Villages remain half empty, the economy is in a shambles and the fear of violence has returned.
That is a far cry from the wild enthusiasm that accompanied the May 24 pullout, which theoretically opened the way for a social and economic revival in a region that for two decades had been the stage for an unrelenting guerrilla war against the Israelis. There were grand visions of hundreds of thousands of displaced persons returning to rebuild their homes and their lives in the stretch of territory along the border with Israel, of millions of dollars in investment to rebuild roads, bridges, schools and power plants. That has not happened. The villages, be they Muslim or Christian, are half empty. When Israel withdrew from Lebanon, the SLA disintegrated, and an estimated 6,500 former SLA members fled the country for fear of reprisals.