A Fiery Round Four Begins in Beirut

Like a cancer checked in one organ only to flare up in another, factional fighting erupted again in Lebanon last week. Premier Rashid Karami's reluctant decision to order army units into the northern sector of the country (TIME, Sept. 22) finally halted the violence around Tripoli. But Lebanon's second largest city had hardly quieted down when street warfare broke out in Beirut for the fourth time since last April. More than 100 people were killed in several days of shooting and bombing in the capital before a tenuous truce was negotiated at week's end.

Root Causes. By now, after six months of recurring warfare between mostly Moslem leftists and largely Christian rightists, no one seems to have a lasting solution to the bloodletting that has taken more than 2,000 lives so far and is steadily tearing apart what was always thought to be the Middle East's most tolerant and cosmopolitan country. Karami last week made a new attempt to pull his nation of 3 million people back together again by proposing a "Committee of National Reconciliation" comprising representatives of Lebanon's various religious and political groups. Syria, which is anxious to maintain a stable Lebanon as a buffer along Israel's northern border, also entered the peace-making effort. Syrian Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam arrived in Beirut late in the week to help negotiate the fragile ceasefire.

TIME Correspondent Karsten Prager, who has watched the violence unfold since last spring, cabled this report on the new fighting in Beirut:

In just six months, more people have been killed in factional fighting in Lebanon--they call it "the troubles" here--than have died in six years of agony in Northern Ireland. While that statistic is dreadful, it does not begin to convey the sense of fear and insecurity that is gnawing away at Lebanon's veneer of sophistication.

One round of street fighting in Beirut was touched off by an argument over a pretty girl. This time the tension was increased by a gasoline shortage resulting from the violence in Tripoli, which cut off most of Lebanon from the country's largest refinery. Some scenes--the sight of Cardin-clad gentlemen siphoning off other people's tanks, for instance--would have been hilarious except for the potential violence. Sure enough, fistfights and near riots eventually erupted. There was a shootout between a gas station owner and a group of armed right-wing Christian Phalangists over fuel allocations; one man was killed, two more were wounded--and even more guns came out all over town.

Beirutis had been expecting a resumption of the street battles for days. The capital lay paralyzed under a bright fall sun; business was at a standstill, and citizens huddled in their homes. Housewives laid in extra supplies of food. Rather unnecessarily, Radio Lebanon appealed to its listeners to stay indoors because "all streets are unsafe." Sharif Akhawi, one of the country's best-known radio announcers, broadcast repeated warnings about roving bands of armed men. As fighting escalated, he called for firemen to return to their stations and for blood donors to help hospitals whose supplies once again were running low. Occasionally his voice broke with the strain.

The capital became two cities--the less affluent southern and eastern tier, where left-and right-wing militiamen once again faced one another across roadblocks, and the more prosperous, relatively quiet northern sliver along the Corniche, where embassies are and well-to-do foreigners and Lebanese have their apartments. But even there, shops and restaurants eventually shuttered down and traffic died. At the prestigious 100-room St. Georges hotel beside the sea, the management counted all of twelve guests.

Hardship Post. Guerrillas fought one another with rockets, mortars and heavy automatic weapons. Not only were the internal security forces that Karami ordered in outnumbered by street fighters on both sides but they were also probably less well armed. All parties in the continuing battles are able to buy such automatic weapons as the Soviet-designed AK-47, U.S.-made M-16s and a variety of mortars, recoilless rifles and machine guns of both Western and Eastern origin supplied by willing arms dealers throughout the Middle East. Stores were dynamited and part of the shopping area near the old city center went up in flames. Smoke billowed over Beirut's deserted port as armed men--no one knows who they were--held the firemen at a distance.

Given the circumstances, it is astonishing that the large foreign community in Beirut has hung on so tenaciously. The lure of Middle East gold, more easily accessible from Beirut than anywhere else, obviously remains strong. Tellingly, however, the State Department now considers Beirut, once a favorite R. and R. spot for much of the Middle East, a hardship post for embassy staffers.

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