Hezbollah recruiting push comes amid deeper role in Syria

AP ^ | December 18, 2015 | Bassem Mroue

[MinorityRepublican]

At tightly guarded facilities in south Lebanon, men as young as 17 undergo training by the Shiite guerrilla group Hezbollah on weapons and anti-insurgent tactics before being sent to Syria to fight alongside President Bashar Assad's forces.

Hezbollah has been conducting a large recruitment drive, a sign of how the war in Syria has become perhaps the most intense conflict the group has waged. Its losses in Syria — now more than 1,000 killed — are approaching the toll incurred by the group in 18 years of fighting the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon in the 1980s and 1990s. That conflict earned Hezbollah its reputation as Lebanon's strongest armed force.

The recruitment, drawing from Lebanon's Shiite community, is even more important now as Hezbollah expands its involvement in Syria, engaging in battles deep inside the country and trying to take back rebel-held territory.

"Hezbollah is both battle-weary and battle-hardened," said Bilal Saab, a resident senior fellow for Middle East Security at the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security. "Hezbollah has lost many men in Syria, but it has also acquired new skills. It is overstretched, but it can operate in multiple terrains."

With strong financial and military backing from Iran, Hezbollah has been able to step up its role in Syria even while maintaining the political domination in Lebanon that it has held for several years.

"Hezbollah is not weaker than the time they joined the war in Syria," said Hisham Jaber, a retired Lebanese general.

About 3,000 Hezbollah fighters are in Syria, roughly 15 percent of the group's main fighting force, said Jaber, who heads the Middle East Center for Studies and Political Research in Beirut and closely follows Hezbollah. It also has about 30,000 fighters it could mobilize if needed.

[TigerClaws]

Read this week ISIS has 200,000 troops.