On the night the Middle East changed, Abdulrazaq al-Masri was at home with his wife and children in the Syrian town of Qusayr, glued to social media. It was December 7th 2024, and his Twitter feed was full of astonishing rumours. Rebels were said to be advancing on Damascus; the president, Bashar al-Assad, had supposedly fled the country. Masri glanced out of his window – it was eerily quiet. Just after midnight, he decided to venture outside to see what was happening. The Assad dynasty was indeed falling that night, but Masri was about to witness the crumbling of a different regime.
Qusayr is a small, low-rise town 10km from the border between Syria and Lebanon. For as long as anyone there can remember, smugglers have been ferrying tomatoes, medicine, drugs and guns across the farmland on the edge of town, which straddles the border. A few opulent villas with pseudo-classical columns dot the streets: testament to the fortunes made from smuggling.
In the 2000s Qusayr became the transit point for a new commodity: Iranian-made rockets. They were destined for Hizbullah, a mighty militia devoted to the tenets of Shia Islam. Masri remembers how the Syrian government began to cut Qusayr’s electricity in the middle of the night. Trucks would then appear in the blackened streets, heading towards Lebanon, where Hizbullah’s arsenals were housed. The lights wouldn’t come back on until the last truck had trundled through town. | | |
