon, has said the visit to Syria will “shake Lebanon’s political stability and put Lebanon in the Iranian camp”.

A senior Lebanese official allied to Damascus described the row as “part of the political struggle in the region”.

The influence of Iran’s allies in Lebanon was shown last year by the selection of a longtime ally of Hezbollah, Christian politician Michel Aoun, as head of state in a political deal that also installed Saudi-allied Sunni Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri.

SYRIAN RETURNS

Hezbollah has recently stepped up calls for the Lebanese government to engage directly with Damascus over the return of Syrian refugees, who now account for one in four of the people in Lebanon and are overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim.

The issue is of enormous political sensitivity in Lebanon, although all politicians agree they must return to Syria due to strains on Lebanon’s resources and risks to its sectarian balance.

Hariri has said Lebanon will only coordinate refugee returns with the United Nations, which says there can be no forced return of people who fled the conflict, many of whom fear returning to a Syria governed by Assad.

But one branch of the Lebanese state, the powerful internal security agency General Security, recently held talks with the Syrian authorities to secure the return of several thousand Syrians into Syria following a military campaign by Hezbollah in the northeast border region.

General Security says the refugee returns have been voluntary. The United Nations has had no role in the talks.

An expected Lebanese army assault on Islamic State militants at the border with Syria has been another focal point for the debate over cooperation with Damascus. The army, a recipient of U.S. aid, has said it will lead the battle alone in Lebanese territory, and does not need to coordinate with other parties.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has said his group and the Syrian army will mount a simultaneous assault against IS from the Syrian side of the frontier, however.

“Practically speaking, the dissociation policy is finished,” said Nabil Boumonsef, a columnist with the Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar.

But he warned of the political ramifications in Lebanon, saying “political score settling” by one party against another would create “a big problem” in the country.

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington; Additional reporting by Laila Bassam; Editing by Tom Perry and Sonya Hepinstall)