TRIPOLI, Lebanon, 16 July 2003 — Syrian troops quit artillery and tank positions in northern Lebanon early yesterday, witnesses said, as Damascus gradually scales back its military presence in its smaller neighbor. Witnesses said trucks carried Syrian tanks and troops away from positions south of the port city of Tripoli and toward the Syrian border, extending troop movements that began late on Monday near the capital Beirut.
Syria has about 15,000 troops in Lebanon, a widely resented symbol of the control it took in the aftermath of its 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war. The United States and other Western countries have urged it to pull out. “We have received orders from high command to Syria and we’re trying out those orders,” a Syrian officer at the head of a convoy told Deutsche Presse-Agentur, DPA.
A convoy of 25 empty vehicles, including tank transporters, crossed over the border into Lebanon from Syria and headed toward Tripoli, the main city in the north, to complete the pullout. In the morning, Syrian soldiers evacuated four posts in the area of Aramoun, southeast of the capital. In addition positions on the coast of Khaldeh, south of the capital, were seen to be deserted by afternoon, the sources said.
In a related development, pilotless Israeli reconnaissance planes were seen flying over the town of Baalbeck, in eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, a Syrian stronghold, as a Syrian convoy was heading to the Lebanese-Syrian border.
Lebanese Army sources said Syrian “logistical and administrative units” had vacated their posts in the areas of Khaldeh, Aramoun and Dowhaat Aramoun as well as regions north of Lebanon. According to Lebanese security sources, 1,000 Syrian soldiers are scheduled to leave toward Damascus by the end of the day.
In the past three years since Syrian President Bashar Assad took office in Damascus, there have been three troop redeployments which brought the number of Syrian troops in Lebanon from 35,000 down to around 16,000.
The forces have become a focal point for Christian-led opposition to Syrian influence in Lebanon, which it flooded with troops early in the civil war to save Christian forces from defeat by Muslim and Palestinian fighters. Damascus later turned on the Christians after they sided with its archenemy Israel, and helped sponsor a postwar political pact that expanded the power of Muslims at the expense of the Maronite Christians.
Syria cemented its role in Lebanon after the war, but in 2001 withdrew its troops from prominent positions in Beirut in an apparent concession to the increasingly vocal, Christian-led critics of their presence. The 1989 Taif agreement called for the redeployment of Syrian forces out of the cities to Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley within two years.
It took another 15 years for the Syrians to start making serious withdrawals after persistent pressure from Lebanese Christian leaders, including Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir.
Pressure also came from foreign countries, particularly the United States whose Secretary of State, Colin Powell, during a visit to Syria last May reportedly urged Syrian leaders to withdraw their forces from Lebanon. It is not clear whether this week’s Syrian redeployment would be the last. Lebanon and Syria have repeatedly said the Syrian military presence in Lebanon “is necessary but temporary.”
In a recent press interview, Bashar was reported as saying the complete withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon is “a matter for the two countries to decide.” Lebanese political sources said that all Syrian troops could be withdrawn by 2004.
Meanwhile, Israel has promised the United Nations it will halt its air force’s violations of Lebanese airspace from around the end of July, Lebanon’s Foreign Ministry said yesterday.
“The commander of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon has told Foreign Minister Jean Obeid that Israel has informed it that it plans to cease all violations of Lebanon’s airspace in two weeks’ time,” a ministry source said.
He said Israeli warplanes would be limited to overflights of the “Blue Line”, drawn up by the United Nations when Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000 after a 22-year occupation, while repairs are carried out on a frontier fence.
