Feud In the Hills

Lebanon, half Christian and half Moslem, is a small, well-to-do nation that owes its prosperity to the common realization that the quarrels which divide it are bad for business and impossible to resolve. Almost torn apart by feuds a year ago until U.S. troops intervened, Lebanon still remembers its differences.

Last week Lebanon's President Fuad Chehab, who does his best to ignore the feuds, headed for his summer home in the mountains, there to greet a group of visiting Lebanese-Americans (TIME, Aug. 3). Among his invited guests: bulky Nairn Moghabghab, 48, one of the heroes of Lebanon's long independence struggle against the French. It was Guerrilla Moghabghab who in 1944 shot a French soldier who was trying to replace the Lebanese flag with the Tricolor atop Beirut's parliament building. Moghabghab became a Deputy and later Minister of Works.

In last year's civil war, Moghabghab, a Christian (Greek Catholic), sided with Christian (Maronite) President Camille Chamoun. In the mountainous Chouf area near his home, he led a private army of his own against the forces of Kamal Jumblatt, chieftain of the Druses, craggy mountaineers who practice the secret rites of an Islamic heresy. When Jumblatt's army overran his village, Moghabghab burned his own home to the ground rather than let it fall to the enemy.

Since peace returned to Lebanon, Moghabghab has never traveled alone in the mountain regions, always packed a gun. But last week was a special occasion. As the President's motorcade started up the steep final hill to his mountaintop palace, Moghabghab's car, just behind it, rounded the bend. Among the hundreds of Druses lining the road, shouting and cheering, someone recognized their old enemy. Within seconds, Moghabghab's car was surrounded. His driver leaped out, ran off to attract the attention of General Adel Chehab, commander in chief of the army, who was just a few yards ahead. As Moghabghab sat helpless in the car, four shots, muffled by the wild shrieks of the crowd, rang out. Moghabghab pitched over dead. His body was dragged from the car, battered with sticks and boulders.

Fearing that the murder might break Lebanon's tenuous internal peace, the Cabinet met in emergency session, attended Moghabghab's state funeral en masse. The army was recalled from maneuvers, dispatched to the Chouf. Ex-President Chamoun berated the government for failing to protect his friend. Chieftain Jumblatt offered his tepid regrets ("It was fate's will").

Ominously, Moghabghab's relatives refused to attend his funeral or claim his body for burial. Following custom, they will accept his body only if it is accompanied by the corpses of his assassins.

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