Lebanon Torching Towns

By Marguerite Johnson.

Smoke spewed skyward from a cluster of Christian villages around the port of Sidon last week as Druze and Muslim forces, victors in a fresh outburst of fighting in Lebanon's ten-year-old civil war, put the torch to the plundered shops, homes and schools of Christians. Throughout the week, as militiamen from at least three different factions took over the region, residents of Beirut and Sidon drove into the villages to join in the looting. They loaded their cars and pickup trucks with furniture and clothing, raided vegetable gardens and stripped an entire banana plantation before returning home. Some shawled women squatted in doorways, laying claim to the possessions inside and, in some cases, even the house.

Most of the Christians had fled inland to the Christian stronghold of Jezzine and south to the Israeli security zone before the advancing militias swept into their villages. Christian leaders, however, claimed that 70 people, mainly the elderly who stayed behind, had been slaughtered. Indeed, the invaders, in the first flush of victory, shot at anything that moved, including dogs and donkeys.

The Christian villages east of Sidon began to fall to the Muslim forces two weeks ago, soon after several hundred Christian militiamen belonging to the Lebanese Forces pulled out of the heights above Sidon. Less than 48 hours later, Muslim militiamen stormed up the hills and captured several Christian villages. A few days later, Druze militiamen struck at other Christian villages in the region just north of Sidon and the Awali River. The operation was necessary, said Druze Leader Walid Jumblatt, to "cleanse the area of the Lebanese Forces." These in the past had been allied with Israel. The Druze, however, have long sought to control the territory north of Sidon in order to give them access to the sea.

United Nations refugee officials estimated that between 10,000 and 20,000 Christians were made homeless by the fighting. It was the Christians' worst setback since the Chouf Mountain war in 1983, when more than 100,000 were displaced as a result of Druze victories following the Israeli pullout from the mountains. The fighting cast a shadow over Lebanon's few moments of joy last week. They came when Israel pulled back its troops from the port city of Tyre, which has been occupied since the first day of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon on June 6, 1982. As Israeli tanks withdrew, Shi'ite Amal militiamen drove in to a huge welcome from the residents of Tyre. The fighters began rounding up collaborators, although Daoud Daoud, an Amal leader, insisted that "now is a time for pity. Collaborators who do not have blood on their hands will be forgiven."

The Israeli withdrawal, which completed the second phase of a three-phase pullout from Lebanon, was also greeted with relief by the Israelis. The Tyre region had been one of the most hazardous of the occupation, with roadside bombs and ambushes becoming almost routine. Israeli forces remain in a buffer zone stretching along the frontier, but they are expected to pull out altogether no later than early June. Some Israeli analysts, however, are questioning whether the military presence can be ended entirely. The betting is that the Israeli army will continue to operate on both sides of the border for some time to come.

With reporting by John Borrell/Beirut and Roland Flamini/Jerusalem