Beirut’s Sunnis Are Banking on Stability : Lebanon: Commerce-minded minority is encouraged by postwar developments. Their confidence is reflected in the neighborhoods.

In a country where political agreements translate easily into dollars and cents, Lebanon’s commerce-minded Sunni Muslim community views this country’s May 22 cooperation treaty with Syria as a step they can bank on.

Although stability in postwar Lebanon may not come automatically, it now at least has a guarantor. Syria is underpinning the Lebanese government’s attempts to regain control over the whole country. Dismantling the major militias and reasserting authority over commercial seaports are two important success stories that the Sunnis enjoy telling.

In Lebanon’s mix of religious minorities, the Sunnis are called a minority without a minority complex. Numbering 900,000--compared with the country’s 1.2 million Shiite Muslims--the Sunni community regards itself as part of the Arab world, which is overwhelmingly Sunni.

Consequently, the Sunnis have never been overly involved in politics, and they never had a major militia force supported by the community, as did Lebanon’s Shiites, Maronite Christians and Druze, the last an offshoot sect of Islam. Renewed commercial confidence is much more noticeable in Sunni areas of Beirut than in Christian zones, where fear lingers over Syria’s suspected ulterior motives.

Even small shops such as Sunni-owned Uncle Samih’s bookstore near the American University of Beirut are spiffing up. A coat of paint, new shelves and a general rearrangement of merchandise cost the bookstore’s owners $1,200. Two years ago, their storefront was riddled daily with shrapnel.

“After years of war, the Sunnis got the same benefits as the other groups (militias) did--and without fighting,” said American University Prof. Nizar Hamzeh, summing up the Sunnis’ postwar position.

But for 15 1/2 years of conflict, they paid a heavy price. Beirut’s main commercial district was 60% Sunni-owned and was looted and all but destroyed in early 1975.

That commercial disaster had a devastating counterpart in 1984 when Shiite and Druze militias took over predominantly Sunni West Beirut. Shiite refugees stayed on and became squatters, turning the area into what one Sunni businessman called “new ghettos.”

The Lebanese-Syrian treaty is a spinoff of the 1989 Taif agreement--named for the Saudi Arabian city where it was drafted--which evenly divided the Lebanese power pie between Christians and Muslims. The previous division was an unwritten agreement dating back to Lebanese independence in 1943 and was based on the size of the various religious minorities, topped at that time by the Maronites, with Sunnis in second position and Shiites in third.

The National Covenant, as it was called, reserved the presidency for the Maronites, the premiership for the Sunnis and the speakership of Parliament for the Shiites. The only change that Taif accomplished in this formula was to put it down in black and white, thus institutionalizing it.

However, the powers of the Maronite president have been greatly reduced.

The fact that the Shiites gained almost nothing through their population increase reflects Damascus’ determination to maintain a political balance among Lebanon’s three major religious communities.

Although the commercialist practices of the Sunnis conflict with Syria’s socialist philosophy, Lebanese Prime Minister Omar Karami, a Sunni, has complete Syrian backing.

On the subject of controlling the Sunnis, one importer said: “If Syria wants to control us, it can do so by strengthening us through our economic activities, and this will work to force us to toe the Syrian line.”

Today, Sunni commercial activity ranges from chairmanship of the national airline to the leadership of the Lebanese Chamber of Commerce. And U.S. products on the market are often put there by Sunni importers.

Sales of U.S. brands of breakfast cereal, cheese, vegetable shortening and facial tissues are in the hands of Sunni agents. One adventuresome importer is successfully marketing Mexican-style food products from Texas.

Amr Arayssi, whose family has been associated with Arabic sweets since 1844, established a company called Mid-America Imports Inc. in June, 1990. The 25-year-old Ohio State graduate formed a partnership with two cousins and now sells U.S. consumer products ranging from candy bars to lingerie.

Arayssi receives two 20-foot container shipments a month, and he says that 10% of each one consists of new U.S. products to try on the Lebanese market.