Lebanon Nearing the Point of No Return

The terror arrives with the sound of rolling thunder and the flash of perpetual lightning. Hour after hour, petrified families huddle in basements and stairwells as booming howitzers rain shells over the city. For the 1.2 million residents of Beirut, the past month has been a living hell. Rival militias have relentlessly pounded the Muslim and Christian halves of Beirut, with shells tearing into houses, apartment buildings, schools and even hospitals. Ambulances careen through deserted streets scooping up bodies sliced by shrapnel. During early-morning lulls, men scurry out to buy increasingly scarce bread and bottled water. Then they stop at pharmacies to stock up on tranquilizers to help them get through the next barrage.

Lebanon (pop. 3 million), once a lovely oasis of fine beaches, snowcapped mountains and cosmopolitan culture, may be in its death throes. Its brutal civil war, which began 14 years ago this week, shows no sign of ending. Since March 8 the heaviest bombardments in four years have killed 177 and wounded 591. Equally devastating, men, women and children are suffering mental breakdowns from the protracted, indiscriminate terror.

Few understand anymore what is being fought for. The country is rent into sectarian fiefdoms ruled by quarreling Christian, Muslim and Druse warlords. The once thriving economy has all but collapsed. With nine Americans and five other foreigners still held hostage by Muslim gangs, few Westerners any longer dare set foot in the country.

What makes Lebanon's current predicament more hopeless than ever is the disintegration of the presidency. Somehow the office had survived previous crises nominally intact as the main symbol of Lebanese nationhood. But when President Amin Gemayel's six-year term expired in September, factional disputes prevented parliament from electing a successor. As his final act, Gemayel named General Michel Aoun, 53, commander of the mainly Christian Lebanese Army, to head an interim government. Muslim groups rejected Aoun and set up their own government headed by Gemayel's last Prime Minister, Selim Hoss.

Aoun's bold moves to assert his authority triggered the new fighting. In March, Aoun's 20,000-man army took on the Muslims, imposing a sea blockade of five of their illegal ports, used mainly for smuggling drugs and guns. Druse warlord Walid Jumblatt's militia and 40,000 Syrian troops responded with continuous bombardments of Christian neighborhoods. Aoun's forces hit back in kind.

Aoun claims a larger aim -- "a war of liberation" against Syria's occupation army. While some Lebanese laud his moves as patriotic, his tactics risk locking the Christians in a perilous confrontation. Syrian President Hafez Assad adamantly refuses to withdraw, insisting his troops are necessary to maintain at least a semblance of order. Making the situation more ominous, the Christians are getting substantial military support from Assad's archenemy, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who seeks to avenge Assad's support of Iran in the gulf war.

But Lebanon's real trouble goes back to a 1943 unwritten "national pact" giving a dominant share of power to the Christian community. It has battled to hold on against the Muslims, who today are in the majority and are demanding a larger role in governing the country. Now, without even a figurehead President to sustain the fading dream of national reconciliation, and with the big guns drowning out all appeals for peace, Lebanon's chaos may have reached the point of no return.