Reuters AlertNet, UK
April 26 2005

Lebanese say breath easy as last Syrians leave

Source: Reuters

By Lin Noueihed

ANJAR, Lebanon, April 26 (Reuters) – For almost 30 years Anjar’s
claim to fame was not the ruins of an 8th century city but the
headquarters of the Syrian intelligence that once brokered Lebanese
politics from the border town.

As the last Syrian soldiers and spies trundled home on Tuesday,
residents of Lebanon’s border towns said they could finally stop
looking over their shoulder.

“I couldn’t breath easy until they were gone,” said Karam Yousef, who
works in a gift shop at Anjar’s archeological site.

“My brother quarreled with the Syrian labourers working on his farm
and they threatened to put the intelligence on him. They would just
come and take whatever they wanted from the fields. Who dared say
no?” he said.

Fresh-faced Lebanese soldiers in fatigues now stand guard outside the
intelligence headquarters, replacing the Syrian agents in faded
leather jackets that once warded off visitors.

But locals still drop into a whisper when they joke that Lebanon’s
governments have been made and broken in Anjar for years, that it was
Syria’s capital in Lebanon, not Beirut.

Rustum Ghazaleh, the head of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon, lived
there from 2002, until he went home on Monday, effectively ending
Syria’s 29-year military and security presence.

His predecessor Ghazi Kanaan was based in Anjar, which is closer to
Damascus than Beirut, for 20 years.

Syrian troops and officers occupied property belonging to Lebanese.
They abandoned villas in the mountains weeks ago, but remained in the
eastern Bekaa Valley until this week.

“Twenty-eight years ago, the Syrians asked for a house to use for a
few months,” said Andre Hosepian a grocer in Anjar.

“A few days ago, a Syrian officer invited me for a cup of coffee and
gave me the key back. I had two houses the Syrians stayed in
rent-free all those years. Now I have both back.”

BREATHING EASY

Locals watched until the last of the Syrian troops had crossed the
border before a small group unfurled a couple of Lebanese flags and
broke into a traditional dabke dance.

“I am relieved because there is no one they did not harm,” said
Mahmoud Laiss, who runs an insurance and exchange shop on the Masnaa
border post.

“They would go into a shop to buy something and insist on paying
below cost or nothing at all. If you try to say no you don’t know
what might happen. Let them go and leave us alone.”

Another insurance salesman standing nearby chipped in to ask when the
Syrians would release three men from the nearby town of Majdal Anjar,
whom he said had been jailed in Syria for over 20 years. Syria says
it has no Lebanese detainees in its jails.

But residents of Anjar itself say they had no quarrel with the
Syrians, who protected it through the 1975-1990 civil war.

Living at the nerve-centre of Syrian influence in Lebanon had its
benefits. Anjar was safe. Its residents, mostly of Armenian descent,
were protected from an old land dispute with Muslims.

But most hoped for a fresh start now the Syrians were gone.

“When I used to bring groups of tourists here, they would see all
these Syrians and get confused. They would ask are we in Lebanon or
Syria?” said Henri Baghdassarian, a tour guide. “Now, how do you
explain a thing like that?”

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress