City Largely Calm Under Security Force : An Affable Syrian General Is New ‘Ruler’ of Beirut

A Syrian soldier in the raspberry-red uniform and saucer-shaped helmet of a paratrooper seemed oblivious to his surroundings. Gripping a Soviet-made rocket launcher, he paced in front of a lingerie shop on Hamra Street, West Beirut’s once-fashionable shopping boulevard, as Lebanese women minced by on stiletto heels.

On the beachfront Corniche Mazraa this week, men sipping Turkish coffee under garish beach umbrellas hardly spared a glance for the spectacle of a passing security patrol--a station wagon of Syrian soldiers, a truck containing Lebanese policeman and, finally, an armored car with Lebanese army troops morosely bringing up the rear like a caboose.

Several hundred Syrian soldiers have been deployed in the predominantly Muslim half of the Lebanese capital since July 4, a week after a new security plan went into effect. After months of anarchy, described by residents as the worst in memory, a semblance of calm has returned to the capital.

In addition to the welcome respite from Lebanon’s 11 years of factional fighting, West Beirut, for all practical purposes, has had a new ruler as well. Since power in Lebanon is directly related to firepower on the streets, the new man is not even Lebanese, but an affable Syrian army officer named Brig. Gen. Ghazi Kanaan, the personal emissary of Syrian President Hafez Assad.

“Kanaan really is the new ruler in Beirut,” a Lebanese newspaper editor said. “We call him the Syrian high commissioner.”

Another prominent Lebanese, who asked not to be identified, said: “Kanaan is really running things these days, the focus of all attention. It’s just like it used to be when (Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman) Yasser Arafat was in charge.”

Virtually every day, the Beirut newspapers carry accounts of other warlords such as Nabih Berri of the Shia Muslim militia Amal and Walid Jumblatt, leader of the Druze militia group, being summoned to Kanaan’s office.

Officially, Kanaan is the mudiir istitla’at, a title whose English equivalent has a sinister ring: head of surveillance. In Syria these days, however, it is the military intelligence that seems to have the confidence of President Assad.

Physically, Kanaan seems to be the antithesis of the security man. Immaculately attired in conservative civilian dress, he jokes frequently and speaks of a passion for jogging. Shunning the Syrian predilection for secrecy, Kanaan courteously receives journalists and supplicants at his temporary headquarters at Beirut’s Beau Rivage Hotel.

Assad’s Trouble-Shooter

Kanaan has been Assad’s trouble-shooter for Lebanon for several years and has demonstrated that he is capable of ruthlessness when the occasion demands. In 1985, he supervised the siege of Tripoli, in which Syrian artillery leveled a significant portion of the northern port city to end a rebellion by Sunni Muslim fundamentalists opposed to the Arab Democratic Party, a militia group supported by Damascus.

Since June, 1985, when fighting first erupted between Shia Muslim militiamen and Palestinian guerrillas at three refugee camps south of Beirut, the Syrians have maintained a sizable contingent in West Beirut, but they were nearly all intelligence agents in plainclothes attire.

Unable to stem the anarchy of West Beirut, however, the Syrians decided to bow to Lebanese requests and send a small force of uniformed troops to the city, engaging in more of a police action than a military deployment. It was the first appearance of Syrian troops in the capital since they were chased out by the Israelis in 1982.

‘A State of Chaos’

“It’s strictly a security plan to put an end to a state of chaos which was virtually unbearable,” said Salim Hoss, a Sunni Muslim who is Lebanon’s minister of education. “The economy, social system and human existence were at a point of collapse, and we needed rescue.”

Estimates of the size of the military force, composed mostly of paratroops, range from 200 to a more likely 600 men, in addition to the 1,000 security men already here.

The key decision that helped persuade the Syrians to send in the troops was a unanimous agreement from the myriad Muslim factions not to oppose the deployment.

“The fundamental thing which has helped us the most,” Kanaan said in an interview, “was the commitment of all the parties on the ground.”

In Kanaan’s view, the proper role of the Syrian soldiers is to provide “moral support” for the Lebanese internal security forces that have ostensibly replaced the militia gunmen on the streets.

The Use of Force

“While we are here primarily for moral support, we are also capable of materially supporting the security plan with the use of force,” Kanaan said.

Although the Syrian deployment so far has taken place without overwhelming hitches--an attack by gunmen on a civilian bus July 19, leaving four people dead, was a definite setback--Kanaan has had his hands full trying to extend the security plan to other areas besides West Beirut and the international airport.

Hezbollah, the militant Shia Muslim “Party of God,” which is closely allied with Iran, had opposed the entry of Syrian troops into the mostly Shia slums south of the capital, in what was seen as a direct challenge to Syrian authority. Among other things, Hezbollah was believed to be holding American and French hostages in the southern suburbs, and deployment there will make the detention of foreigners easier to detect.

Dropping Opposition

But, after meeting with Kanaan, one of the mullahs who acknowledges being a leader of Hezbollah, Sheik Ibrahim Amin, announced that he was dropping his previous opposition.

“We had some observations and queries,” Amin was quoted by newspapers as saying, “but they did not reach the point of being a stumbling block.”

Another headache for Kanaan is the presence south of Beirut of the three refugee camps in which there are large numbers of armed Palestinian guerrillas, many of them loyal to Arafat, who is despised by the Damascus regime.

During two rounds of fighting in the camps, Syria’s main allies in Lebanon, the Shia militia known as Amal, was unable to seriously penetrate the camps despite overwhelming firepower.

In the last week, Amal forces have been constructing huge earthen revetments on the camps’ perimeter near Beirut airport, leading some to conclude that a new offensive against the Palestinians may be in the offing.

No Israeli Objection

Paradoxically, Israel, which has demanded the withdrawal of all Syrian forces from Lebanon in the past, has raised no protest to the latest move, leading to the suspicion in some circles that the potential of conflict between the Palestinians and the Syrian-fundamentalist alliance may account for Israel’s lack of apparent concern. Even the U.S. State Department, which generally takes the Israeli view in Lebanon, has not expressed opposition to the Syrian move.

One factor that apparently motivated the Syrian involvement was the deteriorating Lebanese economy, which was harmful to Syria’s own economic stability, since most of its goods pass through Lebanese hands.

In the last year, Lebanon has suffered the collapse of its currency--it began the year at 17 pounds to the dollar and now stands at 46 to the dollar--as well as 200% price inflation, massive unemployment and a breakdown of infrastructure.

Money Going Out

“The only businesses booming in Beirut these days are moving companies,” quipped one Westerner who has been a resident since the 1950s. “There is still a big flow of money going out and nothing coming in.”

There are gasoline shortages in both West and East Beirut--four people were wounded in the Christian sector this month during a shoot-out in a gasoline line. Prices fluctuate so wildly that many shops have adopted the practice of listing the prices in U.S. dollars rather than Lebanese pounds.

Education Minister Hoss and other Lebanese political figures acknowledged in interviews that the security plan will work only temporarily unless a political solution can be found soon.

The Syrian deployment has been denounced by Christian leaders in East Beirut as illegal, an attitude that, in part, reflects the fact that without rampant instability in West Beirut, the Christian militias lose their reason for existence.

‘We are going to provide the Lebanese people with a chance to breathe,” Kanaan said. “Hopefully they will use the rest to think about a political settlement.”