Death of a patriot
Charles Glass
Beirut
Saad Haddad, the Lebanese army major whom the Israelis found and funded in South Lebanon in 1976, was buried this Week in his native village of Marjayoun. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir trek- ked north with other Israeli politicians to Pa Y tribute to his 'great friend' at a funeral in St Peter's Greek Catholic church. The Lebanese army and government, whom Haddad had served for 20 years before he established his militia, boycotted the ser- vice, but a few Lebanese Christian leaders from Beirut attended. Leftist newspapers Condemned the late major as an Israeli agent, which he was. He was also something most Lebanese find impossible to under- stand: a patriot. He may have been Misguided and used by men more cynical than he, as good soldiers often are, but he Loved his country. In 1982, in his simple house in Mar- JaYoun where he lived with his wife and six daughters, Haddad told me: 'Many Lebanese cannot understand why Major Haddad is fighting. If not for Lebanon, for What? It's something new for the Leban- Lese2 He sincerely believed his Israeli benefactors had no intention of occupying Lebanon permanently. And if they did? !ro against it,' he said. 'I would not fight tne IDF (Israeli Defence Forces), but I Would resign.' Haddad's illness, said by his family to had been cancer, in an Israeli hospital has !ld an unexpected consequence. It has led indirectly to renewed combat in and around Beirut in which scores of people have died. The chain of apparently unrelated events began with the decision of a military tribunal in Beirut, apparently out of sym- pathY for the dying man, to restore Had- dad's commission. The army had stripped 'mu of his rank in April 1979 when he declared a small area in south Lebanon around Marjayoun to be an independent `Free Lebanon'. Called Haddadland by the PLO forces that Haddad was fighting, the strip was an Israeli protectorate which infr- inged Lebanese sovereignty. But it was, in the view of Haddad and many other Chris- tian officers, the only area of the south Where the PLO did not rule.
Of itself, restoration of a major's corn- Mission to a dying man need not have led to righting. But delicate negotiations were Under way in Beirut and Damascus to disen- gage fighting forces in the area between Beirut and the Israeli-occupied south. The Nan, as it was being negotiated by the Lebanese-born Saudi millionaire Rafic _Hariri, called for the Christian Lebanese Forces militia to withdraw from all its posi- tions in the hills and the coastal highway south of the capital. It also called for their replacement by units of the Lebanese army in some positions and paramilitary police in others close to the lines of the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt. The Lebanese forces wanted very much to leave the scene of their defeat last summer, and on the face of it there was nothing in the plan that Jumblatt should have objected to.
Then, it appears, Jumblatt learned of the military tribunal's decision on Haddad. The Druze leader was already anxious that the army might be moving too close to some of his more vulnerable positions, but he then threw a spanner into the works which the government would not take out. He demanded that the army restore the pay and promotions of the Druze officers, including the chief of staff, who left the army last September rather than continue fighting against their co-religionists in the moun- tains. The army agreed to pay them, but it refused to add their names to the new year's promotion list. Jumblatt was furious. It appeared to him and others that this was another case of the army favouring a Chris- tian officer over Muslims and Druze.
Suleiman Franjieh, the Maronite former president who is a member with Jumblatt in the Syrian-supported National Salvation Front, raised the subject at lunch last week with President Amin Gemayel's adviser, Wadih Haddad (no relation). Haddad had gone to Franjieh's north Lebanese village of Zgharta to win Franjieh's support for the disengagement plan. But even Franjieh, who respected Major Haddad because Had- dad had obeyed his orders in the early 1970s to fight the Israelis, told Wadih Haddad that the government could not restore the commission of a Christian officer and
ignore the Druze. After all, the army had agreed to pay them, so why not promote t hem?
As usual, discussions reached an impasse. Efforts by the three foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Syria and Lebanon to agree on disengagement failed. The Syrians were again raising two political issues unrelated to the security scheme: the 17 May agree- ment between Lebanon and Israel and the presence of the multinational forces in Beirut, both of which Syria opposed. Lebanon wanted to leave these subjects to the National Reconciliation Conference in Geneva, but Syria wanted a commitment from Lebanon in advance of the security plan. So, the much-abused ceasefire was abused even more, by all sides. Shiite Muslim militiamen battled the army in the streets of Beirut, and the army and the Druze exchanged artillery fire. The Lebanese Forces militia shelled Druze villages, and the Druze shelled Christian East Beirut. At this writing, the fighting has not stopped — nor has there been signifi- cant movement of forces to indicate that any party is fighting for a particular objec- tive. Just more carnage, more innocent Lebanese men, women and children to bury and bandage.
Dany Chamoun, son of former president Camille Chamoun, attended Haddad's funeral in south Lebanon and on Tuesday invited several journalists to his East Beirut apartment for lunch. It was the kind of pleasant, informal affair in which the Lebanese excel. Young Chamoun no doubt sees himself as a successor to President Gemayel when Gemayel's term ends in 1988. He said the security plan was more or less dead and that its supposed ultimate goal, a return to the Geneva conference which adjourned last 4 November, was dead as well. In his view, Geneva was a disaster because Syria, which attended as an observer, had used it not to foster Lebanese reconciliation but to attack the 17 May agreement.
The only way out, Chamoun said, was for talks without the Syrians. He said that representatives of all the Christian com- munities — from the Maronites and Greek Orthodox to the Armenians and Assyrians — would meet at the end of this month to issue a common call to the Muslims for talks on reform. Chamoun seemed to think he had found a way to bypass the Syrians. These 'community talks' would get the Lebanese to agree among themselves and then confront the occupiers, Israel and Syria, with a fait accompli.
Easier said than done. For one thing, the leader who represents most of the Chris- tians of the North, Suleiman Franjieh, will undoubtedly boycott the Christian meeting. And it is unlikely that the two most power- ful opposition leaders, the Druze Jumblatt and the Shiite Nabbi Berri, will offend their Syrian backers by going outside the Geneva framework. Obviously Lebanon needs something to jolt it out of this deadlock, but shake-ups usually come in military rather than political form.
Previous page
