Lebanese Militiamen Face Difficult Choice

The young man has no illusions: He’s on the losing side of a bitter conflict, and when his comrades leave this mountaintop town in the next few days, he’s staying behind, hoping for amnesty from the Lebanese government.

For more than a decade, he has cast his lot with the South Lebanon Army, a militia trained and financed by Israel to help the Jewish state control the “security zone” it occupies in southern Lebanon.

Now, in the first significant change in the political map of the area in 14 years and a step considered a precursor to an Israeli withdrawal, the militia is pulling out of this enclave just north of the occupied zone.

And this man and more than 200 others, mostly natives of this picturesque, mainly Christian town, have decided to stay put.

“I want to remain in my house, with my family,” the slight, unshaven 27-year-old, who would not give his name, said Wednesday. Already, he has turned in his olive green uniform, and he is waiting to see what will happen next.

If the SLA’s bitter enemies, the Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, enter the town instead of the Lebanese army, he said, he’ll try to escape into the pine-forested hills around Jezzine.

The young man spoke in the shadow of a gleaming white statue of the Virgin Mary that marks the entrance to Jezzine. Beyond him, the SLA had parked an armored personnel carrier equipped with three heavy machine guns, and militiamen kept journalists from entering the town.

They also kept a nervous eye on the winding road leading up to Jezzine, preventing approaching vehicles from pausing en route by firing their semiautomatic weapons into the air.

A Lebanese Maronite order of priests, meanwhile, is spearheading an effort to win amnesty for SLA fighters who agree to surrender to authorities, and by midday Wednesday it had collected 203 signatures of militiamen willing to do so. Most are believed to be natives of Jezzine.

Father Adel Alam, a spokesman for the Maronites, said the priests also are willing to open the doors of their nearby monastery in the village of Machmouche to “anyone who’s scared, whether militia members or anyone else.”

At the checkpoint on Jezzine’s outskirts, the SLA commander of the region, who asked not to be identified by name, said the militia’s withdrawal from the town and surrounding villages was about half completed. Like most top commanders, several of whom have been tried in absentia by Lebanese courts for their collaboration with Israel, he said he will go with the militia as it leaves for the Israeli-occupied zone.

“If I had faith in the [Lebanese] government, I would stay,” said the commander, who gave his rank as major. “But I don’t have faith.”

Another militiaman was even more forceful, saying he had tried to talk several friends out of surrendering to authorities. “I tell them they are making a big mistake and the next day will show them this big mistake,” he said. “They will be put in jail and they will pay.”

His own family has already been evacuated to the town of Marjayoun in the heart of the Israeli-occupied zone, he said, adding that he plans to fight on with the SLA in the border strip.

“I like to fight,” he explained, “and I don’t know another job.”

He said he has no faith in Lebanese authorities and spoke enthusiastically of his relationship with Israeli soldiers. One day, he said, he’ll probably live in Israel, where a growing number of SLA members and their families have found refuge.

“We are safe with the Israelis,” he said, fingering the AK-47 slung across his back.

As the SLA began its pullback this week, leaving villages west of Jezzine before the anticipated evacuation from the town itself, residents of the area expressed a mixture of pleasure and apprehension. Several of those interviewed said they hope the withdrawal means an end of the violence that has racked their communities as Hezbollah has sought, successfully, to pressure the SLA into leaving.

Charbel and Lodi Nawfal own a small grocery in the village of Bteddein Ellakush a few miles from Jezzine on a road that winds through pretty terraced hillsides and mountain communities of stone houses and tall trees.

Ten days ago, their front windows were shattered in a powerful midday explosion. A roadside bomb, apparently detonated remotely by Hezbollah, blew up about 100 yards from their home, sending the stricken car of a senior SLA commander careening off the road and a ball of flames onto a nearby hillside. Two large Coca-Cola delivery trucks parked in front of their building prevented greater damage, the Nawfals said.

A few months earlier, a bomb killed four people about the same distance from their home in the other direction.

“There used to be bombs and explosions all the time,” Charbel Nawfal, 46, said as occasional artillery exchanges sounded in the distance. “Now we don’t know exactly if we are liberated or not, but we hope things will be better here.”