Damascus Angry as Pact Fails : Tranquility of Gemayel’s Stronghold Shattered as Fears of Syrians Mount

The tranquility and self-confident air of Bikfaya finally has been shattered.

An hour’s drive northeast of Beirut, Bikfaya is a mountain village, one of Lebanon’s oldest. The stately stone houses with the green and red shutters and pine trees by the front door are now mostly deserted. Nearly all of the shops are shuttered.

The town is the ancestral home of President Amin Gemayel and is regarded as a symbol of Maronite Christian power in Lebanon. For the last week, its residents have uncomfortably adjusted to a new reality: Bikfaya has become the latest front line in Lebanon’s 11-year civil war.

Many Are Leaving

“A lot of people are leaving because of the fighting,” said Haroot Sefalian, who was loading the display cases from his shop onto a flat-bed truck. The front of his store had been wrecked by an artillery shell the day before.

“People are very afraid,” added Seman Saina, who was neatly stacking concrete blocks in front of the window of his market. “Everybody is afraid of what the Syrians might do.”

Syria has been furious with Gemayel since Jan. 15, when an insurrection in the Christian heartland led to the overthrow of Elie Hobeika, leader of the main Christian militia called the Lebanese Forces. Only two weeks earlier, Hobeika met with Lebanon’s Muslim militia leaders in Damascus and signed a peace agreement that was painstakingly negotiated by Syria’s President Hafez Assad.

Blow to Syrians

“It was a big blow for the Syrians,” a Lebanese newspaper editor commented, “and now they are going to take their revenge on Gemayel.”

The Syrian regime, while publicly maintaining a Sphinx-like silence about the Lebanese president, has begun working behind the scenes in an apparent effort to topple him from office.

Muslim political leaders, who were summoned to Damascus for consultations, returned to Beirut with calls for a boycott of the regime.

Lebanese Premier Rashid Karami, a perennial optimist, solemnly demanded an immediate end to religious sectarianism in politics. Even Hussein Husseini, a moderate Shia Muslim and the leader of Lebanon’s Parliament, accused Gemayel of making a “serious about-face on the journey to national entente.”

Both Christian and Muslim leaders were skeptical that a boycott would have much practical effect, since Gemayel’s government has been paralyzed for much of the last year. More than anything else, according to Lebanese officials, the sight of such figures as Karami and Husseini attacking Gemayel represents a psychological blow to the president.

Currency in Tailspin

One immediate effect of the depressed mood was that the Lebanese pound went into a tailspin, with damaging implications for the battered Lebanese economy. There were many unconfirmed reports that speculation against the pound was centered mainly in Muslim areas, implying that the decline was an orchestrated political move.

Far more worrying to the Christians were reports of Syrian troop buildups and the possibility of a major military confrontation. The nervousness was increased by a steady stream of bellicose statements from Muslim militia leaders who are closely controlled by the Syrians.

“We are back to the language of the gun, the language of fighting,” declared Walid Jumblatt, the Druze militia leader and Lebanon’s minister of public works and tourism. “We are here in the mountains to define anew the framework for battle, the battle for existence.”

Druze Attack Feared

While Jumblatt is renowned for his colorful verbal excesses, there are genuine fears that the Druze militia might launch an assault against Souq el Gharb, a mountainous region where Christian units of the Lebanese army have been dug in, facing Druze units across the mountains in Aitat for more than two years.

So far, the most serious fighting has been in the area between Bikfaya and Douar el Choueir, where a pro-Syrian militia called the Syrian National Social Party has taken up positions backed by Syrian army troops.

Last week, Syrian special forces soldiers in their distinctive purple and green camouflage uniforms were visible on the roads leading to Douar el Choueir. Syrian tanks and armored vehicles belonging to Syria’s 62nd Brigade were also visible.

“We are fighting against dangerous people supported by the Syrians,” said Tewfik Dagher, leader of the Falangist Party’s militia in Bikfaya. “The fight is against the legal power in Lebanon and to bring pressure on Amin Gemayel to resign.”

Christian Unit Deployed

Arrayed against the Syrian National Social Party and Syrian troops in Bikfaya are elements of the 8th Brigade, a Christian unit that is considered the best in the Lebanese army, as well as the local Falangist fighters.

“We are not fighting the Lebanese army,” said the National Social commander at the Douar el Choueir front lines. “We’re fighting the 8th Brigade because it is a symbol of a state that is being used to serve Israeli interests.”

Up to now, however, the fighting has mostly consisted of sporadic shelling and sniping across a no man’s land, with a handful of casualties on both sides. During a visit by reporters to the Douar el Choueir front, the National Social forces began firing at the Christians in response to a request from a news agency photographer for a picture of the troops in action.

Fighting Exaggerated

The level of fighting has been clearly exaggerated by the news media, local and foreign, as if to suggest that a Syrian assault on Bikfaya is about to be launched at any moment.

Yet most Christian leaders discount the possibility of a Syrian attack, largely because of an awareness by Damascus that a precipitous move now would have the effect of closing Christian ranks behind Gemayel at a time when the Syrians are trying their best to destabilize him.

There is also a strong view in both Christian and Muslim circles that the United States offered secret support to Gemayel to resist the Syrian-brokered peace agreement.

Holders of this belief point to a Reagan Administration’s statement in support of Lebanon’s “constitutional government” at a time when many factions were trying to bring it down.

“The Syrians are trying to squeeze Gemayel on several fronts,” one Western diplomat said in Beirut. “Squeeze him militarily, squeeze him politically, squeeze him economically. The idea is to keep the pressure up until he breaks. But I doubt that they will launch an overt (military) attack.”