MIDDLE EAST: Syria Tries a Shock Treatment

The truce is threatened by reduction of a policeman's role

The crackle of gunfire and mortars has long been a normal sound of life in war-scarred Lebanon, where rival Palestinians, Muslim leftists and Christian Phalangists warily coexist under the watchful eyes of 30,000 Syrian peacekeeping troops. Last week the tenuous three-year-old truce in Lebanon was once again broken by sporadic fighting after Syria announced that it would soon reduce its policeman's role in Beirut. At the same time, the Damascus government said that it would move some of its Beirut-based forces into the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon to buttress Syria's own defense lines against a possible Israeli attack. The announcement sent shock waves throughout the Middle East—and nowhere more than in Israel, which nervously worried about renewed Arab-Jewish tensions in the occupied West Bank.

Syria's action was prompted by a variety of motives. Government officials said that they were trying to use "shock treatment" to force Lebanese President Elias Sarkis to bring the country's rival political factions together. Damascus is also tired of having a client state that refuses to behave like one. Lebanon ignored Syrian advice and attended the Islamic conference in Pakistan last month. Moreover, despite Syrian advice to the contrary, the 22,000-man Lebanese army has been rebuilt along sectarian lines; 90% of its officers are Christian (mostly right-wing Phalangist), whereas 80% of its enlisted men are Muslim. Complained Syria's Premier Abdel Raouf Kasm to TIME Correspondent William Drozdiak: "Nothing has been done in four years to achieve national entente or to extend the authority of the legal government throughout the country. Our decision to withdraw is final and irrevocable."

Western diplomats in Damascus believe that the Syrians are also trying to jolt the Palestine Liberation Organization into adhering more closely to the Damascus line. After P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat visited Iraq and Saudi Arabia recently without clearing his business with Syria, he was summoned to Damascus by President Hafez Assad, who warned the Palestinian leader not to get "too far out in front" of Syrian policies.

Assad and his colleagues argue that Arabs, despite their concern over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, must remember that the Israelis are their real enemies. Says Information Minister Ahmad Iskandar Ahmad: "Our battle is here, not in Kabul. We have no desire to be a toy in the American game of trying to use the Islamic resurgence against the Soviet Union."

The truth, however, is that Syria is being pushed farther into the Soviet camp than President Assad thinks prudent. Though Syria seems eager to turn toward the West to develop its trade and agriculture, Assad is restrained by his adamant opposition to the Camp David accords and by his dependence on Soviet military supplies. For a variety of reasons, Syria has rarely been so isolated within the Arab world as it is today. Thus another reason for Assad's troop decision was to remind other Arabs and the world at large that Damascus still holds the match to Lebanon, potentially the most dangerous fuse in the Middle East.