Business as Usual in Lebanon
ALAN, RAY
SETTLING ACCOUNTS Business as Usual in Lebanon BY RAY ALAN Beirut So it's back to normal in Lebanon. Two brands of Moslems, several kinds of Christians, and the secretive Druses—whose religion...
...That was at a time when Syrian-armed militias were firing on the American Marines in Beirut...
...The Syrians entered Lebanon to help the Christians defend themselves against an alliance of PLO and Lebanese Leftists, then turned against the Christians...
...Built on these shifting sands, and with much of its territory claimed by Syria, Lebanon became in 1941 an independent republic...
...Syria has a mainly Sunni population...
...Silence...
...The villagers of South Lebanon traded with their Jewish neighbors, too, and many Jews fleeing the repressive regimes of Syria and Iraq passed into Israel with Druse or Mitwali guides...
...Lebanese Sunnis suspect Jumblat's Druses and their Shiite allies of aiming to take over key posts in Beirut, with Syrian help, by the methods of infiltration and intimidation that put Assad's faction in power in Damascus...
...The Alawites, a Moslem religious sect and a regional community, have much in common with the Druses...
...President Assad and most other leading figures in politics and the administration are, however, Alawites...
...Every other valley in Lebanon and western Syria developed its own religion—usually a mishmash of Mithra-ist, Hellenic, Judeo-Christian and, later, Islamic themes, often esoteric with several degrees of initiation...
...Rashly, in 1922, the French mandatory authorities enlarged this compact, viable statelet to include the Sunni Moslem port of Tripoli and areas east and south of Beirut inhabited mainly by Mitwalis (a subsect of Shiite Islam) and non-Moslem Druses...
...Soviet-armed Syria remains a powerful factor in Lebanese affairs...
...The Shiites are Lebanon's biggest community, accounting for about 40 per cent of the population...
...Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek, Turkish and countless other armies have left inscriptions and ruins along its ancient coastal and mountain tracks...
...Border raids caused Israel to accidentally bomb the Druse town of Hasbaya (on the flank of Mount Hermon), cooling their relations...
...As for the Lebanese Sunni Moslems, Jumblat describes them as "primarily concerned with their economic privileges," and says they "would rather go on living under the Maronite Christian yoke" than see greater power held by the Shiites, whom they consider heretics, and the non-Moslem Druses...
...The last to leave were the French, making their third withdrawal from Lebanon...
...In the 1860s, French intervention had interrupted a massacre of Christians by Druse and Moslem militias and obtained from the region's Turkish rulers a measure of autonomy for a mainly Maronite sanjak (province) of Lebanon that proved stable and peaceful...
...The French media, reinforced by British, Italian, Spanish and other snipers, also tended to sneer at America's "failure" in Lebanon...
...all Lebanese are members of a minority...
...Berri replied icily: "To settle accounts...
...The Levant is probably the world's oldest crossroads of migration and invasion...
...The Druses make up only about 7 per cent of the population...
...The French news agency has reported a grim little dialogue between President Amin Gemayel, who is a Maronite Christian, and Nabih Berri, the Shiite leader, during last month's reconciliation conference in Lausanne...
...Shall we lunch together...
...But Jumblat adds that he is no lackey of Assad's and defied him by attacking the Murabitoun...
...Both are encouraged by their religious leaders to practice secrecy and dissimulation in order to protect their beliefs and security...
...At least, tell me what you want," pleaded Gemayel...
...He complained to a recent visitor that the Jordanian police keep his house, telephone calls and movements under constant surveillance...
...Would you like us to meet and talk things over...
...But quarrels and account-settling have already broken out within the anti-Ge-mayel alliance it supports...
...and the guarantee that impresses them most is an armed militia drawn from their own sector clan...
...Now he is more concerned about carving a bigger slice of influence for himself and his traditionally poor, depressed community than advancing the causes of secular government and socialism which Jumblat erratically preaches...
...Of late, Jumblat has spent more time in Amman, Jordan, than in Lebanon...
...Its troops kept clear of the fighting, though, and Lebanese and Palestinian Druses actually helped the Israelis chase the Albanian adventurer Fawzi el-Kawukji and his Arab Liberation Army out of Galilee...
...Most Lebanese Sunnis, who are orthodox Moslems and make up almost 20 per cent of the population, dislike the Murabitoun and have not forgiven the Palestinians for the deaths and devastation they caused in and around Beirut and Tripoli...
...The sad truth is that everyone has failed here, above all the Lebanese...
...Jumblat's advocacy of socialism, though, is so unconvincing as to be comical...
...The Sunnis similarly mistrust the Druse leader Walid Jumblat because they believe him to be under the influence of Syria's dictator Hafez al-Assad...
...The Murabitoun were helping some 2,000 armed Palestinians re-establish themselves in Beirut...
...The Syrian President and his Lebanese allies, Jumblat observes, have almost eradicated the political influence of the Western powers in Lebanon...
...The other day a British editorialist airily recommended an amendment of the Lebanese Constitution that would "reunite the nation and guarantee the rights of the minorities...
...Still, he feels safer in Amman than in Beirut, where at least one attempt has been made to assassinate him...
...The occasion was a solemn one, marred only by the comment of Claude Cheysson, France's undiplomatic Foreign Minister, that "we are not scurrying out like rabbits"—a reference, according to a semiofficial television commentator, to the hasty departure of the British and Italians...
...Jumblat is a traditional Levantine feudal lord and orders his subjects accordingly in his palace in central Lebanon...
...Silence...
...In addition, Assad exerts a veto on the policy of King Hussein (hence the little monarch's "surprising" attack on U.S...
...Into this sectarian jungle after World War I came the French, armed with a League of Nations mandate and a desire to help the Lebanese Christians as well as establish a commercial and cultural foothold in the Levant...
...Their most popular leader, Nabih Berri, was an ally of Jumblat's during the winter fighting...
...policy after a Syrian publication reminded him that Damascus had a claim on Jordanian territory...
...But when King Hussein defeated a bid by the PLO to take over Jordan in 1970, Palestinian guerrilla units moved to South Lebanon...
...The Saudis, too, fearing the consequences of displeasing Assad, continue to finance most of his Soviet arms purchases...
...Jumblat says he considers Assad the only significant statesman in the Arabic-speaking world...
...asked Gemayel...
...The Druses have attacked and mauled the Murabi-toun, a Libyan-backed Sunni faction...
...The British Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, was so eager to please Assad during a visit to Damascus that he even declared—according to the Mid-eastern press—Britain was in agreement with Syria on Lebanon...
...and Soviet technicians are reportedly building another military installation, an advanced radar station, on a Syrian-controlled mountain less than 30 miles from Beirut...
...Lebanon is not a simple three-cornered brawl like Ulster—and, heaven knows, the British have made little progress in settling that...
...Lowlanders who displeased the invaders were massacred or deported, like the Israelites on at least two occasions...
...Jumblat's advocacy of secularism makes sense: His political influence in a Lebanon organized, as in the past, on religious lines would be slight if his Syrian ally dropped him, was overthrown or suffered a fatal heart attack...
...But there is no nation to reunite...
...Although Yasir Arafat's PLO forces have been chased out of Lebanon, efforts to put Humpty Dumpty together again have been unsuccessful...
...Lebanon is a beautiful country," he says, "but it is populated by savages...
...the Syrians hold about a quarter of the country, and the Israelis a strip in the south...
...Each community despised or distrusted its neighbors...
...Its plains are graveyards of forgotten towns and villages...
...He inherited his Socialist Party from his father and its members are all from the Druse sect...
...The recipe for survival became pliability and sycophancy in the plains and hardy self-sufficiency in the hills...
...Against the advice of its senior Army officers, it was pressed into supporting the Arab League's attack on Israel in 1948...
...Two brands of Moslems, several kinds of Christians, and the secretive Druses—whose religion contains Judeo-Christian and Islamic elements —still shoot at each other from time to time...
...The Israelis moved in to occupy PLO bases and counterbalance the Syrians...
...Against the will of most of its Christians and Druses, who speak Arabic but are not ethnic Arabs, Lebanon was persuaded to join the Arab League when it was formed in 1945...
...Except for a few French observers, all Western military forces have now withdrawn...
Vol. 67 • April 1984 • No. 7
