Rhodesian troops—sitting on a short fuse in the air. a castel When General Aziz El Ahdab appeared on television in Lebanon carly last month to announce mis coup a cral against President Franjieh, the population of the West region of Beirut (a Moslem region)
expressed its spontaneous and initially positive reaction towards it by shooting This reaction to a coup made by a well known servant of the bourgeoisie in part reflected the desire of the population for an end to the cruel and inter minable fighting. Essentially, however, une masses were reacunu to me sonapartist aspect given by Ahdab (himself a Sunni Moslem) to his movement.
This general, a long-time servant of the Maronite Christian leadership of the Lebanese army. introduced in his declara tion phrases like the Arab Lebanese populanon. which were intended to play on the strong Arab nationalist feelings existing amongst the Moslems in Lebanon and on their hopes of getting rid of Franjieh - a President whom they saw as an imperialist butcher, a puppet and Their spontaneous reaction did not last long, in spite of the strong support given by the Moslem bourgeoisie to Ahdab's movement. Very quickly it became clear that Ahdab was too weak to install 'peace and order". In fact Ahdab's coup was based on an army whi which had almost completely disinte"Peaceful' This explains why Ahdab tried to present his coup as a peaceful call for unity of the army and society as a whole, knowing full well that he was unable to smash down or even repress any strong opposition of any sort in a country where every party or movement is an army Svria would have preferred a solution like Ahdab's. It had been preparing for Itsecretly, our recognised ine weakness of this coup and thus took out of Lebanon its foreign minister Khaddan (who had become much more a permanent resident than a visitor in Lebanon) two hours before the coup happened. The purpose of Syria's disceet silence following the coup was to allow it to intervene with another solution in case Andao stared. but Franjien was not prepared to accept a bourgeois solution in which he was not a leading participant. He therefore began immediately to prepare a military offensive based on his own armed militia. with the intention of provoking a new explosion of the civil war in which he would try to redress the situation to his advantage The civil war broke out once more. The Phalangists (the principal Christian rightist armed force) had not expressed either support or opposition to Ahdab during the first two days of the coup. But when it came to the crunch they came down for Franjieh against Ahdab, knowing that a division in the Christian Hari-Kiri - the lesson that British Leyfighting forces would lead to a real disaster for their plans.
What determined their position was that a new element had entered into tho scene - the rapid growth of the rebel "Army of Arab Lebanon' led by Ahmad El Khatib. This army was winning over most of the regular regiments and was recruiting most of the Moslem soldiers (who made up a majority of the rank-and -file of the regular army, in contrast to its Maronite leadership). The Army of Arab Lebanon' was strongly supported by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (and explicitly by Fatah), and acted independently of the Syrian regime.
This was particularly important because the Syrian regime was advancing towards an accord with the Americans which was to the disadvantage of the leadership of the Palestinian resistance.
Thus the Syrians chose to support Frangen wne was obstinately now!
onto his presidential position) in order to weaken the Lebanese left and Fatah This weakening would have facilitated the Syrians' own negotiation with the Leftist celebrates capture of Holiday Inn Americans and put an end to the strengthening of Khatib's army.
Khatib's army in fact constituted a real obstacle to the reconstruction of a centralised repressive army in a Lebanon deprived now of any real state apparatus Hence the left and the Palestinian resistance (in all its formations), greatly helped by the "Army of Arab Lebanon', were able to develop a strong military offensive against the right-wing Christian fighting forces The battles are at their highest point. Each contending force is trying to turn the military situation to its own advantage hoping thereby to impose its conditions in any new solution that results from this important war - a war that condenses within itself all the problems of the Middle East and all the contradictions which the Lebanese bourgeois regime has accumu alcu Majida Salman opportunity to threaten that the