Syria's Ongoing Lebanese Adventure

By Kurt Mendenhall

The fall of the Shatila refugee camp in southern Beirut to Palestinian guerrillas of Abu Musa's Syrian-directed Fatah-Uprising faction marked a significant military setback for Yasser Arafat. With the fall of Burj AlBarajneh camp, the mainstream Palestine Liberation Organization would lose its last independent base in Lebanon north of Sidon.

The PLO setback is a victory for Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad's efforts to establish firm control of Muslim areas of Beirut before the scheduled Lebanese presidential elections, and follows the Syrian occupation of Beirut's Shiite neighborhoods.

Syria interventions follow a clear pattern in Lebanon, which is a crazy quilt of sects, classes, and ethnic groups In a situation of fundamental conflict and change.

These latest extensions of Syrian control came 15 months after a previous Syrian intervention in West Beirut to prevent the destruction of the Syrian. supported Shiite Amal militia at the hands of militiamen from Druze leader Walid Jumblatt's Progressive Socialist Party and from the National Resistance Movement, aligned with the Lebanese Communist Party. Amal's military ineffectiveness, despite its rapid victory over the Iranian-directed Shiite Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon, has presented a persistent problem for Syria, which until April had been supporting an unsuccessful Amal siege of Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut to thwart the re-emergence of a PLO military infrastructure in Lebanon.

Syria's interventions follow a clear pattern in Lebanon, which is a crazy quilt of sects, classes, and ethnic groups in a situation of fundamental conflict and change. While attempting to preserve its own interests in Lebanon, Syria seeks to maintain at least some vestige of stability. To continue doing so, Syria might eventually find itself seeking to occupy all of Lebanon. Improbable as this seems, given the hostility such a step would arouse both inside and outside Lebanon, it would be the partial realization of the dream of "Greater Syria," restoring ties that were severed when World War I broke up the Ottoman Empire of the Turks.

It Began with the French

In 1920, under a League of Nations mandate, the French awarded their Maronite Christian clients a state of their own. To the core Maronite area of Mount Lebanon, the French unwisely appended the Muslim areas of Tripoli, the BekaaValley, and the south, setting the stage for subsequent sectarian strife as the Muslim population gradually exceeded the Christian population.

The impact of the mandate period on Syria was profound. Damascus, which was under French mandate, lost its markets in Palestine, which was under British mandate. In the north, trade routes to Aleppo, then economically the most important city of Syria, were severed by France's cession in 1939 of the port of Iskenderun to Turkey. Homs, the largest market town of central Syria, saw its Mediterranean access through Tripoli cut off by tariff barriers erected by the French in the interests of their Maronite clients. While some French and Maronite spokesmen foresaw the difficulty of maintaining the artificially expanded state, most jumped on the bandwagon of Christian expansionism.

What Syria wants is the "Finlandization" of Lebanon.

With the retreat of Western imperialism after World War II, Maronite' dominated Lebanon was faced with slowly awakening Muslim and other groups demanding radical change in keeping with the rising tides of nationalism, anti-Zionism, and socialism elsewhere in the Arab world.

After a brief civil war in 1958, which culminated in the first US Marine intervention, Lebanon literally fell apart early in 1975. The collapse of the "national compact," which apportioned government jobs and parliament seats by religious sect, based on 40-year-old census figures, was accelerated by the ongoing struggle between Israel, which made an alliance with the Maronites, and the Arab world, which encouraged and funded Palestinian and Muslim militias on Lebanese soil. With US encouragement, Syria intervened reluctantly in the civil war in 1976, to prevent a Palestinian-Muslim leftist victory that would have exposed Syria to Israeli military operations against a greatly strengthened Palestinian guerrilla force. Later, the Syrian effort was directed against attempts at Maronite aggrandizement.

Israel's disastrous invasion of 1982 sought to extirpate the last vestiges of organized Palestinian nationalism, distance a Christian Lebanon from pan-Arab influences and, incidentally, drive the Syrians from Lebanon. Instead, it led to yet another collapse of Lebanese institutions and sovereignty and to a major clash between the Israelis and Syrians for both the soul and territory of Lebanon.

Allied with Syria against the 1982 Israeli invasion were a host of disparate groups united only by their opposition to the Maronite-controlled government of Lebanon and to its invitation to Israel to invade and expel the Palestinians. These groups included Sunni and Shiite Muslim militias, the Druze-led Progressive Socialist My, the mixed Muslim-Christian Syrian Social-Nationalist Party, the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia, and Palestinian guerrilla groups inside and outside the PLO.

Assad's success in outlasting the Israelis was based upon his utilization of such indigenous groups, both against Israeli forces (and US Marines), and one another, as necessary. Although Syrian forces were always in the background, they were used only to prevent one Lebanese group from totally defeating another.

Iran is the most recent outside power seeking to extend its sphere of influence in Lebanon, and even create a state there modeled after its own. Although Syria seemed unable to persuade Iran to rein in its Hezbollah proxies in Lebanon, in fact Syria has achieved what it wanted to, the pacification of Beirut's Shiite neighborhoods and the withdrawal of many Hezbollah fighters to their previous positions, without firing a shot.

It is symptomatic of Lebanon's extreme factionalism that Assad's actions against Hezbollah are tacitly supported by the US, Israel, and the Arab world, and opposed by PLO mainstream Palestinians and also by Maronite groups, who believe they have the most to lose from Syria's tightening grip on Lebanon.

Syria's enemy is not a particular party but the trend toward Islamic fundamentalism. Sheikh Muhammad Hussein Fadiallah, Hezbollah's presumed spiritual mentor, told a German magazine last year, "You may be able to kill or capture many leaders or people but you cannot throw an entire nation into prison. We are a nation, not a party."

The struggle between Amal and Hezbollah has greatly complicated Syria's efforts to control Lebanon's Shiite community. According to one knowledgeable Syrian source, there are several major reasons for antipathy between Amal and Hezbollah. First, Hezbollah derives most of its membership from Shiite immigrants from the central Bekaa Valley while Amal's rank and file comes mostly from Southern Lebanon. Hezbollah cadres, according to this source, are from particularly unsocialized tribal groups, and this accounts for their recourse to extremist actions, such as kidnapping Western hostages and the attempt to assassinate Syrian Generals Kanaan and Bayrakdar on the night before the current Syrian occupation was to commence. Hezbollah has called for the establishment of a revolutionary Islamic Republic of Lebanon on the Iranian model.Amal, on the other hand, calls for a reformed secular regime with far greater representation for Lebanon'sShiite plurality Secularization and relative equality of opportunity for different religious groups has been a consistent goal of Assad's regime. Another consistent goal has been firm opposition to Muslim fundamentalist opposition movements, Sunni or Shiite, whether in Lebanon or Syria.

Assad vs. Sunni Fundamentalism

An example of Assad's hostility to Sunni fundamentalism in Lebanon has been the very firm repression of Thwhid, the Islamic Unity Movement of Sheikh Shaaban based in Tripoli. Any signs of armed opposition to Syrian troops is dealt with ruthlessly Abdul Halim Khaddam, Assad's proconsul in Lebanon, reportedly told Shaaban that "Tripoli is not dearer to us than Hama," making it clear that Syria is prepared to crush any fundamentalist rebellion in Lebanon's Tripoli as firmly as it crushed Sunni fundamentalists in Syria's Hama. Yet Assad has met with Shaaban to discuss ways of easing tensions in northern Lebanon, just as Assad has met with such Shiite figures as Hussein Musawi, reputedly the leader of Islamic Amal and linked to the obscure Islamic Ahad, which has claimed responsibility for numerous kidnappings and suicide bombings.

Not Taking Any Risks

No serious observers doubt that Syria can crush Hezbollah militarily. But why should it take the risk of igniting a major conflagration in the Bekaa and south Beirut and suffering numerous casualties when patience and diplomacy can prevail? After all, Iran needs Syria far more than Syria needs Iran.

Syria first and foremost desires a unified and stable Lebanon. If it did not, it could have annexed the regions it now controls—roughly 60 percent of the country—and imposed its will there. Syria's refusal to countenance any presence that threatens its own control is well attested by the Syrian orchestrated expulsion of Yasser Arafat's forces from Tripoli when Arafat was attempting to maintain an independent PLO foothold in northern Lebanon after his expulsion from Beirut in 1982 and the closure of his offices in Damascus in 1983.

Some analysts suggest that Syria did not move against Amin Gemayel after the latter's refusal on Feb. 14, 1986, to ratify the tripartite agreement, which was drafted by Syria and signed by the heads of the Shiite, Druze, and Maronite militias, because the only forces that could be relied upon to crush the Lebanese forces were troops recruited from President Assad's own Alawite sect. The fighting, though it might have been brief, would have been bloody, with most of the Syrian casualties coming from Assad's co-religionists. Whatever the reasons for the failure to enforce the tripartite agreement, Assad revealed one of his most consistent characteristics, patience.

What Syria wants is the "Finlandization" of Lebanon. Damascus aspires to the role of regional hegemon, assuring Lebanon' s respect for Syria's wishes without having to dictate specific policy decisions to the Lebanese government. The fact is that Syria, a state with a complex mosaic society ruled by a narrowly based elite, needs Lebanon as an example that pluralistic societies can be made to work on a secularized model. Even the Reagan administration seems belatedly to have recognized the constructive aspects of Syra's role in Lebanon and is attempting to patch together a formula to permit the upcoming elections to occur on schedule.

Syria has never established an embassy in Beirut because of the imperialist dismemberment that a sovereign Lebanon represents. In order to maintain its dominant role, Syria will continue to support Lebanese unity, while defending perceived Syrian interests against any internal or external threat. In the long run, that may prove more attractive to the great majority of Lebanese than any alternative presented by Syria's Israeli or Iranian challengers.

Kurt Mendenhall, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, has traveled extensively in Syria.