Assad's Major Gamble

Syria plunged deeper than ever into the turbulent Lebanese civil war. In the cool, dark hours one morning last week around 3,000 infantrymen and nearly 100 tanks moved across the border into neighboring Lebanon. This was another desperate attempt to help end the 14-month-old fratricidal bloodletting that has already claimed more than 20,000 lives. It was also a high-risk gamble that could embroil the Syrians in a major confrontation with most of the Palestinian movement. Yet this new attempt at a Pax Syriana may just force the Lebanese to discuss their differences long enough to permit a political compromise to take root. At week's end talks were under way, fueling hopes for an eventual peaceful solution.

Daring Move. The Syrian attacks last week were intended to check the mainly Moslem leftist forces and their radical Palestinian allies, who have been battling Lebanon's mainly Christian rightists. Syrian President Hafez Assad has been seeking a peace that would enable Christian and Moslem Lebanese to continue sharing political power; this would make it unlikely that a radical state would emerge on Syria's western frontier. This led Assad, earlier in the year, to send several thousand Syrian-led Saiqa fedayeen into Lebanon to bolster the Christian minority. Last week's action was a more daring move, for although a number of Syrian regulars have been disguised as Saiqa, and others have been based just inside the border, no regular forces of any outside power had ever pushed so openly and deeply into Lebanon in such numbers during the civil war.

Predictably, Lebanon's leftists were enraged. Leftist Leader Kamal Jumblatt called a one-day general strike in Beirut that kept people off the streets and closed the few shops that had not already been shuttered by the incessant street fighting. He also requested that other Arab states "interfere" in order to end the Syrian intervention. This was seconded by the Palestine Liberation Organization, which also managed to accuse Washington of being behind Assad's move.

Egypt too denounced Assad, thus further chilling the already frigid relations between Cairo and Damascus. In a letter to the Arab League, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmy accused Syria of preparing "bloody butcheries that are in reality a war of genocide." Fahmy, like Jumblatt and the P.L.O., called for joint action by other Arab states to get Syrian troops out of Lebanon. In Cairo, Arab students protesting the intervention occupied the Syrian embassy for three hours; in Moscow, Arabs demonstrated in front of the Syrian mission.

Assad sent his forces into Lebanon across two fronts last week. A relatively small group drove into the northeastern corner of Lebanon and encountered little resistance. The Syrians' primary objective in this area was easily accomplished: the lifting of the five-day leftist blockades of the Christian towns of Qubayat and Andqit.

The major Syrian force pushed into central Lebanon, where it also found almost no military opposition. It took control of the strategic central Bekaa Valley, with its Riyaq airbase and the Damascus-Beirut highway, relieved the Christian community of Zahle, which had been under siege by the leftists for several months, and occupied the important crossroads town of Chtaura. From its position in the Bekaa, the Syrians were less than a 30-mile march from Beirut; to advance to the capital, however, they would have to pass through mountainous terrain, ideally suited to small-unit harassment tactics.

Gentle Syrians. The day following the Syrian intervention, TIME Correspondent Wilton Wynn drove from Damascus into Lebanon along the main highway that runs to Beirut. "I was aware of the Syrian presence primarily because of the numerous checkpoints and camouflaged, Soviet-made Syrian T-54 tanks sitting in the green wheatfields among the red poppies," cabled Wynn. "All was peaceful. Chtaura, for example, was going about business as usual--shops, cafes, food stalls and restaurants were open. Outside the town, old women once again had set up the stands from which they were selling freshly harvested onions, cherries and potatoes. Except for confiscating arms from anyone carrying them in public, the Syrian troops were dealing gently with the local population, and at some checkpoints Syrian soldiers were distributing leaflets explaining that the purpose of the sudden military intervention was to bring peace." By midweek, that purpose had been accomplished--for the moment, anyway--in most of central and northeastern Lebanon. Only in battle-scarred Beirut did devastating fighting continue.

What prompted Assad to order last week's incursion was his mounting frustration at seeing the failures of his previous attempts to end the war. His hope that Syrian-backed Elias Sarkis, who was named Lebanese President-elect last month, would soon take office has dimmed considerably because President Suleiman Franjieh refuses to resign until the fighting stops. A symbol of intransigent Christians to many Moslems, Franjieh's term does not officially expire until mid-September. Thus, according to a Syrian official, Assad decided "to create a situation in which Lebanon's President-elect can take office." But Assad waited until he had renewed the United Nations Observer Force mandate on the Golan Heights, thus assuring himself a calm frontier with Israel.

Reaction in the U.S. was muted. Washington is thought to be reconciled to a strong Syrian hand in Lebanon as the best hope for peace and for eventually controlling the terrorists based in the Palestinian refugee camps. Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin, at the end of his four-day official visit to Damascus, signed a joint communique calling for peace in Lebanon but said nothing about the intervention. Israel's leaders could barely suppress their glee at the events in Lebanon. Quipped Premier Yitzhak Rabin to a group of Haifa students: "Why should we stop the Syrian army, which is killing terrorists?" Rabin added that his country does not feel threatened by Damascus' military action in Lebanon so long as the Syrians do not start moving toward the Israeli-Lebanese border.

Raised Hope. Assad must now decide whether to send his troops into Beirut in order to impose a Syrian solution. He probably realizes, however, that that could trigger a ferocious battle in which Syrians would surely suffer the kind of heavy casualties they have been spared so far. The resulting funerals in Syria could unleash new anti-regime demonstrations, as an officer's burial did last month (TIME, May 31).

The Lebanese also do not want a violent confrontation with the Syrians. Fear of this was probably one factor spurring the three-hour meeting last week between top Phalange Militia Commander Bashir Gemayel (son of that right-wing party's leader, Pierre Gemayel) and Jumblatt; it was the first rightist-leftist discussion at that high level since the war began. According to aides, the two men expressed optimism that a "Lebanese solution" could be found, and both were said to have endorsed the basic political reforms long demanded by the left. Jumblatt later met with Sarkis, raising some hope that Lebanon's leaders were more willing than before to compromise their differences.

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