Reshaping the Country, Syrian-Style

After 19 months of bloodshed and brutality that have taken at least 37,000 lives, the civil war in Lebanon took a hopeful turn last week. Reason: Syrian troops, who only a week earlier had been combatants in the war, suddenly switched to peacemakers and took the road to Beirut--in order to enforce peace between the Christian and Moslem factions. With the tacit permission of other major Arab powers--notably Egypt and Saudi Arabia--Syria was on the verge of turning Lebanon into a de facto protectorate.

Initially at least, the new peacemakers met with little opposition, and even some enthusiasm. "There was no incident at all connected with their entry into the Beirut suburbs," reports TIME's Abu Said Abu Rish from the Lebanese capital. "In the column that pushed down the main Beirut-Damascus highway, one tank crewman was singing Arabic songs through a megaphone; another sat atop his turret playing a shepherd's flute. In some places the troops were received with slaughtered lambs. In others women threw rice and tincture of orange blossoms over them in the traditional sign of welcome.

"When they arrived at the Moslem leftist stronghold of Aley, the highest-ranking commander of the Palestine Liberation Organization there leapt out of his Land Rover to greet his Syrian counterpart. They saluted formally, shook hands, embraced and finally kissed. Everyone was smiling. In the car on the way back to Beirut, the Palestinian commander said: 'I wish they had done this from the beginning, moving into both sides. I hope they never leave Lebanon.' The Syrians, however, were received coolly in Christian areas. At Jounieh civilians on the roadside looked grim, and two militiamen standing with their guns dangling stared in amazement as the tanks rolled by."

Mixed Feelings. The Syrian forces are the spearhead of a pan-Arab army that will eventually reach 30,000 men. Other Arab League nations, including the Sudan and Saudi Arabia, have contributed troops to the Lebanese peace-keeping force. But at summit meetings in Riyadh and Cairo (TIME, Nov. 8), an understanding was reached that the largest contingent of the "Arab Security Force" would be the Syrian brigades sent into Lebanon earlier this year by President Hafez Assad. Some Arab leaders had mixed feelings about so large a Syrian force in Lebanon; they were alarmed by the dominant Syrian presence, but at the same time relieved that any fighting to be done would be by the Syrians. Moving cautiously to avoid confrontations, the Syrian brigades last week probed the suburbs of Beirut to separate the fighting groups there. Only after that did the Syrians plan to move into the capital itself to reunite a city that for all practical purposes has been split into hostile halves, along the so-called green line, for more than a year.

Under terms of the armistice worked out at the summit in Riyadh, the Syrians were also authorized to disarm combatants on both sides. That will be a difficult assignment since neither the Christians nor the Moslem leftists and their Palestinian allies seem ready to disarm voluntarily. Even as the Syrians moved into Beirut, Moslem and Christian gunners let loose a final barrage of shells, killing a dozen civilians in one marketplace that was hit without warning. Returning from a luncheon engagement last week, Christian Moderate Leader Raymond Edde, a former presidential candidate, narrowly escaped assassination at the hands of a mobilized death squad that managed only to wound him in the hip. It was the second time he had been shot in six months.

The first priority of Lebanon's Syrian protectors--after disarming the combatants--is to reunite its Christian and Moslem sectors. "A Swiss-style federal system in Lebanon is unacceptable, totally unacceptable," insists Information Minister Ahmed Iskander in Damascus. "We will not accept partition of Lebanon, or anything that hints of partition."

That position is bound to bring Syria into conflict with Lebanese Christians. As they gained the upper hand in the civil war--with Syrian assistance--the Christians withdrew protectively into an enclave of their own based on the seaport of Jounieh. More recently, with overt help from the Israelis, the Christians have taken over the mountainous area of Lebanon between the Litani River and the Israeli border that was once used by Palestinian guerrillas as a jump-off point from which to attack Israel. The Christians insist that they can police themselves, and want to do so without surrendering their arms. To protest the Syrian demands, nearly 1,500 Christians marched on the presidential palace at Baabda last week and demonstrated their resentment to President Elias Sarkis.

Christian Resentment. The cease-fire force will probably have less trouble with the Palestinians. They were badly battered in skirmishes with Syrian troops before the latest cease-fire took effect, and appear anxious to avoid further confrontations. Under terms of the Riyadh agreement, the Palestinians are supposed to withdraw to the refugee camps from which they operated before the civil war began. Even as the Syrian forces approached Beirut last week, officials of Al-Fatah and other Palestinian groups abandoned their offices in the city and retired to new headquarters inside the camps. The followers of P.L.O. Leader Yasser Arafat were likely to accept the Syrian protectorate; what course hard-line groups like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine would take was less clear.

If any other group puts up determined resistance, the Syrians will probably knock it down, quickly and forcefully. Unlike Assad's initial foray into Lebanon, the Syrian force now has the backing of the Arab League to act as principal peacemaker. The Saudis have indicated their support in an explicit way: Riyadh has agreed to pay at least $18 million of the estimated $90 million it will cost to maintain an Arab peace force in Lebanon for the next six months.

The Syrians seem certain to remain in Lebanon much longer than that, even though Sarkis--in his first television address as President last week--spoke of their presence as "temporary." It will take at least two years, by some estimates, merely to rebuild Lebanon's fragmented army and internal security forces. In parts of Lebanon, the Syrians seem to have settled in for a long stay. In the fertile Bekaa Valley, Syrian currency circulates as easily as the Lebanese pound, and shopkeepers routinely do business in either. Arriving there from Damascus, TIME Correspondent Wilton Wynn stopped at a Lebanese checkpoint manned by a Syrian soldier. "Welcome to our country," he said.

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