Now you see them now you don’t

Now you see them, now you don’t. The Syrians have always been good at the disappearing act and they were at it again yesterday, packing up their troubles in their old kit bags and departing from the suburbs of Beirut with a smile, a wave and a convoy of equally old trucks

Now you see them, now you don’t. The Syrians have always been good at the disappearing act and they were at it again yesterday, packing up their troubles in their old kit bags and departing from the suburbs of Beirut with a smile, a wave and a convoy of equally old trucks.
Goodbye Yarzeh, goodbye Baabda, it’s a long way to Damascus but their heart’s right there Or so we were supposed to think. After all, the 400 Syrian troops who drove up the mountain highway from east Beirut were real enough.So, the Lebanese were asking themselves last night, is the Syrian army ­ after a quarter of a century in Lebanon ­ at last going home? For back in June of 1976, they had driven down this very same highway, a soldier with a flute playing an Arab tune atop the first T-55 battle tank as Syrian officers ordered Palestinian gunmen off the streets and kicked the Christian Phalangist signposts into the nearest ravine. Not far behind them, a very raw young reporter called Fisk sat atop another tank, dutifully prophesying for his readers that the Syrian army may stay in Lebanon “for a few years”.

Talk about getting it wrong.And 25 years later, you can’t help wondering if the Lebanese are getting it wrong too. True, the Syrians pulled out of their boot camp opposite the Lebanese defence ministry and from the Christian Maronite suburb of Baabda. But down on the Corniche ­ in what we all called West Beirut before the capital was formally reunited ­ the same Syrian sentriesstood outside their company headquarters at Ein el-Mreisse. So, too, at the Bain Militaire, the Syrian special forces were guarding the officers’ club. If this was a withdrawal, it was a mighty slow one.Of course, the fact that the Syrians were happy to allow photographers to take pictures told its own story The Syrians wanted to be seen to be leaving. And after months of complaints from the Lebanese Christian community ­ which repeatedly asks why the Syrian army stays in Lebanon when the Israeli army has left ­ there was good political reason for the Syrians to give the impression that they were sensitive to Christian concerns.But in Lebanon, what you see is not necessarily the truth. With a million Syrian guest workers in Lebanon ­ and a Syrian intelligence apparatus run by Brigadier General Ghazi Kenaan from his headquarters in the eastern Lebanese town of Aanjar ­ it could be argued that the Syrians don’t need their troops in Beirut to keep Lebanon under control.

In any event, the 40,000 Syrian soldiers which the Western news agencies still claim to be here ­ because they failed to report the reduction in numbers over the years ­ are in reality only 21,000. Most of their armour is at least four decades old.Besides, we have seen these withdrawals before. After the 1982 Israeli siege of Beirut, the Israelis announced the final departure of the Syrian army from the city We watched them leave in their trucks and tanks. But it was the Israelis who were driven out of Beirut just two weeks later; and within two years, the Syrians were back, along with General Kenaan, who ostentatiously jogged along the Beirut seafront each morning ­ without bodyguards ­ to let the world know that his lads were back.Twice more over the past two years, we’ve been told the Syrians were leaving. They closed down an office in Hamra, pulled their troops out of the ruins of a war-shattered supermarket and waved goodbye in 1999 Then they emptied a barracks 200 metres from my home. But they suddenly turned up again close to the airport road, manning a checkpoint once run by Palestinian guerrillas. “We need the Syrians here,” the Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafic Hariri, would say in answer to all inquiries.