Smugglers Dodge Mideast Troubles : Black market: Mule trains provide badly needed goods and keep shaky economy going. Risky trek runs the borders where Lebanon, Syria and Israel intersect.

On most nights, the Nightingale, the Flying Carpet and the King clamber along the rocky smugglers’ trail in the foothills of Mt. Hermon between Lebanon, Syria and Israel.

Carrying American cigarettes, Scotch whiskey and electrical appliances for Syria on their backs, they run the gantlet of Syrian and Israeli soldiers dug in along a front that threads across the snow-capped, 9,200-foot mountain.

On the return leg, they carry diesel fuel from Iran and other goods that are prized in lawless Lebanon, where civil war began in 1975, and central authority collapsed long ago.

The Nightingale, the Flying Carpet and the King are mules specially trained for the six-hour trek on and around Mt. Hermon, where the borders of Lebanon, Syria and Israel intersect.

Because of their special skills, each mule is worth about $3,000, twice the average for a pack animal in southeast Lebanon. Those skills include recognizing and running from anyone in military uniform and leading pack trains of up to 100 mules.

“It’s a no-man’s-land out there,” said Adnan Daher, a 16-year-old smuggler. “The Israelis are on a hill to the west, the Syrians on a hill to the east, and Lebanon behind us.”

No accurate figures on the smuggling trade are available, but diplomats in Syria say it amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Shebaa, a predominantly Sunni Muslim town in the Israeli-occupied sector of south Lebanon, has been a smugglers’ haven for decades. The men of Shebaa have traditionally defied authority.

About 5,000 of Shebaa’s original population of 200,000 still live there, said Mohammed Zoheiri, a sprightly man of 90 who has been mukhtar, or mayor, for 45 years.

The others went to Beirut, other parts of Lebanon or the oil-rich Persian Gulf states because “work opportunities are scarce here,” Zoheiri said while sipping tea with visitors.

He said the “mulers” as he calls them, “have known no other way of making a living. They were born on mule back.”

Some of his 40 grandsons are muleteers, as his father was, Zoheiri said. “It’s Shebaa’s profession.”

Over the border in Syria is Sirghaya, the nerve center of Syrian smugglers, where half the 15,000 people live off the contraband business.

“They’d have to arrest the whole town if they wanted to stop us,” said a merchant in nearby Madaya, the main outlet for the smuggled goods. He was unwrapping high-heeled Italian shoes that had just crossed the frontier.

Although it costs money in lost tax revenue, diplomats say, the illegal trade also helps the troubled Syrian economy.

A recent report by the U.S. Embassy in Damascus said: “The off-the-books economy is both a sore point and a salvation. The black market provides badly needed goods and in many ways keeps the economy going.”

Because of the steady flow of contraband, the planners of Syria’s socialist economy do not have to divert precious foreign exchange for imports. President Hafez Assad’s government generally turns a blind eye as long as the trade keeps to border towns.

Diplomats in Damascus said there is also a sizable illicit trade in goods from Israel through the Israeli-occupied zone in south Lebanon.

Iron reinforcing bars and other building materials are particularly prized in Syria. The U.S. Embassy report said Syrian construction workers “would be out of jobs but for smuggled building materials.”

Daher, the 16-year-old smuggler from Shebaa, said after a recent nocturnal expedition: “We provide whatever our Syrian partners demand.”

He said the Shebaa men hand over their loads to Syrian mule trains.

Each mule carries about 100 kilograms, or 220 pounds. Each smuggler owns two mules and clears about $100 a week, four times the average wage in Lebanon.

“Syrian soldiers usually start intercepting us after the snow melts,” said a smuggler who identified himself only as Ahmed. “We move to another unloading spot close to the Israeli-controlled hill. The Syrians don’t go there.”

A few days earlier, a Syrian customs patrol fired on a pack train from Shebaa and killed a mule, but the smugglers escaped with the rest of their animals.

Shebaa smugglers have 600 to 800 mules, said Amin, a 51-year-old who has been in the trade since boyhood.

“It’s a dangerous profession, but Shebaa’s smugglers rarely get killed,” he said. “We know our way and the lead mules are well-trained.”

Most Shebaa men killed in recent years were victims of land mines, he said.

Amin said it takes up to three months to train a lead mule, which should be “big, strong, healthy and smart.”

A mule chosen as a leader is kept in an “isolated, dark stable without food or water for two days,” he said.

“Then a man, who shouldn’t be a smuggler because the mule would get used to his smell, goes in dressed as a soldier and beats the mule with a stick,” Amin said. “A smuggler goes in after him and gives the mule food and water.” He said the “soldier” fires a rifle near the mule during the beating. “The ‘soldier’ becomes the mule’s enemy,” he explained, “and the animal tries to escape the minute a soldier is seen or a bullet is fired. At this point, the mule becomes eligible to lead a caravan.”