Syria Forces Keep a Subdued Profile : Military: The Arab world’s No. 2 fighting machine shows no sign of escalating the crisis.

The rocky red earth fields of southern Syria spread in a flat plain in front of Damascus. The view was clear this week: no Syrian military buildup on its Israeli and Jordanian borders.

“The army is on high alert,” a Syrian government official said, but he insisted there had been no major troops movements since the Persian Gulf War broke out last week. Western diplomats in the capital say that their intelligence information is the same.

Here in Daraa, where the land rises to a ridge at the crossing into Jordan, few uniformed soldiers Thursday walked the streets of this town enriched by border business, including smuggling. There was no sign of Syrian armor on the roads stretching north to the capital.

The 9th Armored Division had been based near Daraa but was pulled out two months ago and deployed to Saudi Arabia as Syria’s main contribution to the American-led allied forces there. Press reports that it had been replaced by a division from Lebanon appear inaccurate.

Syria’s main military concentration lies about 40 miles to the northwest, along the highway from the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights to Damascus. Four of the country’s nine divisions are based along that stretch, together with a forest of antiaircraft batteries.

A British reporter who visited the heights Tuesday said he saw no unusual military activity--no tanks, troops or artillery on the move. His report was confirmed by diplomatic intelligence.

And on the Iraqi border, where allied air raids reportedly have taken place within 15 miles of the frontier? No major movements sighted, the Damascus-based diplomats said.

“Syria feels threatened only across the Golan, even with this war,” a regional military analyst said. “Why would the Iraqis attack? They’re trying to draw Syria out of the coalition.”

By all accounts, the Arab world’s No. 2 military machine has no intention of escalating the crisis engulfing No. 1, Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi legions. At least no provocative border buildups have been reported, despite political sniping between Syria and Jordan and Damascus’ continuing state of war with Israel.

President Hafez Assad’s regime made its capital from the crisis last fall, sending warplanes and troops against the suburban Beirut redoubt of Maj. Gen. Michel Aoun, the Lebanese Christian leader who defied Syrian hegemony in the Mediterranean state. While the world’s attention was focused on the Persian Gulf, the Syrian-led attack on the presidential palace at Baabda finished the general’s rebellion against a Syrian-backed, Arab League-brokered compromise government in Beirut.

At least three Syrian divisions remain in Lebanon, effectively controlling two-thirds of that country and presenting Assad’s 400,000-man army with one of its major problems. Military control of Lebanon’s opium-producing Bekaa Valley and of a multitude of militias running protection rackets in the weapons and narcotics trade in the Bekaa and elsewhere in Lebanon, has immersed the higher ranks of Assad’s Lebanon army in corruption, according to foreign military and narcotics officers.

But in terms of arms alone, Assad’s army remains a formidable force. Denied his wish for Soviet-supplied “strategic parity” with Israel, the Syrian president nonetheless has been delivered first-rate weapons. “He’s got top-of-the line stuff,” a Western diplomat said in Damascus. “MIG-29s, SU-24s (fighter-bombers) and T-72s (battle tanks.)”

But paying for continued supplies--in the past two years Moscow has been demanding cash--is a problem. While an estimated 40% of Syrian revenue goes to the military and security forces, Damascus still owes the Soviets $15 billion in unpaid military bills, according to Western intelligence estimates.

The strain is showing, said a regional diplomat, who pointed to an increasing number of Syrian soldiers on duty in Damascus who are attired in a mix of uniforms and civilian clothes. “They just don’t have enough to go around,” he said.