Militias Stonewall Central Government in South Lebanon

By Marilyn Raschka

If there were a "Who's Who in South Lebanon," the Lebanese government would not be listed. The important headings would include Israel, the PLO, Hezbollah, Amal, the "South Lebanon Army" (SLA) and UN troops.

In January, the Lebanese government decided to remedy this. It announced that in February it would deploy army troops into the Iqlirn Al-Tuffah province as a first step in reasserting control of the whole South.

The choice of this 50-square-mile sector in the foothills east of the coastal road has military, political and demographic motives. Once the arena where Amal battled Hezbollah, a peace accord brokered through Damascus in October 1990 quieted the area enough for its shaken residents to return. The Lebanese government would like to see them stay, and the army, once in place, will make sure conditions are conducive to doing so.

The deployment of the army was carefully planned to seek cooperation from members of the old who's who. Lebanese Foreign Minister Fares Boueiz made contacts with the US, France, Britain and other European countries to secure what he called " international cover" for the deployment. UN Secretary Marack Goulding lent support in early January during a trip he makes several times a year to inspect UNIFIL (UN Interim Forces in Lebanon), established in part to oversee the withdrawal of Israel after its invasion in 1978. A second provision of the UN Resolution that set up UNIFIL calls for assisting the Lebanese government in reasserting its authority all the way to the Israeli border. Boueiz also contacted Arab states with special ties to the PLO. He asked that they pass on a simple message: "Please don't give the Israelis an excuse to attack South Lebanon. Exercise self-restraint."

Similar appeals went out to Lebanese resistance groups. What followed was clearly not a part of that script. Palestinian rocket barrages into Israel's "security zone" attracted Israeli "retaliatory" air raids on Palestinian installations until, on Feb. 5, the Amal militia announced there would be no further exchanges of fire.

The exodus of civilians from South Lebanon is an old story. Chronic economic problems have made the area the poorest in the country. Heaped on top of that have been unstable security conditions—the result of a vicious circle of PLO activity, Israeli reprisals, the growth of indigenous resistance groups and surrogate militias.

Reeling under these cycles of deteriorating security, and increasingly despairing of a peace settlement to end 15 years of turmoil, thousands of war-weary Southern Lebanese have traveled to neighboring Arab countries and to nearby Cyprus to apply for immigration visas—to anywhere.

Boueiz and other Lebanese leaders see a new and sinister side to the exodus. They fear, ironically, that migration of Lebanese from the South could make room for the thousands of Palestinians that Israel would like to expel from the occupied territories. That expulsion would, the argument goes, open up land in the West Bank for Soviet Jews flooding into Israel.

A Familiar Exodus

On Jan. 18, a familiar exodus took place at the US Embassy in Beirut. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and his US mini-staff hastily departed by helicopter to Cyprus. Even in the staunchly Christian neighborhood where the embassy is located, pro-Saddam Hussain feelings coupled with anti-American sentiments proved too potentially dangerous.

But the "arrival " of Iraqi missiles in Israel did far more damage. Thousands of Lebanese residents fled Israel's 6-to-10mile-wide "security zone" in Lebanon, which is patrolled by Israel's surrogate army, the SLA militia, with an estimated 1,000 Israeli soldiers as backup.

Israel furthered the panic by distributing leaflets in the zone with instructions on how to cope with the effects of chemical warfare. It even suggested to some 1,300 Lebanese from the zone who work in Israel that they buy gas masks from the Israelis at $100 each.

Lebanese residents remembered another reason to leave. In 1990, Israel carried out 21 air raids in the area. No one kept count of the mock raids, or the frequent shelling of Lebanese villages by the SLA following a resistance operation by Hezbollah or an affiliated group.

As-Safir, a Beirut daily that does an excellent job of covering the South, in a recent in-depth look at the exodus of the Lebanese from South Lebanon and the emigration of Soviet Jews to Israel, asked: "Could this be a mere coincidence? Is it possible the Lebanese civil war has performed a political function by undermining the demographic situation and restructuring it so as to conform with Israel's own demographic interests?"

Meanwhile, the Lebanese government is struggling with its own Palestinian problem. Its determination to disarm all militias allows for no exceptions. "All Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias will be disbanded and their weapons handed over to the legitimate authorities, " the government declares. The term "non-Lebanese" refers to the 11,000 Palestinian fighters in Lebanon.

The Lebanese government's determination to disarm all militias allows for no exceptions.

In 1986 the Lebanese parliament declared null and void a 1969 agreement which allowed the PLO to set up bases on Lebanese soil. Lebanese Prime Minister Omar Karami has ignored recent demands by the PLO that a new accord defining Palestinian-Lebanese relations be signed. The Sunni prime minister, whose sectarian community was once the closest Lebanese faction to the Palestinians, publicly announced that Lebanon will abide by the armistice agreement signed with Israel 42 years ago.

It is unlikely, however, that the Lebanese authorities possess the capability to go into the camps and disarm the guerillas. The armed Palestinian factions still maintain bases inside the 11 Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.

There is also doubt about meeting the present deadline of March 15 for dissolving the militias. Although Greater Beirut is basically militia-free, the gunmen have relocated to areas elsewhere in the country.

In response to the government's plan, the pro-Iranian Shi'i militia Hezbollah issued a statement of its own: "[The government should] differentiate between militias and the role of the resistance ... in its legitimate struggle against Zionist occupation."

For its part, the most formidable "who" in the South, Israel, issued a statement of its own: "If the presence of the Lebanese army in the area is exploited by terrorist groups to mount guerrilla activity against us, we will certainly respond." And, the Israeli statement warned, in such a case the Lebanese army would be subjected to danger as well.

Marilyn Raschka is an American faculty member at the American University of Beirut and an editor of the Americans for Justice in the Middle East newsletter.