ARSAL, Lebanon: Residents of the isolated border town of Arsal, in the eastern Bekaa, say they fear that the recent cross-border forays by Syrian troops are a precursor to a larger military operation against them on the pretext of halting the smuggling of arms to the Syrian opposition.

“We are almost certain it’s going to happen. We saw pro-Assad demonstrators in Damascus calling for the destruction of Arsal. They think we are smuggling weapons into Syria,” said Ali Hojeiry, the mayor of Arsal, as members of the municipality nodded in agreement inside his smoke-filled office Friday .

Eleven days ago, a farmer was killed in the remote hills east of Arsal when, according to local residents, Syrian soldiers backed by tanks and armored vehicles penetrated several kilometers inside Lebanon and sprayed machine gun fire in the direction of Lebanese farms. A few days earlier, farm buildings were damaged by tank fire during another incursion. The cross-border penetrations, the latest occurringat dawn Friday morning, have forced most local farmers to flee the area.

Until recently, Syrian border violations tended to occur in the Wadi Khaled district of Akkar, consisting of Syrian troops slipping just over the frontier near the villages of Hnaider and Mouanse or firing machine gun rounds into Lebanese territory.

But the recent Syrian attention on Arsal appears to be connected to allegations of weapons being smuggled through the remote passes of the rugged and barren mountains that mark the border in east Lebanon. The prices of black market weapons have skyrocketed in recent months. Arms dealers say the unrest in Syria is fuelling the price hike, but most of the smuggling so far appears to be on an ad hoc and individual basis rather than a more organized transfer of arms to the opposition.

Certainly, Arsal has a history of smuggling commercial goods to and from Syria as do many Lebanese villages along the border, but the residents insisted that no weapons were being dispatched across the frontier.

“Not one gun has crossed the border from here and we have not received one member of the Syrian opposition,” said Mohammad, a member of Arsal’s municipal council.

Some residents claimed that Syrian troops are massing along the border in preparation for an attack on Arsal.

“The question is: What can we do?” said one resident who asked not to be identified. “We feel like we are hostages in the Hezbollah government today.”

The fears of a Syrian invasion of Arsal are probably exaggerated. While it is evident that Syrian troops have penetrated on occasions across the border, and may have set up a temporary presence on Lebanese soil, they are limiting themselves to the remote territory several kilometers east of the town. Indeed, it is often forgotten that there remain sizeable numbers of Syrian troops on Lebanese soil, most notably in the hills south of Deir al-Ashayer and east of Kfar Kouk in the Rashaya district of the Western Bekaa.

The government has played down reports of Syrian forays into Lebanon and insists there is good coordination between the Lebanese and Syrian authorities. Friday, Lebanese and Syrian army officers met at the Dabbousiyeh border crossing in the north to discuss how to “take more measures to prevent smuggling through illegal border crossings,” a statement said.

Still, it is easy to understand the paranoia that has gripped the 40,000 residents of Arsal. The town is geographically isolated, linked to the rest of Lebanon only by a single road that winds over the stark sepia-hued mountains that surround the town. More pertinently, Arsal faces political and sectarian isolation being the only Sunni town in an area that is predominantly populated by Shiites who support Hezbollah and back the Assad regime.

Furthermore, Arsal has a history of opposition to the Assad regime dating back to the mid-1970s and highlighted by the participation of residents in the anti-Syrian “independence intifada” rallies of February and March 2005.

The cluster of farmsteads exposed to the Syrian troop incursions lie in an area known as Khirbet Daoud, about10 kilometers east of Arsal. They are reached by a rutted stone track that winds across an arid, desolate wind-blasted landscape criss-crossed by dry river beds. The border runs along the crest of the barren Anti Lebanon mountains, although Syrian farmers long ago encroached onto Lebanese territory, planting and cultivating orchards of apricot, pear and almond trees and feuding with aggrieved Lebanese landowners.

The last presence of the Lebanese state is a police checkpoint on the eastern outskirts of the town. There are no Lebanese troops deployed east of Arsal, underlining the sense of vulnerability felt by local farmers.

There were no Syrian soldiers to be seen at the end of a tense hour-long drive through the wilderness. But, according to Hussein Wehbe, a farmer who lives with his family in a two-room house and adjacent tent, Syrian troops deployed on a hill a few hundred meters to the east that morning.

“They fired shots in the air and stayed on the hill for about half an hour,” he said as his wife stooped over a fire to brew a pot of Turkish coffee. “If I take one step closer to the border from here, they will shoot at me.”

Asked why he chose to stay when most other farmers had fled, he said, “This is my land and I’m not going to go anywhere else.”