Israelis to the left, Hizbollah in for the kill

Frontline SOUTHERN LEBANON

NOT LONG after the Gurkhas moved into Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon as part of the UN's 20-year-old peacekeeping force, a couple of Israeli-paid Lebanese militiamen tried to bring their guns into the little smuggling village of Shebaa.

Leave your weapons with us, said the Gurkhas. A few hours later, another group of gunmen stopped a patrol of Indian troops who were escorting their ambassador.

Hand over your rifles, the militiamen said, until we get ours back. The soldiers refused. The 2nd Battalion, IV Ghurka Rifles, they explained, never - ever - hand their guns to anyone.

The boys from Israel's South Lebanon Army could have saved themselves a confrontation by reading through the regiment's official history. In the officers' mess, a notice-board records their honours with merciless precision: Afghanistan 1897-98, 1914-15, 1934-37, 1939; North West Frontier Province: 1895, 1923-25, 1931, 1937, 1938, 1939-40, Baghdad and Kut al- Amara 1916, Greece 1918, Turkey 1917-19, Syria, 1941, Egypt and Libya 1942, Italy 1944-45.

"We take our regiment's history very seriously," Colonel Guru Batabyal says unnecessarily. Indeed they do; the Gurkhas have lugged their regimental silver all the way from India to the mess above the tiny village of Ebl es-Saqi in southern Lebanon.

They are, after all, in a unique position. With Israelis to the left of them, Israelis to the right of them - in fact Israelis all round them, with visiting Hizbollah trying to kill the Israelis - the Gurkhas are the only UN battalion operating entirely within the Israeli occupation zone. And if the Israelis one day decide to leave, the Hizbollah and their chums will have some scores to settle with the militiamen in the area. It will then need a tough bunch of soldiers to keep the peace - which may be why the Gurkhas are here.

Col Batabyal is a canny man. His advance party toured the area, noted that Lebanese women prefer female doctors, that the farm animals were often sick and that the children liked music. So out came two women medical officers from the Indian army, a military vet (treatment free of charge) and a standing invitation to march their Gurkha pipers through the local schools. "Every soldier, Mr Fisk, must be made to understand that our role is peacekeeping, not peace-enforcing," the colonel says. "I've told my men to salute, smile, be polite and be firm - and give old ladies and school buses the right of way because that is our Indian tradition."

A half hour in the colonel's office is a mixture of literary quotation and military wisdom. The Indians are full-time professional soldiers and officer selection will accept only 300 out of every 120,000 applicants. Tennyson is quoted with approval. "Their's not to reason why, Their's but to do and die," the colonel says rather grandly. Tell that to the Hizbollah, I say to myself. But he means every word of it.

The IV Gurkhas, still - incredibly - calls itself the "Prince of Wales' Own". Which - given the departure of the British in 1948 - seemed to me to be taking things a bit too far.

The colonel, whose eyes became a good deal harder the more they peered at you, read my thoughts. "You cannot live on past glory alone, otherwise you will be bankrupt," he said. "You can take a small loan on the past - but you can't live on it for ever."

The 617 Gurkha and Indian troops - who include Hindus, Christians and Muslims - had their first taste of local savagery on Christmas Day when a pro-Israeli militiaman called Ghassan Daher was shot dead outside his house in the frozen heights of Shebaa. For once, it wasn't a Hizbollah job.

Though he was an intelligence officer, Daher's real sin was that he knew the identity of a man who'd killed Ismael Hazira, a smuggler shot dead near the Syrian border. Daher had been silenced. So the Israelis "invited" some of the locals to visit their intelligence officers in a town outside the UN zone - the Gurkhas couldn't prevent them - and two young men allegedly confessed to the killing.

For Major Rahul Sherma, it was an unusual incident. He checks the smugglers out of Shebaa each day, their mules loaded with Marlboro cigarettes for Syria, seven boxes to a mule, the men returning with raw tobacco. They carry money, mobile phones and guns - the latter left at a post provided by the Gurkhas.

Instead of a draughty UN hut, they provided The Independent with a suite of three rooms and a Gurkha who would arrive every 10 minutes, snap to attention, then produce a teapot of polished silver, coffee cups and sugar- coated biscuits. By his third visit, Mr Fisk was beginning to feel like Captain Fisk and when a real captain - Amit Sherma, the colonel's ADC - arrived with superbly hand-written invitations (emblazoned with cross-Kukri insignia) to drinks and dinner in the officers' mess, it was not difficult to imagine how Capt Fisk might become - by morning, of course - Viceroy of Lebanon's South East Frontier Province.

Malcolm Muggeridge once reflected that the only Englishmen left are the Indians. He should have watched the officers at dinner in their smartly pressed suits and regimental ties and the female doctor in a sari, while The Independent's man in Lebanon arrived - led by Gurkha pipers - in his traditional uniform of scuffed brown shoes, faded blue corduroys and old green pullover.

"Only we have to wear the lounge suits," Capt Sherma confided gently. "You are the guest." Talk about the End of Empire.

Robert Fisk