Lebanon Saving a City From Itself

By William E. Smith

There are only 2.7 million Lebanese, but they are divided into so many feuding factions that the sound of their fighting can be heard round the world. Week after week over the past decade, battles have taken place among confusing groups of militants who seem united only in their determination to blow themselves and their country away. The outside world has become an unhappy participant in the civil war through the hostages held by one group or another. Amid all the car bombings and shellings and kidnapings, the only certitude of Lebanon seems to be that the battle will go on.

But last week, after another prolonged period of anarchy in the Lebanese capital, Syrian President Hafez Assad took one of the biggest gambles of his 16 years in power. He sent 7,500 Syrian troops into West Beirut to try to restore order there -- a task that several countries, including the U.S., France, Israel and Syria itself, had previously tried without success. Was Assad about to become the latest victim of Lebanon's endless civil war, or could he restore peace to the troubled land?

The last time Assad sent in his army was in 1976. At that time the Syrians were trying to save the Maronite Christian forces from total defeat at the hands of an alliance of leftist Lebanese Muslims and the Palestine Liberation Organization, thereby disrupting the country's delicate balance of power. The Syrians ended up fighting the Christians they had come to save, suffered heavy casualties, and had to pull out of the Beirut area in a hurry after the Israelis invaded Lebanon in 1982.

This time a worried Assad decided to occupy West Beirut, the predominantly Muslim half of the divided Lebanese capital, because of what he regarded as an ominous series of threats to Syria's long-term strategic interests. In the first place he was concerned about the renewed strength of the P.L.O. in West Beirut, especially in the refugee camps of Sabra, Shatila and Burj el Barajneh. More specifically, he was angry about the resurgence of P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat, with whom Assad has been feuding for years. The one good thing about Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, from Assad's point of view, was that it drove Arafat and most of the P.L.O. out of the country. But during the past three years, Arafat has been quietly rebuilding his strength in West Beirut. Since last fall, Assad's closest Lebanese ally, the Shi'ite Amal militia, headed by Nabih Berri, has waged a merciless battle against the P.L.O. in the refugee camps but failed to defeat it.

The Shi'ites are the largest of Lebanon's principal religious groups, with a population of more than 1 million. They are also the poorest and politically the most unstable. Founded in 1975, Amal quickly became the main Shi'ite political movement. One of its aims has been to wrest a more equitable share of power from the Maronite Christians and Sunni Muslims, who have divided most of the political spoils since Lebanon became independent of French rule in 1943. In recent months, however, Amal has lost ground within the Shi'ite community to the radical Hizballah (Party of God). Hizballah's rising power concerns Assad because the group, which is allied with Iran, has dreams of establishing an Iranian-style Islamic republic in Lebanon.

In the complicated world of Middle East politics, Hizballah's Iranian connection is something of an embarrassment for Assad, since Syria and Iran have generally good relations. Syria, along with Libya and South Yemen, supports non-Arab Iran against Arab Iraq in the gulf war, mainly because Assad shares with Iran's Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini an overpowering hatred for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. In return for its friendship, Iran sells Syria oil at bargain-basement prices. Assad cannot afford to lose his Iranian relationship, but neither does he, as the head of a secular Arab state that has already had to deal with fundamentalist uprisings, want an Islamic republic created on his border.

Finally, Assad has been worried about the latest military setbacks suffered by Amal. Two weeks ago Walid Jumblatt, the leader of the Druze sect, an offshoot of Islam, sent his militia into West Beirut to help the P.L.O., with whom he has been allied, in its struggle against Amal. Within a few days the Druze had taken over as much as three-quarters of the Muslim section of the capital. Casualties, estimated at 300 dead and 1,300 wounded, were unusually high, even by Lebanese standards.

The primary purpose of the Druze operation had been to end the impasse between Amal and the P.L.O. But another factor may have been the anger of the Druze over the disappearance of Anglican Envoy Terry Waite, who had been under the protection of Druze bodyguards until shortly before he vanished in January. He is believed to have been seized by radical Shi'ites with whom he was trying to negotiate the release of Western hostages.

"Ahlan! Ahlan!" (Welcome! Welcome!) shouted Lebanese villagers as Syrian soldiers, poking their heads out of trucks and Soviet-made tanks, drove through the outskirts of West Beirut last week. From the roadside women waved and men jumped up to kiss the soldiers when they moved toward the capital. But the welcome barely lasted out the week. Within days Hizballah militants were parading down the streets of the city's southern suburbs carrying the bullet- riddled bodies of slain comrades. "Death to the killers of our martyrs!" chanted the marchers. "Death to Syria! Death to America! Death to Israel!"

The Hizballah demonstrators were protesting the killing of 23 of their members by Syrian commandos. According to the Syrians, the fighting started when Hizballah gunmen opened fire on them after the Syrians arrived to take over a Hizballah stronghold known as the Fathallah barracks. It is widely believed that at least some of the foreign hostages in Lebanon have been detained at one time or another in this stronghold. Before abandoning the barracks last week, Hizballah fighters burned some of Fathallah's underground cells, possibly to destroy evidence that hostages had ever been held there.

After the skirmish Syria's military intelligence chief in Lebanon, Brigadier General Ghazi Kenaan, went on Lebanese radio to repeat his order that all militiamen in West Beirut surrender their weapons. Said Kenaan: "All armed men, no matter what their party or movement, will be considered enemies of Beirut."

Syrian intervention had been formally requested by Lebanon's Sunni Muslim Prime Minister Rashid Karami and others in an effort to end the brutal fighting between the Druze militia and Amal. Nobody consulted the country's Maronite Christian President, Amin Gemayel, whose sovereignty now barely extends beyond the borders of Christian East Beirut. Gemayel predictably denounced the Syrian occupation as "unconstitutional." In truth, however, though he may find the nearby Syrian military presence disconcerting, he also knows that it spells bad news for the P.L.O., and he can live with it as long as the Syrians stay out of Christian territory.

Interested foreign governments did not voice strong objections to the Syrian action. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir was notably restrained, and U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, apparently still smarting from U.S. policy failures in the region, said that if the Syrians could restore order in West Beirut, it would be a "positive development." The British government, which broke off relations with Damascus last fall over indications of Syrian-backed terrorist activity, privately regarded the Syrian action as preferable to the prevailing chaos.

Only the Iranians appeared concerned by last week's events. They sent two top officials, Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati and Minister of the Revolutionary Guards Moshen Rafiqdoust, to Damascus to find out what was going on. According to Western observers, the Iranians were hoping to prevent a confrontation between Syrian troops and Hizballah. Clearly, as the shoot-out at Fathallah the following day indicated, they failed.

By week's end, as several of Lebanon's leaders repaired to Damascus for talks with Assad, West Beirut was eerily quiet. General Kenaan invited foreign diplomats and journalists who had previously fled the city to "return immediately," though there was still no sign of the 24 missing foreign hostages. Syrian tanks and armor were concentrated at Beirut International Airport, which remained closed to commercial traffic, while two regiments of Syrian troops manned roadblocks around the city. Garbage collectors were reported back at work for the first time in weeks, and in some Shi'ite neighborhoods posters of Khomeini were being replaced by those of Assad. Following a Syrian order that all militiamen shave off their beards, a sort of emblem of militia membership, scores of young Muslims were lining up outside barbershops. Overall, it appeared that the Syrians had achieved their short- term objective of stopping the fighting. Long-term problems are quite a different matter. As the Syrians well know, Lebanon has a way of conquering anyone who tries to conquer it.

With reporting by Roland Flamini/Nicosia and David S. Jackson/Cairo