The Survivors: After the Battle

WELCOME TO THE BIG BOSS, read a new sign in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley along the Beirut-Damascus highway. In case any traveler did not recognize the big boss, the sign was surrounded by photographs of Syrian President Hafez Assad. Last week the highway was completely open for the first time in nine months--and free of marauding gangs that robbed and killed travelers--as Assad's troops moved into Beirut to unite and pacify the Lebanese capital.

Traveling in three columns, Syrian tanks moved down to the city's battered port and financial district, bulldozing roadblocks as they rolled. The Syrian troops--the bulwark of what will eventually become a 30,000-man multinational peace-keeping force--also moved swiftly to restore civic order. Two attempted kidnapings were broken up and ten looters stealing the last furnishings from the once luxurious Phoenicia Inter-Continental Hotel were arrested.

Most Beirutis welcomed the Syrians joyfully, particularly because the arrival of the army marked an end to the nighttime shellings that have made the city an afterdark hell. Young boys happily clambered aboard the Syrian tanks. Women pelted them with rice and rose petals, Lebanon's traditional welcoming symbols. Behind the tanks, in another sign of trust that the 19-month civil war was over, came a civilian convoy--cars laden with mattresses, bedding and furniture--of Lebanese who had fled the capital when the fighting began.

So Sue Me. "Some of those who returned to Beirut found that their homes had disappeared," cabled TIME Correspondent Wilton Wynn. "Others discovered that while they were away, their houses or apartments had been occupied by squatters. In the Christian suburb of Ain Rumane, Dawud Karami found a woman in his house who not only refused to leave but taunted him, 'You can sue me if you dare.' Another returnee was amazed to see lights on and hear the sound of music emerging from his home on Hamra Street. It was occupied by Palestinian refugees who told him, 'You can have your apartment when we find another place to live.'

"That may take a long time. Fully 85,000 Lebanese and Palestinians in Lebanon are homeless, and there is little hope of finding space before winter winds and rain begin next month. Damour, twelve miles south of Beirut, was once an affluent community of 10,000 Christians. Palestinians from the ruined refugee camp of Tel Zaatar, the scene of some of Beirut's bloodiest fighting, now live in Damour's bombed-out, windowless buildings, existing on a single loaf of bread a day. 'We have to scrounge for anything else to eat,' complained one old man."

Housing is only one of the critical problems that the Lebanese face as they pick up the pieces of their shattered lives under the protection of the Pax Syriana. Since April 1975 when the fighting began, 40,000 people have been killed, all but 4,000 of them civilians. Another 100,000 have been wounded. More than half the population of 3 million urgently need financial and material help. At least $4 billion will be needed to rebuild the shattered economy. The port of Beirut is now unusable, the airport badly damaged--although it opened last week for the first time in five months. During the civil war, Beirut's banks have been robbed of at least $250 million, and tourism, industry and agriculture have all been disrupted. In some areas rebuilding will be complicated, because registry offices were burned down and titles to land destroyed. Perhaps 40% of Lebanese land is thus no longer registered and will have to be resurveyed.

Lebanon's delicate political system will be equally difficult to restore. The Syrians hope to reunite the country on the basis of the so-called Valentine's Day accord of last February, an agreement approved by most of the country's factional leaders--except leftists. This preserves Lebanon's peculiar confessional system, in which political offices are allotted on a religious basis, but gives the Moslems greater political representation. The President will continue to be a Maronite Christian and the Premier a Sunni Moslem, but seats in Parliament will be divided fifty-fifty between the Christians and Moslem sects (previously the Maronites were ensured of a majority). Fearful of never being able to live at peace with the Moslems, some Christians have threatened to carry on guerrilla warfare to maintain the ethnic purity of Christian-run zones. The Syrians, however, are adamantly opposed to any Swiss-style cantonal solution for Lebanon.

Enforcement of the Valentine's Day accord would do little for the Palestinian refugees. Many, if not most, of their camps were completely destroyed and they have no place to go back to now. "We must have permanent homes," said one of the refugees in Damour last week. "We can not continue wandering forever." The Palestine Liberation Organization plans to move its fighting units to the Arkoub region in the south, an area that the Syrians will not enter--to avoid friction with the Israelis across the border. But in the south the Palestinians are likely to confront militant, armed Christians who have taken over much of the region with Israeli support. An outbreak of fighting between these forces could shatter the still shaky peace.*

Still, with the guns gone silent and life returning, the overall mood in Beirut last week was one of relief and some hope. "If the security remains as it has started," says Businessman and Parliament Member Munir Abu Fadel. "we will need about two months of convalescence, and then within six months after that we will start a new boom." It at least sounded a new note in the Lebanese mood: a willingness to think beyond day-to-day survival for a change.

*In nearby Jordan last week. Palestinian guerrillas protesting Syrian actions against the P.L.O. in Lebanon attacked Amman's Inter-Continental Hotel and seized guests and hotel workers as hostages. Jordanian troops rescued the hostages, but three Palestinians, two soldiers, two workers and a guest died in the course of the battle.

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