The Lebanese Civil War (Arabic: الحرب الأهلية اللبنانية, al-ḥarb al-ahliyyah al-libnāniyyah) was a multifaceted armed conflict fought in Lebanon from 1975 to 1990. It resulted in an estimated 120,000 deaths, displaced nearly one million people, and caused widespread destruction across the country.
The war arose from longstanding political and sectarian tensions within Lebanon's confessional system, compounded by demographic change, the presence of Palestinian armed groups following the Arab–Israeli conflict, and the influence of regional rivalries and the Cold War. Fighting initially broke out between Christian militias and Palestinian factions, principally the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), allied with Lebanese Muslim, leftist, and pan-Arab groups. As the conflict escalated, it developed into a complex, multi-sided war involving shifting alliances among Lebanese factions and the military intervention of Syria, Israel, Iran, and other foreign actors.
Throughout the conflict, numerous militias fought for political, sectarian, and territorial objectives, with alliances frequently changing over time. While much of the fighting occurred between opposing sectarian and ideological coalitions, significant violence also took place within individual communities. International peacekeeping forces, including the Multinational Force in Lebanon and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), were deployed during different stages of the war.
The 1989 Taif Agreement laid the foundation for ending the conflict, and most militias were disbanded following the war's conclusion in 1990. In 1991, the Lebanese Parliament enacted a general amnesty for political crimes committed during the conflict. Hezbollah, however, remained armed, citing its role in resisting the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. The war left a lasting impact on Lebanon's political system, economy, and society, and many of its underlying political and sectarian divisions have continued to shape the country in the decades since its end.
In 1860, a civil war between Druze and Maronites erupted in the Ottoman Mutasarrifate of Mount Lebanon. The war resulted in the massacre of about 10,000 Christians and at least 6,000 Druzes.
During World War I, most Arabs fought in the Ottoman army against the British and French invaders.
With the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the French took control of the area under the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon. The French created the state of Greater Lebanon as a safe haven for the Maronites, but expanded it beyond the historical Ottoman borders, including a large Muslim population.
In 1926, Lebanon was declared a republic and a constitution was adopted, which France would suspend in 1932 and 1939. Sunni Muslim factions refused to recognize Lebanon's separation from Syria until its claim on Lebanon was abandoned in 1936. In parallel, Maronite Christian leaders sought a more equal partnership with French authorities and a move towards self-governance, although both communities were divided in their interests. In 1936, the Maronite Phalange party was founded by Pierre Gemayel.
World War II and the 1940s brought great change to Lebanon and the Middle East. Lebanon was promised independence, which was achieved on 22 November 1943. Free French troops, who had invaded Lebanon in 1941 to rid Beirut of the Vichy French forces, left Lebanon in 1946. The Maronites assumed power over Lebanon and its economy. A parliament was created in which both Muslims and Christians each had a set quota of seats. Accordingly, the President was to be a Maronite, the Prime Minister a Sunni Muslim and the Speaker of Parliament a Shia Muslim.
In 1947, the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine led to civil war in Palestine, the end of Mandatory Palestine, and the Israeli Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948. The ongoing civil war was transformed into a state conflict between Israel and the Arab states in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. This led to Palestinian refugees crossing the border into Lebanon.
In July 1958, Lebanon was threatened by a civil war between Maronite Christians and Muslims. President Camille Chamoun had attempted to break the stranglehold on Lebanese politics exercised by traditional political families in Lebanon. These families maintained their electoral appeal by cultivating strong client–patron relations with their local communities. Although he succeeded in sponsoring alternative political candidates to enter the elections in 1957, causing the traditional families to lose their positions, these families then embarked upon a war with Chamoun, referred to as the War of the Pashas.
In 1956, tensions with Egypt escalated when the non-aligned President, Camille Chamoun, did not break off diplomatic relations with the Western powers that attacked Egypt during the Suez Crisis, angering Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. This was during the Cold War and Chamoun has often been called pro-Western, though he had signed several trade deals with the Soviet Union (see Gendzier). Nasser had attacked Chamoun because of his suspected support for the U.S. led Baghdad Pact. Nasser felt that the pro-western Baghdad Pact posed a threat to Arab nationalism.
President Chamoun looked to regional pacts to ensure protection from foreign armies: Lebanon historically had a small cosmetic army that was never effective in defending Lebanon's territorial integrity, and this is why in later years the PLO guerrilla factions had found it easy to enter Lebanon and set up bases, as well as take over army barracks on the border with Israel as early as 1968. Early skirmishes saw the army lose control over its barracks to the PLO and lose many soldiers. Even prior to this, president Chamoun was aware of the country's vulnerability to outside forces.
His Lebanese pan-Arabist Sunni Muslim Prime Minister Rashid Karami supported Nasser in 1956 and 1958. Lebanese Muslims pushed the government to join the newly created United Arab Republic, a country formed out of the unification of Syria and Egypt, while the majority of Lebanese and especially the Maronites wanted to keep Lebanon as an independent nation with its own independent parliament. President Camille Chamoun feared the toppling of his government and asked for U.S. intervention. At the time the United States was engaged in the Cold War.
Chamoun asked for assistance proclaiming that Communists were going to overthrow his government. Chamoun was responding not only to the revolt of former political bosses, but also to the fact that both Egypt and Syria had taken the opportunity to deploy proxies into the Lebanese conflict. Thus the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM), led by George Habash and later to become the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and a faction of the PLO, were deployed to Lebanon by Nasser.
The ANM were a clandestine militia implicated in attempted coups against both the Jordanian monarchy and the Iraqi president throughout the 1950s at Nasser's bidding. The founding members of Fatah, including Yasser Arafat and Khalil Wazir, also flew to Lebanon to use the insurrection as a means by which a war could be fomented toward Israel. They participated in the fighting by directing armed forces against the government security in the city of Tripoli according to Yezid Sayigh's work.
In 1958, President Chamoun was unable to convince the Maronite army commander, Fuad Chehab, to use the armed forces against Muslim demonstrators, fearing that getting involved in internal politics would split his small and weak multi-confessional force. The Phalange militia came to the president's aid instead to bring a final end to the road blockades which were crippling the major cities. Encouraged by its efforts during this conflict, later that year, principally through violence and the success of general strikes in Beirut, the Phalange achieved what journalists dubbed the "counterrevolution". By their actions the Phalangists brought down the government of Prime Minister Karami and secured for their leader, Pierre Gemayel, a position in the four-man cabinet that was subsequently formed.