IRETURNED TO LEBANON for an extensive tour in the late 1990s as a guest of the then Christian chief of the Lebanese Army, General Emile Lahoud. As a measure of the trust he’d engendered in bringing the country together – against almost impossible odds – this competent tactician-turned-politician went on to become the country’s President.
Nobody was to anticipate his role – devious and ultimately utterly destructive – as the principal factotum of Syrian policies along the shores of the Levant. It took a while, but it gradually became clear to us all that President Lahoud was taking his orders from Damascus. He danced to the pipes of former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad and, as we all feared, Emile Lahoud was instrumental in Syria continuing its clandestine security role in Lebanon when Bashar al-Assad succeeded his late father.
For all that, I found in General Emile Lahoud a truly remarkable individual. He was seminal in rescuing Lebanon from the most destructive civil war the country had faced in its three millennia of recorded history. By the time he was able to bring pressure to bear on the combatants – there were about 100 different armies and militia simultaneously vying for power – the country was locked into an almost permanent state of conflict.
To his credit, he stepped into the breach and created a platform, to which he invited most of the major warrior groups, which would ultimately play a role in bringing a peace of sorts to this embattled nation. Had he not done so, Lebanon might have been permanently ripped apart.
Following lengthy interviews with the man himself, I dealt with some of the issues that faced him in a report subsequently published by Washington’s Middle East Policy.1 As he admitted, it was an extremely tough call and his life and those of others involved in the peace process were constantly on the line. What he did not tell me was that Syria’s continued subversive role in Lebanon fostered a number of destructive political undercurrents, including, to his discredit, one or more which he led himself.
Meanwhile, following the murder of the Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Harriri, domestic and international pressure forced Damascus to recall its troops from Lebanon, ostensibly at least. Yet assassinations, car bombings and other acts of terror continue, the majority sponsored by President Bashar al-Assad.
Going back to Lebanon was a thoroughly engrossing assignment. In part, I went in for Jane’s Defence Weekly, as well as the group’s monthly International Defence Review for which I’d done occasional work in the Middle East and Africa over three decades. Once I’d made contact with Lahoud’s office, a young Shi’ite officer was delegated to escort me.
Captain Hussein Ghaddar and I did a lot in those three weeks together. With this enterprising young army officer – who afterwards went on a course at an American military establishment and by all accounts excelled – I covered great tracts of Lebanon, north and south.
Sharp, erudite and totally fearless, he encapsulated the contemporary image of today’s youthful Shi’ite combatant. Ghaddar was focused and well-informed about everything that went on in his own domain and well beyond its borders. From what he told me, he used the web to read all the newspapers in the region, including Israel’s Jerusalem Post and the more liberal Ha’artez. With the Koran in one hand and his AK-47 in the other, this young man cut a striking figure.
On our third day out in Lebanon, Captain Hassan and I went south to Sidon and Tyre and were able to visit the so-called Zionist Front. We were stopped at a roadblock near Nabatiya during a shootout between what was termed ‘Hizbollah and insurgent enemies of the people’, though exactly who was involved and what took place eluded me. Prior to that, I spent time with the miniscule Lebanese Navy and its new American patrol craft. Finally, there was a stint with a totally integrated Special Forces unit where, only a few years before, its Christian and Muslim components – a group of tough, no-nonsense professionals – had been battling each other.
Throughout this little sojourn in the Levant, it had been my intention all along to try to make contact with Hizbollah, something that Jane’s Defence Weekly wanted, though they didn’t hold out any high hopes because this radical military-politico organization had always been notoriously xenophobic. Contacts with Westerners were few, especially for those working for the non-Islamic media. It happened, of course, but, as Hassan phrased it, you had to have ‘connections’.
From the start, I tried to communicate with Hizbollah headquarters in Beirut’s southern suburbs, not far from the city’s international airport. I did so first by phone, then through one of my Lebanese Army friends, but to no avail. I even sent a fax to a number I was given. Eventually, I took the most obvious route and spoke to one of the bellhops at the hotel at which I was staying: being Muslim, he would know the ropes, I’d been assured. Chances were good that he had somebody within his family circle close to the Party of God.