Lebanese Civil War 1975-1990: Factions, Invasions and Beirut

The Lebanese Civil War was a multi-sided conflict fought from 1975 to 1990 between Lebanese militias of different religious communities, Palestinian armed groups and the armies of Syria and Israel. It devastated Beirut, once known as a banking and tourist centre of the Middle East, and killed an estimated 120,000 to 150,000 people. The war ended with the Taif Agreement, which reshaped Lebanon’s political system.

Background and causes

Lebanon’s political order rested on the unwritten National Pact of 1943, agreed at independence from France. The president was to be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of parliament a Shia Muslim, and parliamentary seats were shared six to five in favour of Christians, based on the census of 1932. No new census was held, though Muslims, especially the poorer Shia community, were believed to have become a majority.

Inequality between a wealthy Beirut and a poor countryside added to tension, as did the rise of Arab nationalism and leftist parties. A short civil conflict in 1958 had already brought US Marines to Beirut.

The decisive new factor was the Palestinians. More than 100,000 refugees had arrived after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The Cairo Agreement of 1969 allowed Palestinian guerrillas to operate from Lebanese soil, and after the PLO was expelled from Jordan in Black September its leadership and fighters moved to Lebanon. Israeli reprisals and the PLO’s virtual state within the state deeply divided the Lebanese.

The outbreak: 1975–1976

On 13 April 1975 gunmen fired on a church in Ain el-Remmaneh, a Christian suburb of Beirut, where the Phalange party leader Pierre Gemayel was present. Later that day Phalangist militiamen ambushed a bus carrying Palestinians through the area, killing most of the passengers. Fighting spread rapidly.

On one side stood mainly Christian parties such as the Phalange (Kataeb) and the National Liberal Party. On the other was the Lebanese National Movement, a coalition of leftist and Muslim groups led by the Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt, allied with the PLO. Beirut split along the Green Line between East and West. Both sides committed massacres of civilians, including at Karantina and Damour in January 1976 and at the Tel al-Zaatar refugee camp, which fell in August 1976.

In June 1976 Syria sent troops into Lebanon, at first to stop the defeat of the Christian militias. An Arab summit in October 1976 turned the Syrian force into an “Arab Deterrent Force”, and a fragile calm followed. Kamal Jumblatt was assassinated in March 1977.

Israel’s invasions and the 1982 war

In March 1978, after a Palestinian attack in Israel, Israeli forces occupied southern Lebanon up to the Litani River. The UN created a peacekeeping force, UNIFIL, and Israel later handed border areas to an allied Lebanese militia.

On 6 June 1982, after an attempt on the life of Israel’s ambassador in London, Israel launched a full-scale invasion called Operation Peace for Galilee. Its forces reached Beirut and besieged the PLO in West Beirut for about two months. In August Yasser Arafat and thousands of PLO fighters were evacuated by sea, mostly to Tunisia, under the protection of a multinational force.

The Phalangist commander Bashir Gemayel was elected president on 23 August 1982 but was killed by a bomb on 14 September. Over the next days, Phalangist militiamen, in an area controlled by the Israeli army, killed hundreds of civilians in the Sabra and Shatila massacre. His brother Amin Gemayel became president.

The middle years: 1983–1988

A US, French, Italian and British multinational force returned to Beirut. In 1983 suicide bombers struck the US embassy in April and, on 23 October, the barracks of US Marines and French paratroopers, killing 241 American and 58 French servicemen. The force withdrew in early 1984.

New actors rose. Among the Shia, the Amal movement grew strong, and Hezbollah emerged with Iranian support after 1982. Western hostages were kidnapped in Beirut, some held for years. The Druze and Christian militias fought the “Mountain War” of 1983, and Amal fought Palestinian camps from 1985 to 1988. Lebanon’s currency collapsed and many people emigrated.

Two governments and the Taif Agreement

When Amin Gemayel’s term ended in September 1988 without an elected successor, he appointed the army commander, General Michel Aoun, to head an interim military government. A rival government under Selim al-Hoss continued in West Beirut. In March 1989 Aoun declared a “war of liberation” against Syria, which brought heavy shelling of Beirut.

Lebanese MPs met in Taif, Saudi Arabia, and agreed the Document of National Accord, known as the Taif Agreement, on 22 October 1989. It divided parliamentary seats equally between Christians and Muslims, moved power from the president to the cabinet and the Sunni prime minister, and endorsed a special relationship with Syria. Parliament ratified the agreement on 5 November 1989 and elected René Moawad president, but he was killed by a car bomb on 22 November; Elias Hrawi was elected in his place. Aoun rejected the agreement. On 13 October 1990 Syrian forces attacked his positions, and he took refuge in the French embassy.

Key people

Pierre Gemayel (1905–1984) founded the Phalange party in 1936 and led Christian forces at the start of the war. His son Bashir Gemayel (1947–1982) united the Christian militias as the Lebanese Forces and was killed as president-elect.

Kamal Jumblatt (1917–1977), Druze leader and head of the Lebanese National Movement, demanded the abolition of sectarian politics. His son Walid succeeded him.

Yasser Arafat (1929–2004), chairman of the PLO, made Beirut the centre of Palestinian armed and political activity until 1982.

Hafez al-Assad (1930–2000), president of Syria, shifted alliances repeatedly to keep Syria the dominant outside power in Lebanon.

Michel Aoun (born 1933), army commander and head of the 1988 military government, went into exile in France in 1991 and was later elected president of Lebanon in 2016.

Consequences

A 1991 amnesty law pardoned most wartime crimes, and militias other than Hezbollah, which was treated as a resistance force against Israel, were disarmed. Many former militia leaders entered government. Syria kept troops in Lebanon until April 2005, and Israel occupied a strip in the south until May 2000.

The war left Beirut’s centre in ruins, an estimated 17,000 people missing and a political system still divided along sectarian lines. Reconstruction of downtown Beirut began in the 1990s.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1943: The National Pact sets out sectarian power-sharing at independence.
• 1975, 13 April: The Ain el-Remmaneh incident starts the war.
• 1976, June: Syrian troops enter Lebanon.
• 1978, March: Israel occupies southern Lebanon up to the Litani River.
• 1982, 6 June: Israel invades Lebanon and besieges Beirut.
• 1982, September: Bashir Gemayel is assassinated; the Sabra and Shatila massacre follows.
• 1983, 23 October: Bombings kill 241 US and 58 French servicemen in Beirut.
• 1989, 22 October: Lebanese MPs agree the Taif Agreement.
• 1990, 13 October: Syrian forces oust Michel Aoun, ending the main fighting.

Why it matters

The Lebanese Civil War showed how a fragile sectarian state could become the battlefield for regional conflicts, from the Arab-Israeli dispute to the rivalry between Syria, Iran and their opponents. Its settlement ended the fighting but preserved sectarian politics, and many of its actors, from Hezbollah to former militia leaders, still shape Lebanon today.