Dodging Hezbollah

Editor’s note: This dramatic report, filed by WorldNetDaily
international correspondent Anthony C. LoBaido, describes his recent,
first-hand, harrowing adventure accompanying a South Lebanese Christian
soldier on the run from the radical Islamic terrorist group Hezbollah.
Chronicling their desperate search for the soldier’s missing wife and
daughter, LoBaido’s unusual and haunting story is excerpted from the
September edition of WND’s sister publication, the monthly WorldNet
magazine. Readers may subscribe to

WorldNet at WND’s online
store.

By Anthony C. LoBaido
© 2000, WorldNetDaily.com, Inc.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — There was a dead man lying next to the dumpster behind the Summertime Hotel on a sweltering July afternoon in sunny Beirut. So it should come as no surprise that this writer was taken aback when the dead man stood up and began waving his near-empty bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 around like an Apache Indian brandishing a tomahawk.

“Time to die!” the dead man shouted again and again. As he said these words, a German shepherd wagged his tail excitedly and then sat down at the man’s feet.

“But no, not today. It’s not a good day to die. There’s plenty more left to drink and I’ve got to find my Leila.”

And that was how I met Garrison, a former soldier in the Christian South Lebanon Army. Garrison is a man who would throw himself into the garbage, much in the same manner that his entire army had apparently been reclassified as rubbish by the Barak administration.

The South Lebanon Army had recently been vanquished when the Israel Defense Force pulled out of South or “Free” Lebanon. That small region was perhaps the last Christian enclave in the Middle East. The pullout itself, while planned for months, was hastily completed. Although the Barak government boasted that the IDF “did not suffer any causalities” while giving up the land, the SLA and South Lebanon’s Christians suffered horrendous rape, murder, looting, loss of property, the destruction of Christian symbols and summary execution.

The SLA has fought against the radical Islamic terrorist group, Hezbollah, as a proxy militia on the side of Israel since the early 1980s — fighting, bleeding and dying to protect Jewish settlers in Northern Israel from rocket attacks by the Iranian- and Syrian-sponsored Hezbollah fighters. The SLA’s struggle was a tough, brutal war that featured house-to-house and village-to-village fighting.

Moreover, it was a war that pitted brother against brother and cousin against cousin. But like so many other Christian allies of the West — the Karen of Burma, the Hmong of Laos, the Montagnards of Vietnam, the Afrikaners of South Africa, UNITA in Angola and the black South Sudanese Christians — the SLA Christians have been forgotten.

I helped Garrison steady himself. Despite his state, he didn’t seem like the drinking type. He stood well enough, taking in a few deep breaths.

“Who are you?” he asked me as his eyes squinted at the bright sunlight.

“Are you a Frenchman … English?” Garrison didn’t notice he was standing on a poster depicting President Bill Clinton shaking hands with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Behind the two men was an Israeli flag. Underneath was written, “Hide your daughters: The maniac has come to murder our children.”

I studied Garrison closely. He was wearing baggy-green pants, Nike sneakers and one of those cheap, fake Versace shirts that the Russian mob likes to sport around New York City. He has black, wavy hair and deep Mediterranean blue eyes. He smelled badly, and I longed to give him some of my Old Spice deodorant.

“No, I’m an American,” I replied. “Perhaps the quintessential ‘Ugly American,’ except without so much of the ugly.”

“Ah yes, America,” Garrison said, “Tell me about America and all the news from the great world. What do you like to do there?”

That was an easy one.

“I like to go to McDonalds for breakfast. They have bagels now. I drink my orange juice and eat hash browns while reading the New York Post. I like to keep up with how the Yankees are doing. Baseball is our national pastime, you know?”

“These Yankees, they are number one, no?” Garrison asks.

“Yes, they are the greatest — but not so much this year. They have many Christians on that team. And Chuck Knoblauch is a Texas A&M Aggie, just like me. Did you know that the first American soldier to hit foreign soil in every war was a Texas A&M alumnus? So here I am.”

Garrison seemed nonplussed. “Do you like this dog? He’s been following me all day. Moslems don’t like dogs — won’t touch them. But they are loyal and kind. What do you say, ‘Man’s best friend?'”

I told Garrison that I did, indeed, love dogs. The German shepherd looked at the two of us excitedly, as though all he needed in this cruel world was a new master.

“If we’re going to spend the day with this dog, we should give him a name, don’t you think?” Garrison asked me, while offering his liquor. I declined.

“King is a nice name. My father knew this man, Sally, who had a big German shepherd named King,” I replied.

“Sally? This is the name of a man?”

“Yes,” I replied. “You know, you had to be a tough guy to walk around Ozone Park in New York in the 1950s with a name like Sally. But as tough as Sally was — a big strapping welder — he still cried the day that King died.”

“Can you keep a secret?” Garrison asked. He seemed to be sobering up. It was hot and he was sweating profusely.

“Sure. But first tell me who is this Leila?” I countered, “She broke your heart?”

“That’s the secret,” he said darkly and in a way that made me drop the matter completely. I felt the man would tell me about her when he felt comfortable enough to speak. After all, you have to earn trust — even the trust of a man that looked as if he’d just crawled out of a dumpster.

And so that is how Garrison, King and I began our friendship. In short order, we found ourselves walking gingerly through Beirut. The streets are an odd contrast. There are innumerable demolished buildings — a remnant of the quarter-century-old civil war pitting Moslem against Christian. If you ask directions for just about any location in the city, those directions will most likely involve describing various bombed-out locations:

Destroyed apartments — still inhabited — are a harsh reminder of the civil war in Lebanon which lasted over a quarter of a century.

“You want to go to the Internet Café? Oh sure, three blocks ahead. Look for the bombed-out hotel. Turn right, and you will pass four imploded buildings. And then when you see the bombed-out Coca-Cola billboard, turn left. It should be there, but it might not be. It could have been bombed last week.” On the other hand, there is also new construction going on that seems to be happening everywhere.

In this nation of four million people — roughly the size of Connecticut — Christians and Muslims live on polar sides of the city. The Christians reside in the east and the Muslims in the west. In between them lies a new downtown of trendy nightclubs and restaurants that offers a glimmer of hope of restoring Beirut to its age-old title of “The Paris of the Middle East.” Only a generation ago, Beirut was a half-Christian and half-Muslim city that loomed as an economic miracle over the Arab Middle East.

Into the mouth of madness
South Lebanon is a harsh and brutal area broken into small villages. Its inhabitants are mostly Shiite Muslims who live by subsistence agriculture — growing olives, oranges and other fruits. The now-defunct security zone was about 850 square kilometers in size. To the east lay Mount Hermon and the Syrian-Lebanese border. To the west are the ancient cities of Tyre and Sidon.

In the early 1990s, the Iran-backed Hezbollah guerrillas began to attack Israel and the South Lebanon Army directly in the south of the nation. Also around this time, Syria, which acts as the de facto colonial landlord of Lebanon, dispatched over 40,000 troops into Lebanon — to Beirut, North Lebanon and the Bekka Valley. In the Bekka, they set up training camps for Hezbollah and the Kurdish Workers Party, or PKK.

It was also in the Bekka that Shiite Muslims, with the help of Iranian special intelligence agents, began printing “supernotes,” U.S. 100-dollar bills that rival North Korea’s for their counterfeit excellence. German Marks are also counterfeited in the Bekka. And drugs are cultivated in areas that were once outstanding wine vineyards. Larry Martines, a professor and terrorism expert who works with the U.S. government, tells WorldNetDaily, “The Bekka Valley is home to a great deal of heroin cultivation. It is controlled by the Syrian military. If they even for one second think that you are a DEA agent, you will simply disappear.”

It is impossible not to notice the huge Syrian military and police presence in Beirut. The soldiers and police asked me to stop taking photos on several occasions and, on another, threatened to destroy my camera. As we traversed the city, Garrison spoke softly of his fears:

Hezbollah propaganda poster in Beirut.

“Hezbollah is busy rounding up suspected SLA soldiers and putting them before tribunals. Many SLA soldiers are just turning themselves in to the Hezbollah soldiers. Some of our people will be shot; others will be given jail sentences for collaborating with the Israelis. Still other ex-SLA soldiers will be sent into exile outside of their home villages. I have seen summary executions with my own eyes.”

“We were the best allies the Israelis ever had. And now we’re the main casualties in Ehud Barak’s game of politics with Syria. You see, Hafez Assad wanted to use Hezbollah as a chip with Israel: ‘Give us back the Golan Heights and we will stop Hezbollah from attacking you from South Lebanon,’ says Assad. But when Barak made the unilateral decision to pull out of South Lebanon, he took that chip away from Syria. Thousands of South Lebanese Christians have been betrayed.”

“And now?” I inquired.

“We will survive. We will be once again put on the anvil to be hammered — as if we, as a people, haven’t suffered enough. Yet, we must remember that Moses had to lead sheep before he could lead men. History clearly demonstrates that all who oppose the Jews have been destroyed — the Pharaohs of Egypt, the Spanish Empire, the Nazis and even the Soviets. While on the other hand, those who have helped the Jewish people, like the British and Americans, have prospered. The Lebanese Christians who fought and bled and died for the Jewish people of Israel may be forgotten, but they won’t be forgotten by the true God of the Bible.”

Hezbollah was founded in 1982 to counter the Israeli incursion into the nation. The name of the organization, which means “Party of God” (“hizb,” or party, plus “Allah,” God), was created in 1973. The story goes that as a young mullah was being tortured and murdered in Qom, Iran, his last words uttered were, “There is only one party, the party of God.”

Immediately after its founding, Hezbollah spoke of the annihilation of the State of Israel and “returning the Jewish occupiers back to where they came from.” Hezbollah’s agenda is to create a Shiite state in Lebanon, drive out Western culture and serve its masters in Tehran.

A plea for help
Later that same night, Garrison and I sat at a chic Beirut restaurant eating salads and mutton. As belly dancers moved around the restaurant between the tables, Garrison quietly gave his account of why he had returned to Beirut, against all common sense and self-preservation instinct.

“I joined the SLA to defend Israel in 1984,” he began. “While others were forcibly conscripted into the SLA, I did this mainly for biblical reasons. God told Abraham, ‘I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you,’ meaning to me, that God would help Israel’s allies, and punish her enemies. And even back then I knew that Hezbollah would bring so much bloodshed to our nation. They teach Arab children to kill and die for a lie. They teach that by killing God’s chosen people they will go to Heaven and get a harem of 50 virgins as a reward. As long as they continue to spread these lies, there will never be peace in the Middle East — or in the world.

“We fought bravely, trusting always in our generals, like Aoun and Lahad. And the Israeli soldiers — they too fought with great courage. Even the Hezbollah soldiers fought well. But there was no real blueprint for victory, no national consensus among the Israeli people. The Israelis have, on one hand, been too brutal with the Palestinians. They have forgotten their own treatment by the Nazis. Remember, God told Saul ‘not to forget’ and to ‘remember the Amalekites.’ Then on the other hand, many Israelis have forgotten how the Arabs hate them and will always seek to destroy them. The liberal Jews also hate the fundamentalist messianic Jews, Orthodox Jews and Fundamentalist Christians. They are the ones who put Barak in power.

“I feared we would be betrayed in the end, and we were. I never trusted the United Nations forces in South Lebanon. They were mainly from the European countries, but they hated Christians, which was terribly strange to me.”

The 4,500-member U.N. Interim Force did little to protect the SLA from Hezbollah. The troops were mainly based on the coast at Naquoura and ran checkpoints from Tyre heading to the interior of Lebanon.

Garrison continued, “Once Barak came to power, I sent my wife Leila and my daughter Rachel to live in Beirut, away from the war in South Lebanon. Now that the war is over, everyone is running to Israel. But I cannot leave until I find my wife and daughter.”

“Where are they?” I asked with great trepidation, “I mean, they are still alive, aren’t they?”

Garrison closed his eyes, as though falling into a pit. When he opened his eyes, he blinked them rapidly. He apparently didn’t want to look me in the eye.

“I’m not sure,” Garrison finally replied, “But I feel they are. They have to be. I know my wife — she is very smart. I know that she has taken my daughter to some place safe. She knows that I will never, ever turn myself in to Hezbollah. It is they who should be on trial. So she has moved out of the city to a quiet and safe place where no one can hurt her or Rachel.”

Looking through me with his steely blue eyes, Garrison asks, “Would you be willing to help me find them?”

“Look, this isn’t the Three Kings movie and I’m not George Clooney,” I replied huffily.

Garrison waved his arm with the aplomb of a man tossing aside a drumstick at a Thanksgiving feast.

“I understand. You are right. You are a journalist, not a soldier. But you know, I remember you told me about how you helped a group of Hmong escape from a refugee camp in Thailand before they were to be sent back to their death in Laos. And how you helped organize visas for 35,000 Hmong to come to the United States. And didn’t you say that when you went on that TV show to talk about the persecuted Christians in Burma, that Pat Robertson himself brought up the plight of the SLA and the South Lebanon Christians?” Garrison prodded, sipping on his Heineken.

“I did help some of the Hmong soldiers escape. That was easy. All they needed was money for the train to head south for Malaysia. There are many Christians in America who do care.”

“Do the Lebanese have any political power in America?” he asked.

“Let me put it this way. The only Lebanese man the average American has heard of is Cpl. Max Klinger on the TV show M*A*S*H — you know, that Lebanese camel jockey?”

“You still haven’t said if you will help me.”

Garrison was right. I was dancing around the subject. You can’t fancy yourself as a Christian soldier on one hand, then fail to help those in need, even if it means fighting as a soldier. That wouldn’t be Christian.

“Look, I wrote to Gen. Antoine Lahad 10 days ago at his headquarters in Tel Aviv. I told him that I could lend a voice to the SLA and his people, the refugees, but he didn’t even contact me,” I protested.

“I see,” Garrison countered. “But that should come as no surprise. Over the last month or so the SLA has been totally uprooted. Our Free Christian Zone in South Lebanon no longer exists. We are all on the run and in disarray. This is our darkest hour. I seriously doubt that General Lahad even received your letter. Israel Intelligence probably intercepted it. You must not forget what it says in Ephesians: ‘We battle not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities in high places.’ The forces of darkness, which are great indeed, don’t want you to be able to help the SLA in their darkest hour. You must pray more for God’s help, not become bitter because Gen. Lahad did not answer your letter.

“WorldNetDaily could really be a voice for our people. In Israel, the media is almost totally in the hands of the government. The only real free voice of freedom in Israel is Arutz Sheva. And he is forced to broadcast from a boat several miles offshore from Israel. Recently, the Israeli Police were sent in to confiscate all of his broadcasting equipment from his boat.”

Garrison pleaded. “We need you. The SLA needs you. I need you. Leila and Rachel need you.”

“You could always run away and join the French Foreign Legion,” I replied half-heartedly.

“I have no right to ask you, but you have to make a decision,” he said matter-of-factly. “Let me show you what is beautiful to me.” Garrison pulled out a photograph of his lovely Leila and Rachel. I pored over the photo for a minute.

“They are lovely. You must miss them terribly,” I replied.

“Have you ever been in love?” Garrison asked. “Do you have a wife or children?”

“No, I don’t. But I hope to someday. And I think I fell in love with this stewardess I met on the flight from Austria to Cyprus. She works for Austrian Airlines. Her name is Christina. I never found out her last name, but I can’t stop thinking about her.”

“So then you can imagine how I feel about my wife and daughter, how I can’t stop thinking about them,” Garrison then said.

It was then that I knew I would not be making my Monday afternoon flight back to Cyprus. There was a little voice in the back of my mind telling me that I would be unable to leave Lebanon until I had helped Garrison complete his search for his wife and daughter. Garrison was so strong and brave and single-minded. He was, after all, a real Christian soldier — father, husband and soldier. The kind of soldier I had always aspired to be. Once again, as happened in Laos, Cambodia, North Korea and South Africa, I had crossed the line between journalist and participant. There would be no turning back now.

Was this a death wish, I wondered? No, rather it was a life wish. I had written extensively about the betrayal of America’s and England’s allies. Maybe I could not save those allies. But I could help to save this one brave soul, and perhaps his wife and daughter.

But there was another voice. This one, faint yet somehow stronger, told me that something was not quite right with this man and his story. In the end, it was the fainter of the two voices that had provided me with a premonition of an eerie story that will haunt me as long as I shall live.

In the conclusion of “Dodging Hezbollah,” LoBaido and Garrison embark on a nerve-wracking journey through Hezbollah territory in a desperate search for Garrison’s wife and daughter. On the way, they have several harrowing brushes with death, before the story winds down to its dramatic and memorable conclusion. Read the entire story (about four times the length of this excerpt), complete with photos taken on location by LoBaido, in

WorldNet magazine’s September edition,
available at WND’s online store.