Lebanese Civil War (1958)

LEBANESE CIVIL WAR (1958)

uprising against the government.

Fifteen years after Lebanon became officially free of French mandatory control, it assumed its role as an independent republic on the basis of an unwritten national pact, whose symbolic and practical importance is difficult to exaggerate. In May 1958, the nation of 1.1 million people, whose political institutions reflected the balance of power between its confessional communities, exploded in civil war.

Rooted in a series of interlocking factors of domestic, regional, and international origin, the primary causes of the war were domestic in nature. They were shaped by the policies of the presidential regime of Camille Chamoun (1952–1958), whose personal ambitions capped a domestic politics and foreign policy that greatly exacerbated existing divisions in a state whose civil and national consciousness were less developed than its successful mercantile character.

President Chamoun's ambition to succeed himself in office contributed to the existing political tensions and was widely viewed as one of the major catalysts of civil strife. The Lebanese government claimed that civil insurrection was a function of external intervention organized by Egypt and Syria, in the United Arab Republic (UAR). But the war that

was sparked by the assassination of the journalist Nasib Matni, on 8 May 1958, was rooted in preexisting grievances that involved questions of political access; confessionalism and class; group identity and national consensus; and the major discontent of political elites displaced by corrupt elections in 1957, as well as the dissatisfaction of those constituencies deprived of significant representation.

Opposition groups that included an array of established political figures, some of whom would come to office in the post-Chamoun regime for the first time, opposed the president's perpetuation in office, and, in some instances, his foreign policy as well.

Under the Chamoun regime, Lebanon threw its support to the conservative Arab coalition and became a staunch advocate of U.S. policy and the Eisenhower Doctrine of 1957. That stance identified Lebanon with the anti-Nasserist and anti-Arab nationalist forces in the region. The intensification of domestic tensions exploded with the Nasib Matni assassination, and President Chamoun was challenged by the opposition. The Lebanese govern-ment's response was to blame civil strife on interference by the UAR and to charge it with the attempt to undermine Chamoun regime and state. These charges came before the League of Arab States (Arab League) and the United Nations, which assigned a task force to investigate charges of massive infiltration by foreign forces in Lebanon. It was on the basis of this same charge that President Chamoun had requested assistance from the United States. With the military coup in Iraq on 14 July, an event that shook the Western powers, the United States responded on 15 July with military intervention in Lebanon, while Great Britain gave protective cover to the Jordanian regime. The United States remained in Lebanon overseeing the election of a new president, Fuʾad Chehab, an event which marked the beginning of a new phase in the nation's development. Many would argue, however, that the fundamental roots of this first civil war had not been satisfactorily resolved.

see also chamoun, camille; chehab, fuʾad; united arab republic (uar).

Bibliography

Agwani, M. S., ed. The Lebanese Crisis, 1958: A Documentary Study. New York: Asia Publishing House, 1965.

Qubain, Fahim. Crisis in Lebanon. Washington, DC: Middle East Institute, 1961.

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