Lebanese Civil War: Encyclopedia II - Lebanese Civil War - Formation of militias

Lebanese Civil War - Formation of militias

Constitutionally guaranteed Christian control of the government had come under increasing fire from Muslims and secular left wing groups in the 1960s, leading them to join forces as the Lebanese National Movement (LNM) in 1969. The LNM called for the taking of a new census (the last one had been conducted in 1932) and the subsequent drafting of a new governmental structure that would reflect the actual population balance. This was perceived as a mortal threat for Christian (especially Maronite) power in Lebanon, although alliances were admittedly much more complex than the "Muslims versus Christians" rubric posited by some Maronite leaders and many outside observers.

The two sides were unable to reconcile their conflicts of interest and began forming militias, first for self-protection, but as things escalated ever more in parallel to the regular army. This rapidly undermined the authority of the central government. The government's ability to maintain order was also handicapped by the nature of the Lebanese Army. One of the smallest in the Middle East, it was composed based on a fixed ratio of religions. As members defected to sectarian militias, the army would eventually prove unable to contain the militant groups, rein in the PLO or monitor foreign infiltration. Also, since the government was Christian-dominated, and the officers' ranks especially so, trust among Muslims for central institutions including the army was low. The disintegration of the Lebanese Army was eventually initiated by Muslim deserters declaring that they would no longer take orders from the Maronite generals.

Throughout the war most or all militias operated with little regard for human rights, and the sectarian character of the conflict made non-combatant civilians a frequent target. As the war dragged on, the militias deteriorated ever further into mafia style organizations with many commanders turning to crime as their main preoccupation, rather than fighting. Finances for the war effort were obtained in one or all of three ways:

• Outside support, generally from one of the rivalling Arab governments or Israel, or a superpower, often with strings attached. Alliances would shift frequently.
• Preying on the population. Extortion, theft, bank robberies and random checkpoints at which "customs" would be collected, were commonplace on all sides. During cease-fires, most militias operated in their home areas as virtual mafia organizations.
• Smuggling. During the civil war, Lebanon turned into one of the world's largest narcotics producers, with much of the hashish production centered in the Bekaa valley. But much else was also smuggled, such as guns and supplies, all kinds of stolen goods and regular trade - war or no war, Lebanon would not give up its role as the middleman in European-Arab business. Many battles were fought over Lebanon's ports, to gain smuggler's access to the sea routes.

Lebanese Civil War - The major militias

Christian militias armed by West Germany and Belgium drew supporters from the larger and poorer Christian population in the north of the country. They were generally right-wing in their political outlook, some of them formed under early impulses from European Fascism. All the major Christian militias were Maronite-dominated, and other Christian sects played a secondary role.

The most powerful of the Christian militias was that of the Kataeb, or Phalange, under the leadership of Bachir Gemayel. The Phalange went on to help found in 1977 the Lebanese Forces which came under the leadership of Samir Geagea. A smaller faction was the extremist Guardians of the Cedars. These militias quickly established strongholds in Christian-dominated East Beirut, also the site of many government buildings.

In the north, the Marada Brigades served as the private militia of the Franjieh family.

The Shi'a militias were slow to form and join in the fighting. Initially, many Shi'a had been drawn to the Palestinian movement and the Lebanese Communist Party, but after 1970's Black September, there followed a sudden influx of armed Palestinians to the Shi'a areas. The Palestinian movement quickly squandered its influence with the Shi'a, as radical factions ruled by the gun in much of Shi'a-inhabited southern Lebanon, where the refugee camps were accidentally concentrated, and the mainstream PLO proved either unwilling or unable to rein them in.

The Palestinian radicals' secularism and arrogant behaviour had alienated the traditionalist Shi'a community, but simultaneously presented a model for revolutionary politics that appealed to the young of Lebanon's poorest and most downtrodden community. After many years without their own independent political organizations, there suddenly arose Musa Sadr's Amal Movement in 1974-75. Its moderate Islamist ideology immediately attracted the urban poor, and Amal's armed ranks grew rapidly. Later, in the early 1980s, a hard line faction would break away to join with Shi'a groups fighting Israel to form the Hizbullah guerrillas, whom to this day remain the most powerful militia of Lebanon. Hizbullah was initially aided and trained by Iran, and since the late 1980s, Hizbullah has also received backing from Syria.

Some Sunni factions received support from Libya and Iraq, and a number of minor militias existed, the more prominent with Nasserist or otherwise pan-Arab and Arab nationalist leanings, but a minor few Islamist. The main Sunni-led organization was the al-Murabitun. To compensate for weakness on the battlefield, the Sunni leadership turned early in the war to the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which was dominated by Palestinian Sunnis, although it also had a sizable Christian (mainly Greek Orthodox) minority.

The small Druze sect, strategically but dangerously seated on the Chouf in central Lebanon, had no natural allies, and so were compelled to put much effort into building (and breaking) alliances. Under the leadership of the Jumblatt family, first Kamal Jumblatt (the LNM leader) and then his son Walid, the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) served as an effective Druze militia, building excellent ties to the Soviet Union.

Although several Lebanese militias claimed to be secular, most were little but vehicles for sectarian interest. Still, there existed a number of non-religious groups, primarily but not exclusively of the far-left. Examples of this was the pro-Moscow Lebanese Communist Party (LCP) and the more radical and independent Communist Action Organization (COA). Another notable example was the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), which promoted the concept of Greater Syria, in contrast to Pan-Arab or Lebanese nationalism. The SSNP was generally aligned with the Syrian government, although it did not ideologically approve of Hafez al-Assad's Ba'thist regime.

The Palestinian movement, which had relocated most of its fighting strength to Lebanon after being expelled from Jordan in the events known as Black September in 1970, was formally under the umbrella of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) - by itself undoubtedly Lebanon's most potent fighting force. But in actuality, the PLO was little more than a loose confederation, and its leader, Yassir Arafat, proved unable to control rival factions. This undermined both the PLO's operative strength and the sympathy of the Lebanese for the PLO, as the organization's outside image was increasingly being set by Communist radicals, whose "revolutionary order" rarely turned out to be anything other than protection rackets. In the end, the PLO was held together more by shared interests and Arafat's continual attempts at intra-organizational mediation, than by any coherent organizational structure.

The mainstream PLO, represented by Arafat's powerful Fatah guerrillas, initially hesitated to take sides, but was eventually dragged into open conflict by more radical Palestinian factions. These were encouraged by radical Arab states such as Syria, Iraq and Libya, and espoused Arab socialist or Marxist-Leninist doctrine. Among the most important were the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and its splinter, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). Lesser roles were played by the fractious Palestinian Liberation Front (PLF) and another split-off from the PFLP, the Syrian-aligned Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC). To complicate things, the Ba'thist systems of Syria and Iraq both set up Palestinian puppet organizations within the PLO. The as-Sa'iqa was a Syrian-controlled militia, parallelled by the Arab Liberation Front (ALF) under Iraqi command. The Syrian government could also count on the Syrian brigades of the Palestinian Liberation Army (PLA), formally but not functionally the PLO's regular army. Some PLA units sent by Egypt was under PLO (Arafatist) control, but never played the same dominant role as the heavily armed Syrian-backed factions.

In 1974, stone was added to Arafat's burden with the near-formal breakup of the PLO. A controversial proposal (the Ten Point Program) that aimed to make way for a two-state solution had been advanced by Arafat and Fatah in the Palestinian National Council (PNC). Under furious accusations of treason, much of the PLO's left wing simply walked out of the organization. With Iraqi, and later Syrian and Libyan, backing, they formed the Rejectionist Front, espousing a no-compromise line towards Israel. The defectors included the PFLP, the PFLP-GC, the PLF, as-Sa'iqa, ALF and several others, and discontent mounted also within Fatah. Arafat would eventually manage to patch up the differences, but this would come back to haunt him throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, and the split effectively prevented organizational unity in crucial stages of PLO's involvement in the Lebanese civil war.

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