Why don't the Shiite "militia" leave Iraq and help Hezbollah friends?

[kentuck]

I thought the Shiites were supportive of Hezbollah? Why don't they just forget about Iraq for a while and go to southern Lebanon to assist their good friends, the Hezbollah? That way, it would give Hezbollah needed assistance and would give the new government of Iraq time to recoup their losses of recent weeks??

[dipsydoodle]

1. The buses have all been blown up

- no transport. Seriously I do believe they'd have transportation problems.

[kentuck]

2. Makes sense...

I guess. How do you get out of Baghdad? Dead or alive?

[Teaser]

3. Since the government of Iraq is shi'ah

how would a mass exodus of shi'ah fighters to lebanon help the government recoup anything?

they'd be losing their most effective military units.

[kentuck]

5. You're right!

If we assume the Iraqi government has control over their militias and military?

[kenny blankenship]

4. How do you know some won't?

When "foreign fighters" leave one country to help brother Muslims fighting in another they don't feel a need to inform CNN and the US State Dept.
For all we know there could be some heading across Syria to Lebanon right now.
But I rather suspect that the growing civil war in Iraq will cause most to stay who might otherwise want to go to Lebanon.

[Igel]

6. Two reasons, really.

The first, they're needed at home. If they left, the Sunnis would have a field day. Better a dead Sunni in the hand than two Jews in the bushes.

The second, there's a large swatch of Salafi Sunnis between the Iraqi Shi'ites and Lebanon, and the roads, well, the roads pretty much blow. Up. Their best bet would the the route that Iran publicized, for whatever reasons: through Kurdistan, Turkish Turkey, and down the coast.

In fact, Syria might like having some more Shi'ites. Then again, maybe not; the ruling Alawites are sort of a strange Shi'a offshoot, IIRC.