'Diplomats and diplomacy': My friend Yasser Arafat and the days of civil war -V

1976 The Civil War had a zig zag course, up and down and down and up. The intensity of the Civil War would sometimes increase, some time the situation would seem returning to near normalcy. It seemed that when it slowed down, the two sides had exhausted their arms and ammunition and were waiting to replenish than, but that did not mean that at any time normalcy was around the corner.
On one occasion when the BBC reported that normalcy was returning to Beirut I put my tape recorder in the balcony to record the artillery and Kalashnikov firing that evening and sent the tape to the Foreign Office to show the what normalcy meant. However, a semblance of normalcy had come because in late 1975. Beirut, had been virtually divided into Muslim West and Christian East. Six months after the evacuation in autumn 1975 the families and students returned to Beirut, hearing that the intensity of civil war had decreased.
Some kind of normal life returned with shops opening and jammed traffic of the cars resumed on the roads for some days and then shopping when the shelling was resumed. It was a strange situation, peace and war living side by side. Syria brokered some kind of a so-called Constitutional document worked out between the Christian and Muslim contestants.
Even during this soft civil wars, for days postal delivery would stop through the GPO and the Central Telegraph Office would close down and banks would not function. I asked the Foreign Office to install a wireless in the embassy to be in direct contact with Islamabad at any time.
Through the wireless we could talk not only with Islamabad but telephone any where in Pakistan. Even this so-called calm was not without the shelling and bombing. The installation team which had arrived via Damascus to erect the wireless pole on top of the Chancery experienced a bit of it. The Radio Officer and his two assistants were on the roof when intense shelling and bombing on Alhamra area started.
We all ducked under the tables. They came running from the roof top to do likewise. Window panes of the office were shattered. After the shelling stopped they asked us how did we live under such circumstances. I replied this is a very mild phase of the Civil War. I wish you had been here before.
In march 76, Lebanese Army disintegrated; Lieutenant Ahmed Khatib created a 'Lebanese Arab Army' Khatib's Army and 'Lebanese Nationalist Forces' made significant penetration into Christian areas. Fighting between Muslim gunmen and Christian militias erupted in the commercial center of Beirut, which was the hub of Beirut's banking and commerce.
Buildings after buildings were put on fire in Bab Idris, Burj, Riad el Solh Square, port. It creped up to Alhamra and Rouche, where we lived. My Palestinian driver, Saleh Okkar, took me round inside the town to show me the burnt out offices of the Prime Minister's Secretariat. It used to be guarded by Security. The entire place was deserted, only some armed men of "Murabetun", were there. President's Palace at Baa'bda was attacked, Franjieh left the Palace for his home town Zagherta.
Attempt was made to put Parliament building on fire. Soon all the military barracks were abandoned, all police posts were deserted, post office, telegraph office were closed, banks were closed. I saw a country where the state machinery had collapsed. No police, no military, no banks, no post offices.
Indian embassy which was situated near the President Palace on the Beirut-Damascus highway was ransacked, and S.K.Singh who was then Indian Ambassador took refuge in Ramlatul Bida. The Tunisan Ambassador and some others were also living in the same building. Hardly had he come there when an artillery shell hit the building. He left his apartment for Bristol Hotel, in West Beirut and thereafter left Lebanon for good.
Embassies after embassies started leaving Beirut for Nicosia, Damascus or Jounieh. State structure collapsed. Small bands were operating under local small commander.
They were under no discipline except their own moral sense. If they wanted to shoot any one, they owed explanation to no one. When such civil wars prolong, militias normally break into small bands and not infrequently into gangs.
Syria feared Israeli intervention to aid the Christians. Abdul Hameed Khaddam Vice President and Foreign Minister of Syria declared that they would never allow Lebanon to be partitioned nor Israel to intervene in Lebanon and intervened massively to save the Christians and impose a peace.
They tried to restore peace through holding of elections for a new President in place of Suleman Franjieh whose term of office was expiring in September 1976. However even in this so-called normalcy of Syrian brokered peace there were sometimes exchanges of fire between the East and West Beirut. Big artillery, 220 mm SAM and RPG were freely used, but in typical Beirut style; few days pitched battles, through out the night and day and then for some days guns fell silent. Some times the armed gangs would rob the houses.
I did not know that I was so closely watched that my small parties attracted attention. I had invited a small personal friendly group for dinner, all of them Christians, all living in West Beirut, and on their suggestion I invited Raymond Edde. It was hinted in those days that he might become a Presidential candidate but nothing tangible was said. He was living in Muslim Beirut, his father had been President of Lebanon, he was not controversial among Muslims.
A few days after the party, someone asked me "Are you supporting Edde's election against Sarkis (a Syrian nominee)". Obviously I could have no such idea. It was a small non-political group at that dinner and yet it created this wrong impression. At that time no date had been fixed for elections, nor Edde was nominated as Presidential Candidate.
What kind of normalcy it was, and how much Beirut had been divided on factional side was symbolised by one example. My very dear friend Farid Serhal, MP from Jezzine, offered himself as the third choice in the presidential contest between Elais Sarkis and Raymond Edde. During his lobbying to get support of the MPs he stayed in my apartment with me.
When he was out on his campaign I would receive telephone calls from Christian leaders for him and tell him on return who called. Finally, when he told me that his "third choice" candidacy has been accepted by the required number of Members of the Parliament, and I was thinking how to suggest to him that now he better move to some Lebanese house or hotel, he himself said that now it will be embarrassing for you if I slayed here, I will move out to Bristol Hotel (in Muslim West Beirut.) During his stay there his Cadillac was stolen.
Nothing had happened when it was parked outside in my Shell Building parking lot. Nor it seemed there was much communication between some political circles and PLO. Farid asked me to convey to Arafat that he was not hostile to the Palestinians.
Sometime former Prime Minister Saeb Salam would ask me to convey some message to Arafat. Interestingly, during this lull period, while I was shaving my wife came and told me that one of my very dear friends Anis Elias, a Palestinian Catholic was on telephone for me. I told her to tell him that I will telephone him back after I finish shaving.
She came back "Anis says. He cannot wait. Please ask Sami to speak to me right away." I took the telephone. He said "Sami, I am telephoning you from Kataib's Office in Beit Mary. I and Nadia - his wife - have been brought here." I immediately understood. "You mean you have been kidnapped". "Well, listen we have been allowed just one telephone call outside. Yesterday, Palestinians kidnapped one Shehadeh from here.
They will release us if he is released by Palestinians. Can you do something? I said Farid Serhal is here. He is going to Ashrafih. Shall I ask him to speak to Gemayyal (Kataib boss). He said no use. Please ask some one in PLO to release Shehadeh so that we can be released." I understood what he was saying. His wife, Nadia's cousin, Hannah Bathish was 'director of operations' of Al Saiqa. Without saying so he wanted me to contact Hannah. Obviously the telephone was being taped.
With a very heavy heart I replied, "Anis, I am very sorry. I do not know anybody in PLO for this purpose. I cannot so any thing. You understand" I repeated, "You understand". He said "I do". I repeated, "Sorry, I cannot so anything." Of course this was a formal reply, so that Kataib did not make a habit of kidnapping him and Nadia or any other Palestinian in their area and expect that I will repeat this mercy mission.
After I put the receiver down I telephoned Hannah and conveyed this request from his cousin. Later after Anis and his wife's ordeal was ovet, and he met me he said I understood it was your formal reply.
You made it clear to me and Nadia," I said it hurt me when I said "I cannot do anything" he added yes, but by repeating "You understand" you made it clear what you meant. This incident would also show what 'normalcy' prevailed in Beirut meant. Yes, normalcy did prevail of a sort.
Any how on 8th May the presidential Elections could be held and Elias Sarkis Syrian nominee defeated Raymond Edde. On 11 May 1976 events took a very comic turn. Sarkis as President was unacceptable to Jumblatt. When fighting was about to erupt, a military coup took place.
In my Annual Assessment for 1976, written in December 1975, I had predicted that after a lull in the fighting the Army might execute a coup d'etat in February or around. I had also predicted that the leader of the coup would be (Major General) Aziz Ahdab, an indifferent Sunni Muslim with an equally nominal Shia wife Nina, and that even this coup will fail for the same reasons for which no solution had been reached, that is the broken confidences between Muslims and Christians. It happened as I predicted.
I showed this assessment after the Coup to Saudi Charge Abdul Mohsin el-Samman at my lunch party that without any secret service just on the basis of my analysis I had predicted this Coup. My prediction was wrong by two months. My Annual Assessments and Report must be in the Foreign Office records. Hafiz el Assad, insisted on a military solution, when 'Lebanese National Movement' that is Jumblatt's forces pressed assault on Mount Lebanon.
Syrian military intervention failed to quell the fighting they faced stiff fighting because Syrians were seen as Christian's saviour. From late May to October 1976, Beirut was practically under a siege, with Palestinians and Syrians having running battles and artillery duels.
Lawlessness increased in this phase of Civil War. There were attacks on Saudi and Kuwaiti embassies, Sudanese embassy - Spanish Ambassador was killed. Ramlat el Beda where the United Bank of Pak & Lebanon had their own building, was deserted, having come under heavy shelling. In one of these flats lived the family of a Pakistani executive of the bank (Masood). While he was out, some Palestinians gunmen entered this flat and tried to rob the family.
The Pakistani wife was quite a spirited lady and she fought tooth and nail with the intruders. They tied her up and locked her in the bathroom. In the scuffle identity card of one of them as a Palestinian refugee fell down. When the husband returned he got his wife out of the bath room. He reported the matter to me.
I attached the ID card with my letter and wrote to Arafat saying that day, one of your Pakistani sisters was attacked and her house robbed in the area near your headquarters. I had assured Pakistanis that they were safe in the areas controlled by you. Here is a proof that this attacker belonged to PLO. How should I explain this attack to my community? Arafat sent a senior man from PLO saying that the person has been apprehended.
The ID was fake assuring me of the safety of Pakistani community in that area but I was not satisfied with the assurance. It seemed some opposite group, not Al-Fatah was controlling that area. I went to Prime Minister Rashid Karame at his house in Basta, to find out what was in store. While we were talking, bombs started to fall near his house.
After some days Beirut electricity went off. The grids were hit by artillery shells and for about eight months we remained without electricity.
EVACUATION OF 1976:
By June '76, there was pressure from the community that arrangements be made for their evacuation. I was not in favour and said that neither I feared an Israeli intervention nor danger to Pakistanis; I could look after them but when the demand was made persistently I agreed to make the arrangement to evacuate the community to Damascus. I called a meeting of the Pakistanis to determine the date of exodus from Lebanon. Other embassies too were busy with their evacuation plans.
Western countries sent their nationals to Nicosia through Christian port of Jounieh. I wanted the Pakistanis to go through the road to Damascus and from there fly to Pakistan by PIA. In our community meeting I feared that the air port will be closed after a few days and it did happen. Because of certain suspicions the other side started to bomb the air port which remained closed for one year and four months.
I informed all Pakistanis that whoever wanted to leave should join the caravan of cars on 30th June 1976. Some from those areas where it was feared that their house will be looted, they were offered the facility of storing their personal luggage in the embassy basement. I hoped that their belongings will be safe but if even the Embassy was closed down, I could not assume responsibility for their property left in the basement. By the grace of God when they returned, their personal things were as safe as they left.
When we were planning to take the caravan out of Beirut I received a call from Nina, General Ahdab's wife that both she and the General would like to visit us at our flat in Shell Building. Surprise! Why would they like to climb eleven floors! After they climbed up to our apartment, Aziz Ahdab requested me to take Nina with us in the caravan upto Damascus from there she would go to Baalbeck herself.
Nina was from Baalbeck. We had to tell him that the PLO and Arab Army had made it a condition that no one except Pakistanis were included in our caravan. Apparently she dropped the idea as both he and Nina were at my lunch parties thereafter after the families had been evacuated. I asked PLO and Khatib's Arab Army to provide armed escort upto areas in their control. The PLO and Arab Army asked us to take the road to Saida from there to Nabatiyyah, to Marjeun to Bekaa to Damascus.
The Palestinians and the 'Arab Army' put only one condition on us that no one except Pakistanis will be included in the caravan. No Pakistani was prepared to lead the caravan. They asked that I should lead it to Damascus. Although the escort had arrived at the Shell Building quite early in the morning, our departure was being delayed. It was said that the exchange of artillery fire at Saida made crossing the city dangerous.
Finally, we were told that Saida continued to be under bombardment. We should wait till it stops. When it was getting too late I asked the Escort commander to trust Allah and move on. We have to reach Damascus before dark instead of waiting in Beirut we should proceed to Saida. The commander of the PLO escort agreed. At Saida he told us that shelling had decreased but it was still going on.
I said we would take the risk and move on. He suggested that in that case we should cross the danger zone in Saida one by one, dashing through Saida city, and wait outside the city for others to join them. In good times there was bumper to bumper traffic in Saida but then Saida roads were totally deserted. When we crossed Saida and reached Nabatiyyah, the PLO handed us over to the "Arab Army" escort who left us at Marjeoun.
They could not go beyond because thereafter began the area under the control of the Syrian Army. We crossed the Lebanese border without any formality as the offices of the immigration, police and custom had been deserted. On the Syrian border some one from the embassy was present to receive us. We had carried our entire luggage with us on a truck to Syria so that it could go to Pakistan. Syrians would not allow it to be taken to their Customs and kept there. Our ambassador had refused to keep the crates in the embassy.
He said he would take no responsibility. So our crates were left at the border and my wife had to have the crates opened an things unpacked in the presence of a Syrian Customs Inspector and repacked and put in crates again to be air lifted by PIA.
This was contrary to the Law of Diplomatic Immunities of sealed & closed consignment passing in transit through a third country but what could one do. They knew very well that I was from the family whose Arif Manzoor died training their Air Force and yet....
III
After leaving the families in Damascus, when I intended to drive back to Beirut, I heard on the BBC radio news that supply of water had stopped and food was scarce in Beirut. Petrol when it was available was being sold at equivalent of Rs 400 per gallon. By chance when I reached Damascus our generator had arrived there by PIA from Islamabad. I put it in the car so that the wireless could be made operative.
I put in my car twenty cans of 10 liter each with petrol and ten kilo of dried Arabic bread (ka'ak) so we could use it for food in emergency, I carried in my car one bag of flour also. Then I searched for 50 ampoules of cholera vaccines in Damascus market. In Beirut the Municipal services had been suspended for several months and because of the unclean conditions cholera was an epidemic. Chinese Embassy in Damascus learnt of my presence in the city.
Their Counsellor contacted our embassy and requested that I take for their Beirut embassy cholera vaccines. I bought two gas petromax, one for the embassy and one for my house and a tin of kerosene oil also. Because foreign banks had closed down and transfer of money was not possible to us to meet the expenses of the Embassy, therefore, with the permission of the Foreign Office.
I drew $10,000 in cash from official account and took them to Beirut. If the car was hit by any fire the car would have burnt on the spot. In the absence of law, any armed person who used to search the cars on the road, would have easily snatched the whole amount but i was sure that with the crescent and star flag on the car, no one will do any high handedness in the area through which I was to pass. The armed groups would respect this flag and allow my car to come out of the line and let it pass.
Only in Marjaeoun I was stopped for investigation, the boot was opened and every thing was inspected but my personal search was not made otherwise $10,000 official money would have been snatched. Now I understand why this search was made. While we were in Damascus one Christian Major Haddad had put up a "Free Lebanese Army" and a tiny little enclave in his control with Israeli support. At many places the Marjaeoun road is only two or three miles away from Israel. There some times Israeli Army entered and conducted searches.
Lebanese Foreign office was in Ashrafieh, East Beirut. The General Post Office, Central Telegraph Office, head offices of banks and utilities were based in this contested area. Naturally the wireless link with Lebanese embassies was also located there.
It made even a nominal Prime Minister helpless, in conveying his instructions to Lebanese ambassadors abroad Adil Ismail, the Muslim Director General of the Foreign Office, called me that the Prime Minister Rashed Karameh wanted to send a wireless message to the Lebanese Permanent Representative in the United Nations through our wireless link. He also telephoned me to say that as the Banks were closed, funds could not be remitted to Lebanese Embassy in Islamabad, and asked that Pakistan may lend them the amount the embassy needed till restoration of normalcy; the total amount will be reimbursed after restoration of normal banking channels. Our Government agreed to do this.
Additional Foreign Secretary Mufti Abbas spoke to me on wireless asking me to close down the Embassy and come back I did not agree. I also did not feel like leaving Beirut because I wanted to give no body an opportunity to say later, "Koreshi, the same ambassador who broke down in Beirut Civil War".
But another reason was that Arafat had sent me word that if I lowered Pakistan flag in Beirut it will have demoralising effect on Palestinians. I was not willing to lower the Crescent and Star flag in a Middle Eastern country. Beirut remained under a siege from June 76 to November 76.
On one side Syrian troops were stationed on the heights of Aaley and B'hamdoun, in the East Kataib controlled Christian areas, and in front on the sea Israeli navy was appearing once a while. This was the bloodiest period of the civil War. The entire city was like a battle field. Twice the mirror views and front glass of my car were cracked, and once a bullet made such a well-shaped small hole in the boot as if I had it made myself.
Missiles were flying over our building. Again I had to sleep in the corridor between the walls. Quite often in the after noon there was no traffic, streets, localities were drenched of all activities, and the city looked like a ghost town. In the evening the sound of the artillery fires and continuous firing of Kalashnikovs broke the silence. Food was scarce, water supply was disconnected, sitting in the darkness in the flat was a torture. In such conditions one felt like talking to oneself.
In this loneliness only one activity was left, either read books, under petromax light if there was kerosene, or otherwise under the light of a candle. I utilised my loneliness to translate two books into Urdu (both published). We had become so used to the sounds of guns and firing of artillery rounds that we considered them as inevitable background music.
When there was a lull in the fighting I used to visit the few Pakistanis still left in Beirut or take the risk and visit friends in similar forced isolation within West Beirut. I had to be my own driver in the evenings, since my very loyal Palestinian driver, Saleh Okkar, was living in Sabra with his family of twelve children and wife.
In civil wars a person develops a strange sixth sense about the areas which would be safe, when, how long, and which ones would be dangerous. They called it the sixth sense of survival. Looking back, I realise that it was sheer good luck that I did not encounter any mishap. In several cases, ordinary Beiruti were dispossessed of the car or money.
I look back and I feel that if I were older and wiser I would have never been so adventurous and fool hardy.
Before our families were evacuated, and Necemittin Tuncel, Turkish ambassador was alone, I and my wife used to go to his embassy put him between the two of us -- for safety's sake - and keep him in our flat in the night for a play of bridge.
Once somebody from Black September came to me and said that they suspect Tuncel of being 'pro-Israel' for which he gave me a rigmarole explanation. He said they might blow up his embassy. I told him first of all they were wrong, and if they did any such thing, they would lose Pakistan's support. Pakistanis "are (till then)" as much attached to Palestinian cause as to Turkey.
That was the end of the matter. Finally Tuncel was allowed to close down the embassy on his retirement. Armenians were their mortal enemies in Beirut. He asked me to give him my official car to take him to Damascus from where he could go on his own.
My Palestinian driver, Saleh Okkar drove him via Beka'a and Ba'albeck to Damascus from where he took Turkish Air Lines. My friend, Turkish Military Attache, Colonel (later General) Bahaittin Krakaya who was my constant companion, as his family was evacuated and mine, and we were living near, bought a car, and kept it in my parking compound which was in the open. Nothing happened when it was parked with me.
But he insisted putting Turkish Embassy CD plate, and park it in the parking lot of his building. He was under orders of transfer and he could get good discount if the car was registered abroad rather than brought as a brand new car. He did it much against my advice. Next day the Armenians blew it, placing a bomb underneath it.
I used to pass the evenings with Saad Memluk, who owned the Federal Palace Hotel an old style hotel right across my apartment. The roads were deserted, no soul around. At his hotel I was introduced to a lady, as Madame Jumblatt dressed in jean and T-shirt who came to the hotel bicycling, I asked her "which Jumblatt?". She said: "Kemal of course!" She was the estranged wife of that great leader Kemal Jumblatt, and daughter of a great revolutionary Amir Arslan whom the British exiled to Malta in WWI.
She used to go round on her bicycle, very simple and down to earth lady. There used to be in that company some one in whose family Leila Khalid was married, the lady who did the first our hijacking in the history.
When in 1976 the UBL&P officer left Beirut I had to look after the UBL&P branch near my house on the Rouche round about, UBL&P's buildings and the personal effects of the staff as if I was custodian of the Bank. UBL Head Office kept in touch with me in running the branch through its Lebanese Druze Manager, just as the PIA did to liaise with its Greek Orthodox Manager UBL&P owned a big multi-storey complex of luxury flats in Ramlat el Beda Wilayat Hussain Abidi the President of the UBL&P was also living in that building. In hurry they had left their house full of personal things except money and jewellery. The building was left in charge of an armed guard Ahmed, a shorties from the South whose loyalty they always suspected.
I thought I might just look up that building so that their entire house hold items could be stored in the huge embassy basement. It was a deserted area. As soon as my car arrived there and I got out of it, Ahmed came to take me in. Just then a 'shower' of Kalashnikov burst of fire was aimed at me. I ducked and waited till it was quiet again.
I got in the car and drove back to the embassy. Next I heard that the building was attacked and Ahmed died fighting the attackers. I went down in the basement. I saw blood spilt all over the walls and the floor. The man whose loyalty they had suspected shed his blood to do his duty.
It must be said that the Lebanese are brave people. I wondered if the area had been occupied by the Kataib because UBL&P tenant on the ground floor of their building was General Lahoud who was a patron saint of the South Lebanon's (Christian) militia.
After peace returned to Lebanon in mid 1976, I had the Abidis personal effects shipped to London, as they wanted. Similarly I had to take care of the PIA office in Alhamra after the office was closed. I think I went too much out of the way even at the risk of my life to look after the Pak institutions.
(To be concluded)