Syria Threatens to Unleash Tunnel Warfare Against Israel

First, it was Hamas, and then Hezbollah. Now, Syria is threatening to undermine Israel with tunnels.

In fact, a Syrian general claims that the Syrian Civil War has turned Syrian soldiers into “experts” at digging holes in the ground.

“I can tell you that as experts on tunnel warfare, we have made large strides during this crisis, throughout the years of the war,” Brigadier-General Lu’ayy Shehadeh told Hezbollah TV network Al-Manar.

In its seventy-five-year history, the Syrian military has rarely had a reputation for being expert in anything. But fighting the Islamic State, which has used underground fortifications extensively, has given the Syrian Arab Army—the official name of the Syrian ground forces—a bloody lesson in subterranean warfare. And not just Syrian government soldiers: American soldiers and U.S.-backed Syrian, Iraqi and Kurdish fighters have had immense difficulty rooting out ISIS from labyrinthine tunnel complexes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Subterranean passages enable ISIS fighters to avoid air strikes and artillery fire, escape encirclement, and allow them to pop out of the ground to spring ambushes.

MORE: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/syria-threatens-unleash-tunnel-warfare-against-israel-49687