AILSA CHANG, HOST:
In Syria, opposition forces continue their stunning offensive days after seizing the major city of Aleppo. Rebel forces are now sweeping south towards the capital, Damascus. They're within miles of the regime's stronghold of Homs, closer to the border with Lebanon, where a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah is just over one week old. People there now worry that fighting in Syria might spill over. It's happened before, as NPR's Lauren Frayer reports.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)
RAFAAT NASRALLAH: (Non-English language spoken).
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: Rafaat Nasrallah gestures across the snowcapped hills at Syria, just 5 miles away. As a child, he'd crossed the border to go to Boy Scouts. But after the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, Sunni Muslim rebels also crossed the other way. They occupied a village here, fought with Lebanese soldiers and set off suicide bombs. In response, Nasrallah's Christian village teamed up with Shiite Muslim Hezbollah fighters to do armed patrols.
NASRALLAH: (Non-English language spoken).
FRAYER: "I'd make a deal with the devil if it meant protecting my village," he says. "But Hezbollah is not the devil. They're our neighbors, the kids we grew up going to school with," he says. His alliance with Hezbollah does come at a cost, though. The road up to here is lined with craters from Israeli airstrikes. Hezbollah also uses this border to ferry weapons from Iran, across Syria and into Lebanon. And those supply lines are what Israel has been targeting.
FATIMA SALAH: (Non-English language spoken).
FRAYER: Fatima Salah chants the Quran's opening lines as she shuffles through rubble. Ten of her cousins were killed in an airstrike last month on their house near this border.
SALAH: I will show you the house how it was before.
FRAYER: She shows me an old photo on her phone of a two-story house with flower beds.
That's a massive house, and that was right here.
SALAH: Yes.
FRAYER: It's just, like, twisted metal, and I can see just the back of it, just sort of...
SALAH: Yes.
FRAYER: ...One room standing.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)
FRAYER: Salah sees Syria and Israel as two fronts in the same war. On the same day Israel agreed to a ceasefire and a phased withdrawal of its troops from Lebanon, Syrian rebels started making advances on the other side of this border.
SALAH: It's obvious. The day it stopped over here, it started over there. It's not a coincidence. It's the same war.
FRAYER: Against who?
SALAH: Against the resistance.
FRAYER: By the resistance, she means Hezbollah and its patron, Iran. The idea is that Iran has been so preoccupied with the war in Lebanon, where its proxy, Hezbollah, has suffered huge losses, that it took its eye off or perhaps diverted resources from bolstering another of its allies, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government. And so it's on this border that people like Fatima Salah worry Syrian Sunni Muslim groups fighting Assad could confront the Lebanese Shiite Muslim Hezbollah, which she sees as her protector.
SALAH: They are next to us. They are on our borders. Well, next step - Aleppo, Hama, Damascus and then us.
FRAYER: Her fear is real. A decade ago, the same rebels who've taken cities in Syria this week crossed into Lebanon just behind her house. But the timing of their assault inside Syria now has fueled speculation here that Israel and the U.S. might somehow be supporting these rebel advances as a way to weaken Assad, Hezbollah and Iran. In the past, a former Israeli military commander did confirm that his country was arming some anti-Assad rebel factions. People here say they fear that may tip the scales toward a bigger regional war.
(SOUNDBITE OF SHEEP BLEATING)
FRAYER: Ali Zgheib is an international law student who also herds sheep on the Lebanon-Syria border, just like his father and grandfather before him.
ALI ZGHEIB: (Non-English language spoken).
FRAYER: His mother is from the other side, the Syrian city of Homs, where rebels are now advancing.
ZGHEIB: (Non-English language spoken).
FRAYER: "We're terrified," he says, "by Israeli airstrikes on this side," which have continued even after a ceasefire went into effect, "and by rebels on the other side," where he crosses to sell his sheep on the Syrian market.
ZGHEIB: (Non-English language spoken).
FRAYER: "If these two wars come together, it'll happen right here," he says, "and there will be no ceasefire anymore." Lauren Frayer, NPR News, in Younine on the Lebanon-Syria border. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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