Battle Notes: Land of the $25 Kill

In grim contrast to the calm in Lebanon's emerging Christian country-within-a-country, the fighting continued to rage elsewhere in a war that combines tragedy with its own brand of occasional bitter comedy. Some items from the notebooks of TIME Correspondents:

At 39, Bahjat Jaber was a bachelor millionaire and landowner with an overwhelming passion: he really wanted to be a police reporter. As a result, when the war broke out Jaber, a Greek Catholic, eagerly took on the assignment of totting up its casualties day by day. He checked hospital reports and the various warring forces, whose figures, while self-serving, were at least a basis on which to work. An important source was Hisham Shaar, chief of Lebanon's national police, whose network relayed not only the locations of new battles but also their ferocity.

The police force has collapsed as fighting has intensified, and communications are increasingly difficult. But Jaber doggedly continues his daily body count, which has become the only faintly authoritative estimate of the mounting toll of an unceasing war. Jaber figures that 32,000 have been killed so far; for tiny Lebanon, that is the equivalent of 2.2 million dead in an American civil war. He is worried, however, that his figure may be on the low side. As many as 6,000 more people may be missing, their bodies never found, much less counted.

Few of Lebanon's battle casualties are fighting men. Most are unsuspecting civilians suddenly hit by shell or sniper fire--or executed merely for being of the wrong religion in the wrong zone.

Throat cutting has become the ritual form of execution, and each side has settled on a favorite dumping ground for victims. In the Moslem zone of Beirut, for instance, one busy repository is a murky space beneath a highway overpass. Its counterpart on the Christian side is a bridge 150 ft. above the Dog River on the road from Beirut to the renowned Casino du Liban. Bodies are simply tossed from the rail of the bridge, which has become a family sightseeing attraction. Cars double-park while occupants ogle the bodies far below without being bothered by the stench.

Some shooting scripts:

A machine-gun crew in a hot firefight near the home of Samir Tabet, provost of the American University of Beirut, selected the roof of Tabet's car as a new gun position. Before opening fire, however, they carefully spread newspapers on the roof so the tripod would not scratch the paint.

"Shoot him, shoot him," demanded other members of a Moslem gang when one of their number showed up with a Christian prisoner. Obviously nettled, the captor turned to his prisoner. "I'm not going to shoot you," he said angrily. "I want to show these guys that they can't order me around." With that, the Christian was set free.

Discovering an older relative blasting away with a rifle from the roof of their building, a young Beiruti inquired what was going on. "I'm a sniper," the old man said proudly. "They give me $25 for each person I kill. I've already made $100 this morning." "But, uncle," pressed the youth, "how do they know you're telling the truth about the number you've bagged?" The old man bristled: "Am I not a man of integrity?"

Campaigning successfully as a law-and-order presidential candidate in 1970, Suleiman Franjieh promised to make it possible for people to sleep with their windows and doors open. Sweeping up the cascade of glass after an exploding mortar shell shattered all the windows in his home, a Beirut householder grumbled to a friend, "Now we know what Franjieh meant."

The Syrian border post at El Jdey-deh conjures up memories of other wars and other refugees. As more and more Lebanese families flee the fighting, hundreds of automobiles are jammed around the customs and immigration office. The car roofs are overladen with household goods; the interiors are crammed with two or three generations of dispirited Lebanese. Periodically, when a Syrian immigration officer appears, the travelers stir into activity and hope. As he reads off a meager list of names of Lebanese refugees cleared to enter Syria, those on the list joyfully prepare to move again. Those who are not slump back sadly to await his next appearance.

In a land where Crusader castles are common sights, the emotional pull of religious combat is powerful. To liberate the Koura region in northern Lebanon from Moslems, a band of 150 Christian fighters set out from Jounieh. In each village through which they passed on their 25-mile route, church bells pealed and local militia joined the march. When the bells rang in one mountain town, the local hairdresser quickly took off his smock, put on a khaki jacket, got an M-16 rifle out of a convenient closet and abandoned his customers under their dryers to join the march. Down the street a frantic mother vainly pleaded with her 14-year-old son: "Last month we lost your brother, and now you insist on fighting." By the end of the march, the Christian column was ten times as big as it was when it started out.

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