The Foreign Service Journal, May 2019

80 MAY 2019 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL George B. Lambrakis was a Foreign Service officer with the U.S. Information Agency and the State Department from 1954 to 1985. In addition to Beirut and London, he served in Tel Aviv and on the State Department Israel desk during the 1967 Six-Day War; as one of two American Observers (with Ambassador Alfred “Roy” Atherton Jr.) at the Israel-Syria disengagement negotiations after the 1973 Arab-Israeli (or Yom Kippur) War; as deputy chief of mission and political coun- selor in Tehran through the Iranian revolution; and as regional affairs director and National Security Council coordinator for the Bureau of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs during the American Southwest Asia troop buildup under the Carter and Reagan presidencies. His professional memoir, So You Want to Be a Diplomat?, is forthcoming. I have been prompted to reflect on my own experiences in Lebanon as I follow the Trump administration’s foreign policy in the Middle East—and, in par- ticular, the anticipated rollout of an Israeli- Palestinian peace proposal that is almost certain to be rejected by the Palestinians and their Hezbollah and Iranian allies. In Lebanon, that crucible of ethnic, religious, sectarian and political com- plexities where the conflicting interests of Iran, Syria, Israel and Saudi Arabia may soon collide, the past interaction of American military ventures and diplo- macy offers a useful cautionary tale. S I arrived in Beirut as deputy chief of mission (DCM) to Ambassador G. McMurtrie “Mac” Godley in September 1975, just as the second Lebanese civil war had begun. (It would last—with occasional interruptions—until 1990.) My wife and two daughters were soon evacuated as part of the general thin- ning down of nonessential embassy personnel from what had been a large regional center for various U.S. agencies operating in the Middle East. The conflict had been triggered when a busload of Palestinian refugees driv- ing through a Maronite (Christian) vil- lage in the north was attacked, and two dozen of them were killed. The Palestine Liberation Organization fighters allied themselves to the Sunni Muslim militias led at that time by Kamal Jumblatt, whose Druze followers hoped to modify the terms of the 1943 unwritten power- sharing agreement between Maronites and Sunnis that left the Druze out. In this battle the Greek Orthodox and Shia remained neutral. Sadly, Amb. Godley had to depart Beirut in November 1975 for cancer treat- ment, and Special Emissary Dean Brown’s effort to mediate an end to the fight- ing failed. I had been serving as chargé d’affaires for six months by May 1976, when veteran diplomat Francis Meloy arrived as the new U.S. ambassador. The war was at a stalemate because Syria’s President Hafez al-Assad had surprisingly intervened to prevent a Maronite defeat. Quietly welcomed by Secretary of State Kissinger, Assad’s intervention was limited by strong warnings from Israel. On June 16, Meloy set out to pres- ent his credentials to the new Lebanese president, Elias Sarkis. Dayton Mak, a retired former Beirut DCM had agreed to replace me as Meloy’s deputy, but he could not reach Beirut because the airport was closed by Palestinians. So Meloy, accompanied by Robert Waring, our economic counselor, who knew the former central bank head Sarkis well, set out from Muslim West Beirut to Sar- kis’ office in Maronite East Beirut. Their driver, Zuhair Moghrabi, sud- denly ordered the embassy’s security “fol- low” car to turn back just before crossing the “green line” into Maronite territory. All three men in the ambassador’s car were kidnapped and their dead bodies dropped in front of the unfinished U.S. embassy in West Beirut the same day. S A British convoy evacuated Meloy and Waring’s bodies overland to Syria and back to Washington, D.C., for a sol- emn memorial service, while I resumed charge of the embassy and presided over a service for all three men. The kidnappers were never identi- fied (though I have my own theory), and Secretary Kissinger ordered another evacuation of nonessential person- nel and American citizens who wished to leave. Because of a promise he had made to Israel, Kissinger was unable to directly contact the Palestinians, who by then controlled most of Beirut, so he mobilized the Egyptians, Saudis and French to convey his threat of serious consequences if the Palestinians did not let his people go. Diplomacy Can Save the Day BY GEORGE B . LAMBRAK I S REFLECTIONS