SYRIAN troops complete their withdrawal from Lebanon today, ending almost 30 years of occupation and paving the way for the country’s first free and fair elections in a generation.

Positions were bulldozed and checkpoints dismantled as the last tanks and artillery guns were removed for the short trip home. Lorries filled with troops and equipment belched black diesel smoke as they ground up the hills of the eastern Bekaa. Green military buses festooned with Syrian flags and portraits of President Assad ferried soldiers across the border.

A monument dedicated to Syrian soldiers who died in Lebanon’s wars will be unveiled at a ceremony this morning in the Bekaa Valley town of Rayak formally marking an end to Syria’s military presence.

With almost all Syrian troops gone from Lebanon, Rustom Ghazale, the head of Syrian military intelligence in Lebanon, the mukhabarat, has vowed to be the last soldier to leave. Once his vehicle crosses the border at Masnaa today, the military road connecting the two countries will be closed.

Jamil Sayyed, Lebanon’s feared security chief and a close ally of Damascus, announced his resignation yesterday. Raymond Azar, chief of Lebanese military intelligence, was reported to have fled to France. The security chiefs stand accused of involvement in the murder of Rafik Hariri, a former Lebanese Prime Minister, whose death heaped pressure on Syria to withdraw.

A Syrian army officer, a camera on his shoulder, stood by the main road at Masnaa filming each vehicle as it passed, capturing for posterity what many Syrians regard as a humiliating retreat. “I am sorry to leave like this because the Syrian and Lebanese people are brothers,” the officer said. “We would have liked to stay.”

But in the nearby ethnic Armenian town of Anjar, headquarters since 1976 of Syria’s military intelligence, there was barely disguised delight. “We are very happy to see them go,” Rafi Tamorian, 25, said. “They might be our brothers, but they have been treading on our hearts for too long.”

The intelligence headquarters lies beside the ruins of an 8th-century town built by the Islamic Umayyad dynasty. The Syrians had used the ancient stone dwellings as billets.

Around one corner of the site lay empty cans and plastic water bottles, and laundry had been hung up to dry in the warm spring sunshine. Two intelligence officers, unshaven and dressed in black leather jackets, light cotton trousers and sandals — the attire of the Syrian mukhabarat — crouched at a fire brewing tea, their rifles leaning against a wall. The sight made a bizarre contrast to the graceful columns and arches of the nearby palace of the Umayyad caliph Al-Walid Ibn Abdel Malik, an earlier Damascus-based ruler of the Levant.

Nicolas Hergilian, who runs a stall by the ruins, said: “Since 1976, Anjar ceased being a centre of civilisation and became a centre for the mukhabarat.

In Majdal Anjar, a Sunni town in the eastern Bekaa well known for supplying volunteers to the Iraqi insurgency, pictures of the murdered Hariri cover walls, shop windows and car windscreens, mute testimony to anti-Syrian passions. “We used to be quiet because we are close to the border but when the Opposition held the (anti-Syrian) demonstrations in Beirut, the village exploded and we all travelled to Beirut to join in,” Khaled Yassin, a shopkeeper, said. “We want our independence.”

A UN team arrives in Damascus today on a mission to ensure that Syrian forces and intelligence personnel have fully departed, in compliance with UN Resolution 1559.

During the 1990s, 30,000 Syrian soldiers were in Lebanon. By the start of this year, redeployments since 2000 had whittled the number down to 14,000. Although Resolution 1559 was adopted last September, the Syrians continued to stall on a total withdrawal. It was Hariri’s murder that precipitated the final pullout.

The end of Syrian domination heralds uncertainty. With a new Government formed last week and parliamentary elections scheduled for May, the pro-Syrian establishment in Beirut is unravelling.

OUT IN FORCE

• Syrian troops entered Lebanon in 1976 as peacekeepers during the Lebanese civil war from 1975-90
  
• By 1990 there were 30,000 Syrian troops in Lebanon
  
• Syria aimed to curb Israel’s influence in Lebanon after two invasions in 1978 and 1982
  
• The assassination in February this year of Rafik Hariri, a former Prime Minister, sparked demonstrations calling for a Syrian withdrawal
  
• On March 5, President Assad of Syria agreed to a gradual withdrawal

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