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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Lebanon
Index
The spark that ignited the war occurred in Beirut on April 13,
1975, when gunmen killed four Phalangists during an attempt on
Pierre Jumayyil's life. Perhaps believing the assassins to have
been Palestinian, the Phalangists retaliated later that day by
attacking a bus carrying Palestinian passengers across a Christian
neighborhood, killing about twenty-six of the occupants. The next
day fighting erupted in earnest, with Phalangists pitted against
Palestinian militiamen (thought by some observers to be from the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine). The confessional
layout of Beirut's various quarters facilitated random killing.
Most Beirutis stayed inside their homes during these early days of
battle, and few imagined that the street fighting they were
witnessing was the beginning of a war that was to devastate their
city and divide the country.
Despite the urgent need to control the fighting, the political
machinery of the government became paralyzed over the next few
months. The inadequacies of the political system, which the 1943
National Pact had only papered over temporarily, reappeared more
clearly than ever. For many observers, at the bottom of the
conflict was the issue of confessionalism out of balance--of a
minority, specifically the Maronites, refusing to share power and
economic opportunity with the Muslim majority.
The government could not act effectively because leaders were
unable to agree on whether or not to use the army to stop the
bloodletting. When Jumblatt and his leftist supporters tried to
isolate the Phalangists politically, other Christian sects rallied
to Jumayyil's camp, creating a further rift. Consequently, in May
Prime Minister Rashid as Sulh and his cabinet resigned, and a new
government was formed under Rashid Karami. Although there were many
calls for his resignation, President Franjiyah steadfastly retained
his office.
As various other groups took sides, the fighting spread to
other areas of the country, forcing residents in towns with mixed
sectarian populations to seek safety in regions where their sect
was dominant. Even so, the militias became embroiled in a pattern
of attack followed by retaliation, including acts against
uninvolved civilians.
Although the two warring factions were often characterized as
Christian versus Muslim, their individual composition was far more
complex. Those in favor of maintaining the status quo came to be
known as the Lebanese Front. The groups included primarily the
Maronite militias of the Jumayyil, Shamun, and Franjiyah clans,
often led by the sons of zuama. Also in this camp were
various militias of Maronite religious orders. The side seeking
change, usually referred to as the Lebanese National Movement, was
far less cohesive and organized. For the most part it was led by
Kamal Jumblatt and included a variety of militias from leftist
organizations and guerrillas from rejectionist Palestinian (nonmainstream PLO) organizations
(see Appendix B).
By the end of 1975, no side held a decisive military advantage,
but it was generally acknowledged that the Lebanese Front had done
less well than expected against the disorganized Lebanese National
Movement. The political hierarchy, composed of the old zuama
and politicians, still was incapable of maintaining peace, except
for occasional, short-lived cease-fires. Reform was discussed, but
little headway was made toward any significant improvements. Syria,
which was deeply concerned about the flow of events in Lebanon,
also proved powerless to enforce calm through diplomatic means.
And, most ominous of all, the Lebanese Army, which generally had
stayed out of the strife, began to show signs of factionalizing and
threatened to bring its heavy weaponry to bear on the conflict.
Syrian diplomatic involvement grew during 1976, but it had
little success in restoring order in the first half of the year. In
January it organized a cease-fire and set up the High Military
Committee, through which it negotiated with all sides. These
negotiations, however, were complicated by other events, especially
Lebanese Front-Palestinian confrontations. That month the Lebanese
Front began a siege of Tall Zatar, a densely populated Palestinian
refugee camp in East Beirut; the Lebanese Front also overran and
leveled Karantina, a Muslim quarter in East Beirut. These actions
finally brought the main forces of the PLO, the Palestine
Liberation Army (PLA), into the battle. Together, the PLA and the
Lebanese National Movement took the town of Ad Damur, a Shamun
stronghold about seventeen kilometers south of Beirut.
In spite of these setbacks, through Syria's good offices,
compromises were achieved. On February 14, 1976, in what was
considered a political breakthrough, Syria helped negotiate a
seventeen-point reform program known as the Constitutional
Document. Yet by March this progress was derailed by the
disintegration of the Lebanese Army. In that month dissident Muslim
troops, led by Lieutenant Ahmad Khatib, mutinied, creating the
Lebanese Arab Army. Joining the Lebanese National Movement, they
made significant penetrations into Christian-held Beirut and
launched an attack on the presidential palace, forcing Franjiyah to
flee to Mount Lebanon.
Continuing its search for a domestic political settlement to
the war, in May the Chamber of Deputies elected Ilyas Sarkis to
take over as president when Franjiyah's term expired in September.
But Sarkis had strong backing from Syria and, as a consequence, was
unacceptable to Jumblatt, who was known to be antipathetic to
Syrian president Hafiz al Assad and who insisted on a "military
solution." Accordingly, the Lebanese National Movement successfully
pressed assaults on Mount Lebanon and other Christian-controlled
areas.
As Lebanese Front fortunes declined, two outcomes seemed
likely: the establishment in Mount Lebanon of an independent
Christian state, viewed as a "second Israel" by some; or, if the
Lebanese National Movement won the war, the creation of a radical,
hostile state on Syria's western border. Neither of these
possibilities was viewed as acceptable to Assad. To prevent either
scenario, at the end of May 1976 Syria intervened militarily
against the Lebanese National Movement, hoping to end the fighting
swiftly. This decision, however, proved ill conceived, as Syrian
forces met heavy resistance and suffered many casualties. Moreover,
by entering the conflict on the Christian side Syria provoked
outrage from much of the Arab world.
Despite, or perhaps as a result of, these military and
diplomatic failures, in late July Syria decided to quell the
resistance. A drive was launched against Lebanese National Movement
strongholds that was far more successful than earlier battles;
within two weeks the opposition was almost subdued. Rather than
crush the resistance altogether, at this time Syria chose to
participate in an Arab peace conference held in Riyadh, Saudi
Arabia, on October 16, 1976.
The Riyadh Conference, followed by an Arab League meeting in
Cairo also in October 1976, formally ended the Lebanese Civil War;
although the underlying causes were in no way eliminated, the fullscale warfare stopped. Syria's presence in Lebanon was legitimated
by the establishment of the Arab Deterrent Force (ADF) by the Arab
League in October 1976. In January 1977 the ADF consisted of 30,000
men, of whom 27,000 were Syrian. The remainder were token
contingents from Saudi Arabia, the small Persian Gulf states, and
Sudan; Libya had withdrawn its small force in late 1976. Because of
his difficulties in reforming the Lebanese Army, President Sarkis,
the ADF's nominal commander, requested renewal of the ADF's mandate
a number of times.
Thus, after more than one and one-half years of devastation,
relative calm returned to Lebanon. Although the exact cost of the
war will never be known, deaths may have approached 44,000, with
about 180,000 wounded; many thousands of others were displaced or
left homeless, or had migrated. Much of the once-magnificent city
of Beirut was reduced to rubble and the town divided into Muslim
and Christian sectors, separated by the so-called
Green Line (see Glossary).
Data as of December 1987
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