Word: beirutization
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...years after the Syrians Lebanon to end its civil war, peace seems as elusive as ever. Last fighting once again broke out between Christian militiamen in the eastern of Beirut and Syrian forces, who the area with rockets, mortars and artillery in an effort to dislodge them. The Syrians have tried to stabilize the country maintaining a balance of power?initially, by moving against an insurgent Palestinian and Muslim left, more recently by attacking pro-Israeli Christians who threaten to partition the country. But for Syrian President Hafez Assad, Lebanon threatens to become a Viet Nam: by pulling his forces...
...along the historic road from Beirut to Damascus, Syrian soldiers can be found, manning big guns and tanks by day, huddling beside tents and fires by night. "Lebanon is a thankless, difficult, lonely task," says one high-ranking Damascus official. No one knows that better than Assad's 30,000 troops, who at a cost of $3 million a day provide the bulwark of the Arab peace-keeping force inside Lebanon. In a land where there are more guns than people, violence and bloodshed are always near, ambush and assassination everyday occurrences. But without the Syrian presence the violence would...
Assad has no intention of pulling out of Lebanon, at least so long as the Israelis supply and advise the Christian militiamen. He has recently set about purging Israeli-trained officers from the Lebanese army and dismantling the various factions' checkpoints and military facilities in Beirut, thus leaving only the Syrian army responsible for security in the capital. Assad's goal is to have a Syrian presence throughout Lebanon, except for the areas south of the Litani River, which are patrolled by units of the 6,000-man United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL...
...Lebanon sparked another confrontation between Syria and Israel. A tenuous truce brought a measure of calm to the country, where clashes two weeks ago between Syrian peace-keeping forces and Christian militiamen left 200 dead, most of them civilians. Both sides used the lull to bring heavy reinforcements into Beirut. Israel continued to supply military equipment to the rightist Christian armies of Pierre Gemayel and Camille Chamoun, who have been engaged in a bloodletting feud with forces loyal to former Lebanese President Suleiman Franjieh, also a Christian. Although most observers believed that the supplies would be the only Israeli help...
Diplomatic observers were not much more hopeful about the situation. "Even if the Syrians and the Christians patch something together," said a Western diplomat in Beirut, "it will hold for only a few weeks or a month. The state will fall back into conditions that produce more fighting. The guns talk here. Nothing else." President Elias Sarkis, who has been frustrated over his inability to prevent the fratricidal fighting, for a while threatened to resign. But he bowed to U.S. pressure to stay on in order to stave off what would almost certainly be, in his absence, total anarchy...