Towards civil war
Con Coughlin
Beirut The fate of Lebanon has once more been given into the hands of a motley collec- 6°11 of militiamen armed with Russian rifles and carrying pictures of Ayatollah ICho- Meiril All hope that the charismatic charm Of President Amin Gemayel might save Lebanon from itself has disappeared and everything points again to open civil war. When Gemayel, a professed moderate on Lebanon's immoderate political stage, was elected President 16 months ago, he receiv- ed an embarrassingly rapturous welcome f„roul the leaders of the various factions. ror once Lebanon had a president who ap- peared to have the interests of the whole country at heart and who would not be lackey or cipher of any political or religious faction. The position in which Lebanon ilfAv finds itself, despite all the efforts by in- ternal and external mediators to achieve Peace, indicates the profound emptiness of such sentiments in a country in which the military solution is always preferred to the negotiated one. The failure of all attempts to make progress towards national recon- ciliation leaves President Gemayel in a vir- thliallY impossible position. His government as resigned, his army has split in two, and more than half of that small section of Lebanon he could truly be said to control has been seized and occupied by Stine Moslem militiamen. The factions opposing the government, notably the Shi'ite Moslems and the Druze, are now stronger than they have ever been Since righting began in 1975. In the Chouf mountain s overlooking Beirut, the Druze litias of Mr Walid Jumblatt, Syrian- financed andSoviet-equipped, occupy hlghly-fortified positions, while Mr J▪ Ornblatt's Progressive Socialist Party has already set up its own 'government' which levies taxes and administers the public ser- vices for the estimated 300,000 Druze P°Pulation. Their comrades-in-arms, the Shi'ite Moslems, have finally given up any hope of reaching an agreement with (-t :einaYel and have taken matters into their ▪ hands, seizing control of West and i:Nuth Beirut. Having easily overwhelmed the Lebanese army, the Shi'ites in turn are setting up their own administration. Et This leaves President Gemayel with East _eirut, the Christian sector of the city. But even there the Phalange Party, although rounded by his father Pierre Gemayel, has 00 intention of surrendering its control to a President whom it perceives as too con- nci,li,atorY towards the Moslems. In effect the .4".10 battle lines of 1975 have again been „7, awn up, with the Moslems in West Beirut Well dug in along the Green Line separating theru from the Christians in East Beirut.
Thus the presidency of Amin Gemayel is already an abstraction, for in reality his authority hardly extends beyond the gates of the Baabda Palace. And the recent dramatic events now put it in danger of complete extinction, as he appears to have lost the one thing which guaranteed his re- maining in office — the Multinational Peacekeeping Force. The force was sent to Lebanon to give moral and military backing to Gemayel's newly-formed Lebanese government. It was also intended to provide greater security and stability to the greater Beirut area until the Lebanese government could build up its own army. But as there is now no government and none of the rival factions appear interested in peace, the multinational force was finally persuaded of the wisdom of pulling out.
President Reagart's decision to withdraw the 1,300 US Marines to the US Fleet sta- tioned off the Lebanese coast is therefore a bitter blow to President Gemayel who has recently mounted an intensive campaign in the American media to persuade people that the US Marines should remain in Lebanon. In an interview in the Washington Post this week, intended to counter growing American demands for withdrawal, President Gemayel said that this would mean the end of democracy in his country and would endanger Western interests in the Middle East. If the Marines went, 'there would not be a new president to replace Amin Gemayel but a Revolu- tionary Council under Soviet control,' he said. While the Americans insist the redeployment of the Marines to the ships does not lessen their commitment to Lebanon, it was always said that their very presence on Lebanese soil significantly
strengthened the Lebanese government.
With the Americans, who organised the peacekeeping force in the first place, in the process of removing their troops from the immediate firing line, it was merely a ques- tion of time before Britain, France and Italy withdrew their troops as well. There is no doubt that this withdrawal will lead to heavy fighting. It will be taken by everyone as a signal for further slaughter. On Wednesday — a new development for Beirut — revolutionary Islamic zealots ap- peared on the streets ordering women to dress modestly and telling all bar-owners to stop serving alcohol or risk being shot.
The preliminaries have already begun with at least 200 people being killed and hundreds of others wounded last week, nearly all of them civilians. The precise cause of the latest fighting has predictably been lost in the inevitable cycle of recriminations. In effect it is the outcome of the lack of any progress towards the na- tional reconciliation formula outlined at last December's Geneva peace talks. As a preliminary to any resumption of the talks, all the factions agreed to the principle of a security plan for the greater Beirut area. But in the ensuing two months the security plan, a modest proposal which would have provided for the disengagement of the war- ring factions and would have helped to con- solidate the limited writ of President Gemayel's government, has disappeared without trace. The government failed to reach agreement with opposing factions on even the most fundamental points, such as the positions which the Lebanese army might occupy.
So long as the talking continued, however, President Gemayel had two very important factors working in his favour, namely the growing strength of the Lebanese army and the seeming commit- ment of the Shi'ite Moslems, in contrast to the idiosyncratic behaviour of Mr Jumblatt, to find a workable, lasting settlement. But the Shi'ite Moslems have an inherent suspi- cion of the Lebanese government, which they fear is working exclusively for Chris- tian interests. They therefore insisted on the right to have their own militiamen to pro- tect the civilian areas until a permanent solution was agreed.
At the same time as this dialogue was tak- ing place the Lebanese government was spending a small fortune rebuilding the Lebanese army, with encouragement from the Americans, with the intention of creating a force capable of standing up to all the private militias. The Shi'ite Moslems were content to let this happen because more than half the army were Shi'ites and their leader Nabih Berri knew, and often stated, that if ever the army attacked Moslem positions, he could call on all the Shi'ite soldiers to leave the army.
Thus the worst thing that could have hap- pened to President Gemayel was for his army to become engaged in a conflict with the Shi'ite Moslems, and this is what happened. Incensed by the intensive shell- ing of Shi'ite Moslem civilian areas by the
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