Bit of Hope for an Exhausted Nation : Is stage set in Lebanon for freeing the hostages?

Can Lebanon’s civil war finally be at an end, after 16 years of horror and destruction? Anyone who has monitored the progress of that country’s brutal sectarian strife and observed the collapse of so many earlier efforts to restore peace has reason to be very skeptical. Still, something concrete has been accomplished in recent weeks that had only been a dream since internecine conflict exploded in 1975.

A government representing all of the major religious groups is functioning in Beirut. The militias that had carved Lebanon into separate fiefdoms are now under orders from their warlords to turn in their heavy arms. The revived 37,000-man national army, a joke through the long years of turmoil and terror, is fanning out from Beirut to reassert central authority. The pervasive sense of fear that for so long has defined the lives of millions of Lebanese is easing.

It is too soon, of course, to speak of anything like national unity. The intense communal hatreds and suspicions that underlay the civil war haven’t disappeared, and it would be unrealistic to expect that they soon might. But the decision has been made to try to resolve the old arguments over how to fairly allocate power, and steps have been taken to give the majority Muslim population more say in running the country and the Christian population less.

The crumbling of Lebanon’s de facto partition doesn’t mean that the Lebanese can soon expect to be fully the masters of their own house. A 40,000-man Syrian “peacekeeping” force continues to occupy about 40% of the country, and Syria’s influence in one way or another seems certain to continue for a long time to come. Syria indeed has never renounced its hegemonic claim to Lebanon or recognized its national independence. Israel controls a security zone in southern Lebanon, with its own forces and by proxy, through a hired Lebanese militia. Palestinians under the PLO’s control still cling to their strongholds. The loyalties of Lebanese Shiites who look to Iran for guidance remain in question.

Still, the long war that killed an estimated 150,000 Lebanese and, says Economy Minister Marwan Hamadi, produced up to $25 billion in damage may at last be fading away. An exhausted country whose people have never lacked business acumen has a chance to rebuild and again prosper. And maybe, as central authority is extended and political cooperation grows, the stage can be set for freeing the American and other Western hostages from their intolerable imprisonment.

Peace, if it can be made to take hold, could even provide some leverage for forcing that prospect.

Lebanon will likely seek several billion dollars in loans for its reconstruction efforts. Would it be out of line for international lenders to link financial help to ending the hostages’ ordeal? Lebanon’s credit-worthiness, after all, can only be based on its prospects for peace and stability, including an end to the kind of terrorism that hostage-taking exemplifies. Nothing would more convincingly herald a new day in Lebanon’s history than having the hostages set free.