Overshadowed, Lebanon Battles Instability

Troubled Lebanon has been pushed to the back burner by the Persian Gulf crisis but still feels its heat. Fear of instability has sent the currency reeling, halving its value against the dollar since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

Lebanese President Elias Hrawi’s hopes of persuading Syria to back a military move against Maj. Gen. Michel Aoun, the Christian strongman, have been put on hold.

Saudi Arabia’s proposed Arab League reconstruction fund for the Lebanese economy has yet to materialize, and in the meantime, the crisis has shattered the league. The 22 member nations have split almost in half, and the league’s top officials have resigned.

Evidence of the grim situation can be seen outside the Canadian and Australian embassies in Damascus, where lines of Lebanese form every morning hoping to get travel visas. Another school term has been delayed in Beirut, and many families say they are pulling out for good.

“It’s been a blow for Lebanon to be pushed off the front pages, in terms of the reconstruction fund,” one Damascus-based diplomat said. His embassy, like many here, deals with both Syrian and Lebanese affairs.

President Hrawi, a Christian who spent his first months in office under Syrian military protection in the Bekaa Valley, was counting on Arab contributions to smooth the way toward reconciliation of Lebanon’s Muslim and Christian communities. But both sides have been caught up in internal fighting, the Shiite Hezbollah and Amal militias battling for control in southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs while Aoun and Samir Geagea, leader of the Christian Lebanese Forces militia, struggle for dominance in East Beirut and the Christian heartland to the north.

“The Syrians want to get rid of Aoun,” the diplomat said, “but they’re in no hurry if the alternative is Geagea.”

Another commented, “I understand that Israel had nixed the use of Syrian air power in a move against Aoun anyway.”

Meanwhile, an estimated 10,000 Lebanese workers have returned from Kuwait and other Persian Gulf countries, drying up remittances that kept some hard currency flowing in. The Lebanese pound has fallen to 1,200 to the dollar. And the Beirut government is forced to dip into its depleted treasury to pay the higher oil prices.

Following the lead of its Syrian protectors, the Hrawi government has opposed Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, but unlike Damascus, it has no army to deploy. During the 1989 artillery war pitting the Syrian forces and their Muslim allies against Aoun’s Lebanese army--he has since been sacked by Hrawi--Iraq supported the general and the Lebanese Forces. The arms shipments reportedly dried up even before the Persian Gulf crisis began.