Blockade Runners Carry Vital Food, Ammunition to Besieged Lebanon Christians

OQAIBEH, Lebanon — Most nights, a dozen small cargo ships zigzag through shelling for ports along Lebanon’s Mediterranean coast to deliver food and ammunition to Christians besieged by Syria and its Muslim allies.

Others dart in during daylight, often as shells and rockets explode around them and knots of people stand on shore and cheer.

The ships’ cargoes have become the lifeline for the estimated 1 million Christians trapped in their enclave north of Beirut.

“This is why there are no serious shortages,” said a police spokesman, who cannot be identified under standing regulations. “The ships bring in vegetables, canned fruit and cattle as well as ammunition.”

Not all the provisions are essentials. An East Beirut businessman said one company recently received 11 containers of whiskey.

The police spokesman said at least 12 ships a day make it through the Syrian blockade. They dock mainly at Jounieh, 12 miles north of Beirut, and the ancient port of Jubayl, 10 miles farther north, and at smaller harbors in between.

Christian sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said two or three ships out of every 15 carry weapons and ammunition from Iraq, Syria’s main Arab rival and the Christians’ only ally in the Middle East.

The latest round of fighting in Lebanon’s 14-year-old civil war began on March 8 when Army commander Gen. Michel Aoun ordered his troops, most of whom are Christians, to blockade ports run by Muslim militias. Fierce artillery battles followed and the Syrians blockaded Christian ports.

Despite a cease-fire called by the Arab League on May 11, the Syrians shell the Christians’ coastal strip daily to try to prevent supplies from reaching Aoun’s forces.

In recent days, the Syrians have deployed navy gunboats to tighten the blockade, and some cargo ships have been turned back.

But some Christians believe the Syrians are not tightening the noose as much as they might.

“With the firepower the Syrians have they could be doing a lot more,” one source said. “We don’t know why there is this restraint, except possibly because they’re not yet prepared to go all the way.”

The danger zone is about six miles off the coast.

Boutros Sassine, 23, was a crewman aboard the 1,000-ton Lebanese freighter Paula, which took several hits on May 18 as it approached Oqaibeh, five miles north of Jounieh, with a cargo of food.

He and three other crewmen were wounded when a Syrian 130-millimeter shell hit the mast.

Lying in St. George’s Hospital in East Beirut, his head heavily bandaged, Boutros said the freighter was about five miles off Oqaibeh “when the shells started falling all around us.”

“Some of them were hitting only a few feet away, sending cascades of water over us. Then we were hit. I saw my brother Boulos and the others fall,” he said.

“A fishing boat which was in the vicinity came through the shelling and took us ashore,” Boutros said.

A Christian source said that most of the ship captains come from the Oqaibeh area.

“Their agency pays them about $5,000 a trip,” he said. “The seamen who used to earn $200 a month now get $200 a trip, which usually lasts between 24 and 48 hours.”

The ships sail mainly between the Christian enclave and Cyprus, 100 miles to the northeast. But Christian sources reported that some also pick up cargoes of fruit and vegetables from the southern ports of Sidon and Tyre, both run by Muslim militias.

A police spokesman in Sidon said merchants charter boats to take produce to the Christian enclave.

“They don’t want to waste their produce,” he said. “They’re ready to sell to the devil.”