The Perils of Peacekeeping

Two years after the Syrians Lebanon to end its civil war, peace seems as elusive as ever. Last fighting once again broke out between Christian militiamen in the eastern of Beirut and Syrian forces, who the area with rockets, mortars and artillery in an effort to dislodge them. The Syrians have tried to stabilize the country maintaining a balance of power--initially, by moving against an insurgent Palestinian and Muslim left, more recently by attacking pro-Israeli Christians who threaten to partition the country. But for Syrian President Hafez Assad, Lebanon threatens to become a Viet Nam: by pulling his forces out, he risks the renewal of civil war and possibly the installation of a pro-Israeli government in Beirut; by keeping his troops in Lebanon indefinitely, he creates a costly morale and manpower drain on his own country. TIME Correspondent Dean Brelis, recently in Syria and Lebanon, reports:

All along the historic road from Beirut to Damascus, Syrian soldiers can be found, manning big guns and tanks by day, huddling beside tents and fires by night. "Lebanon is a thankless, difficult, lonely task," says one high-ranking Damascus official. No one knows that better than Assad's 30,000 troops, who at a cost of $3 million a day provide the bulwark of the Arab peace-keeping force inside Lebanon. In a land where there are more guns than people, violence and bloodshed are always near, ambush and assassination everyday occurrences. But without the Syrian presence the violence would, in all likelihood, be even more brutally unconfined.

Having an army in Lebanon poses a major problem for Assad. So far, an estimated 600 to 700 Syrian soldiers have died there. The requirements of the military presence in Lebanon have also seriously weakened the Syrian forces on the Golan Heights; the current troop level there is far below what it was in 1973, and no combat match at all for Israeli forces. To make up for the huge losses Syria suffered in the 1973 war (7,000 men, 600 tanks and 165 aircraft), the 230,000-man army has been rebuilt and re-equipped by the Soviets, with the help of 2,000 to 3,000 Russian advisers. "The Soviets have turned Syria into a huge weapons depot," says one Western military analyst. "But it's an embarrassment of outdated hardware. This means that the Syrian army's combat capability is very inefficient. About all they can do is defend."

Assad has no intention of pulling out of Lebanon, at least so long as the Israelis supply and advise the Christian militiamen. He has recently set about purging Israeli-trained officers from the Lebanese army and dismantling the various factions' checkpoints and military facilities in Beirut, thus leaving only the Syrian army responsible for security in the capital. Assad's goal is to have a Syrian presence throughout Lebanon, except for the areas south of the Litani River, which are patrolled by units of the 6,000-man United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).

Back home, Assad, 48, remains firmly in control after eight years in power. In almost every way, the law of Syria--sometimes benevolent, often harsh--represents the will of Assad. When there was widespread criticism of corruption last year, he took a hard look at the influence buying of top government officials by free-spending entrepreneurs and fired his Premier, the Deputy Premier, a score of high-ranking civil servants and about a hundred more of lower rank.

But Assad does have opposition. Syria is a predominantly Sunni Muslim country. There are complaints that the Alawites, an Islamic sect to which Assad belongs, represent only 10% of the people most top government offices. Some hard-line Baath Party members grumble that Assad is watering down the Marxist policies of previous regimes, while Syrian entrepreneurs think he has moved too slowly away from Baathism's doctrinaire socialism.

Assad is no democrat. The opposition is subjected to wiretapping, and enemies of the regime are not only imprisoned or exiled but sometimes publicly hung in Damascus' main square after summary trials. Assad keeps the security forces firmly under his control (all of the senior officers must be Alawi). Inside Damascus, a special 9,000-man infantry division, commanded by Assad's brother Rifaat, protects the President and his regime. There are stories of Rifaat's ruthless excesses: people losing a choice villa or apartment because he wanted it for a friend, or brutal beatings of someone who is less than polite to Rifaat's intimates. Nonetheless, says a Western diplomat, "without Rifaat, Assad would not sleep as comfortably as he does."

Assad's admirers call him "the Tito of the Arab world"--a military man who has become an astute politician on a precarious world stage. In seven years, Syria's per capita income has jumped 203% to the present $760, more than twice that of Egypt. The Soviet Union's stranglehold on Syrian imports and exports of the early 1970s has been broken, and today the U.S., Europe and Japan do more business in Syria than does Moscow. Assad is also trying to broaden his country's foreign political alignments. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's visit to Jerusalem, which Assad warned would be a fateful mistake, is still viewed in Damascus as an "outrageous disloyalty by a selfish man." Nonetheless, Assad privately tried to modulate the anti-Egyptian anger of such radical Arab states as Libya and Iraq.

The Syrian President has tried to steer a middle course between the superpowers. He has paid cash for Soviet arms and welcomed Soviet help in building the Euphrates Dam (which will probably not be fully operational for another decade because of major flaws in planning). But Assad has parted company with the Soviets over their policy in Ethiopia, where he continues to support the breakaway Eritrean rebels. He also has improved relations with Washington, which allocated his government $90 million in aid this year. Recently, Assad opened up Syria's northeast oil region to two American companies--a sign, some aides say, of his intention to reduce further his country's dependency on Moscow and adopt a completely nonaligned position. qed

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