Camille Chamoun: Encyclopedia II - Camille Chamoun - During the Civil War

Camille Chamoun - During the Civil War

• main article: Lebanese Civil War

In the 1970s and 1980s, Chamoun served in a variety of portfolios in the Cabinet. This was during the Lebanese Civil War (1975-90), in which Chamoun and the NLP participated through the party's militia, the "Tigers" (in Arabic, nimr means tiger). In the early stages of the war, he helped found the Lebanese Front, a coalition of mostly Christian politicians and parties, whose united militia - dominated by the Kataeb Party - became known as the Lebanese Forces (LF). Chamoun was chairman of the Front in 1976-78.

Though initially aligned with Syria, and inviting its army to intervene against the Muslim-leftist Lebanese National Movement (LNM) and its Palestinian allies in 1976, Chamoun then gravitated towards opposition to the Syrian presence. In 1980, the NLP's Tigers milita was virtually destroyed by a surprise attack from Chamoun's Christian rival, Bashir Gemayel, and the LF forces under his command. After the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, Chamoun decided to enter a tactical cooperation with Israel, in order to oppose what he considered a Syrian occupation.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "During the Civil War", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki