Lebanese Foes, Battling on 3 Fronts, Appear Poised for Decisive Struggle

Christian infantrymen, dug in on Hill 888, peered along the high, flare-lit ridge at Souq el Gharb before dawn Tuesday, watching for Muslim infiltrators and a resumption of last week’s ground assault.

Far below, on the Mediterranean coast in West Beirut, the presses of pro-Syrian Muslim newspapers were rolling. One, As Safir, reported the massing of French warships off the coast and said it was meant to ensure that “fresh arms supplies reached the Christian forces.”

The bloody conflict in Lebanon appeared to be poised for a decisive struggle.

The crushing, indiscriminate shelling by both sides, which has killed more than 700 civilians in the past five months, has diminished in the past week after the United Nations called for a cease-fire. But so far, none of the antagonists have embraced a truce without conditions unacceptable to the others.

Political initiatives have been abandoned. Indeed, Syria especially appears to be impatient about returning to an artillery war that has been decisive only in its damage to noncombatants and their property.

Focus on Ground, Sea

Now, the focus in Lebanon is on ground and naval movements. After pounding Beirut to its knees, driving five-sixths of the population out of the city, military leaders are concentrating on their maps and rosters, according to reports from Beirut.

What they show is that the Christians and the Syrians and their allied militias are joined on three main fronts encircling the 310-square-mile Christian enclave in central and northern Lebanon. The fourth side is the Christian-controlled segment of the Mediterranean coastline. The fronts are:

The mountain approaches to the Christian turf. These run from the commanding ridgeline at Souq el Gharb, about six miles southeast of Beirut, north to the upland town of Bikfaya, home of the Gemayel clan of Maronite Christian leaders.

This front blocks the most direct Syrian access to East Beirut and the presidential palace at Baabda, the seats of Christian power. About 60 miles east and south lies Damascus, the Syrian capital. The main road runs from Damascus across the Bekaa Valley to the Chtoura junction, then west across the mountains to Beirut.

Direct Route Closed

But the direct route from the mountains is no longer open to either side. Druze militiamen at Aley and Syrians emplaced around Bhamdoun control the road east of Souq el Gharb. The long-evacuated strategic village projects like a Christian fist into the Muslim positions, safeguarding the down-ridge roads to Baabda, but it is exposed on three sides. Military analysts say it had been anticipated that last week’s first ground assault would take place there.

With the direct road from Damascus shut off by Christian firepower as it approaches Beirut, Syrian troops and supplies are forced to detour south at a junction east of Bhamdoun and travel through the Druze-controlled Shouf Mountains, reaching the Mediterranean coastal road at a point below Damour.

Beirut’s Green Line, the oldest and most visible front between Christian and Muslim in Lebanon. Stretching south from the port area of the capital, the Green Line, established in the early months of the civil war in 1976, separates militia and army positions in the heart of the city. What had been a major thoroughfare has become a gritty, sandbagged, powder-scorched combat zone over the years. This is the urban warfare front.

At times in the 14 years of civil war, traffic between Muslim west and Christian east has moved freely, usually with militia-guaranteed safe passage at the so-called Museum Crossing in the center of the line. In the long years of war, neither Christian nor Muslim military units have crossed the line in force, but snipers and machine-gunners keep the zone closely covered, and fire fights across the line are common.

The northern, coastal front, the most recently developed and therefore the most uncertain. Christian power along the coast stretches north from Beirut through the ports of Juniyah and Jubayl. Syrian strength is seated at the northern city of Tripoli and runs down the coast to the town of Batroun. Between Syrian-controlled Batroun and Christian-manned Jubayl lies the Madfoun River, the line of the northern front. To the east lie mainly Christian-controlled foothills, and beyond towers Mt. Lebanon, impassable from east to west, a region of glacial ski resorts where the rich can live out the war in chalets.

Coastal Drive Feared

Syrian movements on the northern front have alarmed the Christian military in the past 10 days. There have been no ground attacks in the north, just fire to test Christian response, but a successful offensive down the coastal road would interrupt Christian access to the sea and the arms-supply ships that run the Syrian blockade of Christian ports.

The commanders scrutinizing enemy strengths and weaknesses along these fronts are Gen. Hashem Mouallak, commander of the estimated 40,000 Syrian troops deployed in Lebanon, and Maj. Gen. Michel Aoun, the 5-foot-4-inch Maronite leader who has vowed to drive the Syrians out of the country.

Aoun is both commander of the Lebanese army and head of the Christian Cabinet of the divided Lebanese government. He is 54 years old, a graduate of advanced military studies in France and the United States and an artillery expert.

There is less on the public record concerning Mouallak, but his ruthlessness is recorded in Syrian history. He commanded the troops that crushed a fundamentalist revolt in the city of Hama in 1982. The city was heavily bombarded, at the cost of thousands of lives.

Syrian officials admit only that their military is supporting Lebanese “nationalists,” an uneasy amalgam of Muslim militias under Syrian and Iranian tutelage. They include:

Walid Jumblatt’s Progressive Socialist Party militia of an estimated 4,000 fighters, backed by at least that many reserves and armed with Syrian-supplied, Soviet-made tanks and artillery. Jumblatt’s gunners have openly joined the Syrians in the artillery war against Aoun’s forces.

The Shiite militias, Amal and Hezbollah, whose bloody rivalry has only recently been restrained under Iranian pressure. Nabih Berri’s Amal and Hezbollah, guided by spiritual leader Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, have so far taken no part in the five-month-old war, but they were represented at a war council in Damascus last week and pledged to join the struggle to oust Aoun. Amal’s forces are estimated to number 6,500 and Hezbollah’s 3,500, both equipped basically with small arms: automatic rifles, machine guns and grenade launchers.

A handful of smaller militias--the Lebanese Communist Party’s, for instance--ill-equipped and ill-trained to take part in a war against the Christian forces.

Aoun himself commands 20,000 soldiers in the Christian brigades of the Lebanese army. He has the grudging support of the Lebanese Forces, a tough, rightist Maronite militia led by Samir Geagea. The militia fields 6,000 fighters and is capable of mobilizing many more, military analysts say. Iraq, which has entered the Lebanese picture in the past year to aggravate Syrian ambitions, has supplied Geagea’s troops with first-rate weapons, including about 120 tanks.

The army brigades commanded by Aoun are U.S.-trained and are equipped with late-model American weapons. They are considered the best field units in the struggle. The officers are all Christians; some of the men in the ranks are Muslim.

Soviet-Made Weapons

The Syrian firepower is provided by Soviet-made 155-millimeter and 130-millimeter cannons, plus the most feared weapon of the war, 240-millimeter mortars that fire a massive projectile with a time fuse. Like all mortars, it is a high-angle-of-fire weapon, and the heavyweight projectile plunges down through the top stories of buildings, then explodes as its fuse ignites near the ground or underground floors, where a building’s residents usually seek shelter.

Despite a 3-to-2 troop advantage in the attack at Souq el Gharb, the Syrian-supported Muslim militiamen could not dislodge Aoun’s 4,500-member 10th Brigade from its fortified positions and were forced to withdraw. Only along the Green Line in Beirut are Christian forces in numerical parity with the Syrians. And there, as elsewhere, the overall strength of the Muslim side is dominant because of the militias.

On the northern coastal front, Aoun faces his toughest problem. According to press reports, the Christian general has his 8th Brigade dug in north of Jubayl--three infantry battalions and one armored battalion equipped with American-made tanks. However, that brigade is under strength at 2,500 soldiers and is facing a Syrian division, plus a second one that is forming. Aoun is reportedly stripping troops from his 9th Brigade on the Green Line to reinforce the northern front along the Madfoun River.

Fighting for Their Homes

If the artillery war becomes a ground war, the struggle will begin on one or more of these three fronts. The Christians would be hard-pressed, analysts say, but could hold out with their superior weapons, training and morale. They would be fighting for their homes, while the Syrians are outsiders in Lebanon.

The Syrians could throw more divisions into the struggle, but Christian shelling of the Damascus road has already made the journey hazardous. Damascus also could use its far superior air force--Aoun has just a handful of planes--but an air war might provoke Israel, turning what started five months ago as Aoun’s attempt to control Lebanon’s ports into another Arab-Israeli war.