Syria takes all the tricks
Patrick Cockburn
The Syrians have emerged as the real winners from the nineteen months of fighting in Lebanon. They have won because at the end of the day their multitude of enemies hated and feared each other a little more than they did the Syrians. Last weekend units of the 30,000 strong Arab League peace-keeping force—overwhelmingly Syrian in composi moved into the Muslim cities of Tripoli and Sidon without resistance. When !he Syrian army last moved on Sidon at the °ginning of June they were met with desperate resistance and twelve of their tanks were destroyed by Palestinian rockets. This time girls threw nothing more lethal than orange blossom, rice and rose water. In Tripoli left-wing gunmen fired their subMachine guns into the air to celebrate and dispatched twelve of their fellow citizens to h°sPital, four of them seriously wounded. For the moment the cheering crowds Which greeted the tanks are just glad that the war ts over. The Minister of Information saYs that the war killed 60,000 Lebanese and wounded 200,000. If this is right, and it very Probably is, then over 8 per cent of the prewar Lebanese population have become ea. sualties. For the scale of killing (given the ze or the Lebanese population) it was as oad as Vietnam. Neither side took prisoners, torture and kidnapping of civilians was c°olmon, heavy artillery was used in crowded urb'an streets and slums. When I was last in Beirut in March the atmosphere of terror and hysteria was almost tangible. The new government of President Sarkis entirely dependent for its strength on the 1Yrlan army. It will be a long time before a -*ebanese army can be created which is ,°Yal to the government and strong enough lo stand against the experienced militias which were raised during the war. The only r„Ddr! of Lebanon not controlled by the t_31rians is in the south of the country: ,netween the Litani river and the Israeli i°order. From here the Palestinians used to mdunell raids on Israel's northern settleaients. The government in Jerusalem has SO waYs insisted that here is the 'red line' iltlith of which the Syrian troops must not °ve if they do not want to risk Israeli react ion.
The threat does not mean very much. The
time for Israeli intervention was before the Syrians were firmly entrenched in Lebanon —and the Syrians are eager to take over control of the border from right-wing Christian militiamen who with Israeli training and arms have established a cordon sanitaire through the border villages. Kama! Jumblatt, the left-wing leader, has threatened to take his own troops down there to evict them if nobody else does.
The success of President Assad of Syria has been extraordinary. Consider the risks of intervening in Lebanon: Assad is personally popular in Syria, more so than his regime, but he and his government come from a minority sect—the Alawites from the mountains east of Latakiah. The last time Syria intervened in somebody else's civil war was in September 1970. Syrian troops and tanks moved into Jordan to support the Palestinians in their war with King Hussein. The attempt was defeated, the government fell and Assad came to power in his so-called 'Corrective Movement.' He could be sure that his major Arab enemies—the Iraqis and the Egyptians—would cause him the maximum trouble in Lebanon. He also knew that any move was likely to become stuck in the Lebanese political mire.
His manoeuvres over nineteen months of fighting have been masterly if Machiavellian. Last year he supported the Muslims and the left with weapons and ammunition but not with enough to ensure their victory. When the first troops from the Syrian army —Palestinian units ironically enough
moved in, the Christians were losing. Their leaders welcomed 'sisterly Syria' whose government they had long denounced.
From February on the Syrians moved steadily towards support for the Christians. They gave them supplies, they sent in more of their own troops. They broke with the PLO. By doing this they made it extremely difficult for the Israelis to intervene—and there was continual pressure from Washington on Jerusalem to keep out of the war. At the Riyadh and Cairo mini-summits the Syrians got their way in all essentials. The peace-keeping force primarily consists of two Syrian divisions. The other Arab contingents are largely a cosmetic addition.
Apart from the Syrians almost everybody else in the fighting has lost. The Palestinians have suffered some 37,000 casualties and have lost the last base from which they could operate in relative freedom—though the political freedom of Lebanon was as important to them as their military training camps. The PLO has not only suffered a defeat but suffered it at the hands of its major ally. For the left-wing groups, the PFLP and the PDFLP, the outlook under Syrian rule is likely to be bleak. Some of their leaders are already packing their bags for the trip to Baghdad, where they will receive a warm welcome.
But there are a few crumbs of comfort for the PLO. The Syrians seem to have dropped their demands for changes in the command of the PLO which would have turned it into a Syrian stooge. And the war in Lebanon has publicised their existence and their plight more than ever before. Israeli hopes that the war in Lebanon would move the PLO from the headlines to the obituary column are certainly mistaken, if only because most Palestinians have nowhere else to go.
The Israelis themselves have always had mixed feelings about the war. The shortterm advantages were that the Syrians had to give all their attention to Lebanon, the Palestinians were being hit hard, the Arab world was split and getting bad publicity world wide. But the Israeli government has also done very little with the time available except to smirk a little. Instead of offering concessions when the Arabs were divided and fighting amongst themselves—even as a diplomatic manoeuvre—President Rabin's government has done nothing. Indeed the divisions between Rabin and Shimon Peres, his Defence Minister, are so extreme that it is difficult to see any coherent policy emerg ing from Jerusalem. Rabin is now in the curious position of being attacked for intransigence by both Moshe Dayan and Arik Sharon, both hawks of somewhat different plumage.
It seems that in the atmosphere of rather edgy amity established at Riyadh and Cairo the Syrians, Egyptians, Saudis and PLO will move towards offering some sort of peace terms. Probably they will also be rejected.
But in the future it will be Syria which will really determine whether the Middle East will move towards peace or war.
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