Popular Guard

The Popular Guard – PG or Popular Guards (Arabic: الحرس الشعبي | Al-Harass al-Sha'abiy), Garde Populaire (GP) in French was the military wing of the Lebanese Communist Party (LCP), which fought in the 1975-77 phase of the Lebanese Civil War and subsequent conflicts. The LCP and its militia were members of the Lebanese National Movement (LNM) and its successor, the Lebanese National Resistance Front (LNRF).

Popular Guard
Participant in Lebanese civil war (1975–1990)
Flag of the Lebanese Communist Party
Lebanese Communist Party flag (1924-present).
Active1970-1990; briefly in 2006
Group(s)Lebanese Communist Party
Lebanese National Movement (LNM), Lebanese National Resistance Front (LNRF)
LeadersGeorge Hawi, Elias Atallah
HeadquartersZarif (Beirut), Houla (Southern Lebanon)
Size5,000 fighters
Allies Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)
Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party (SSNP)
Communist Action Organization in Lebanon (OCAL)
Lebanese Arab Army (LAA)
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)
Progressive Socialist Party (PSP)
Syrian Army
Hezbollah
Opponent(s) Lebanese Forces
Tigers Militia
Kataeb Regulatory Forces (KRF)
Guardians of the Cedars (GoC)
Army of Free Lebanon (AFL)
Israel Defense Forces (IDF)
South Lebanon Army (SLA)
Amal Movement
Al-Mourabitoun
Sixth of February Movement
Islamic Unification Movement (IUM)
Syrian Army

Origins

The LCP's military wing was not only well-organized, but also one of the largest secular and non-sectarian militias in Lebanon. It was first founded unofficially during the 1958 civil war, fighting alongside the anti-government forces against the Lebanese Army and the allied Christian militias. Disbanded upon the conclusion of the war, in early 1969 the Party's Politburo decided to quietly raise a new militia force ostensibly to help defend the border villages located in South Lebanon. The reality, however, was more complex. Like other political groups in Lebanon, the LCP realized in the early 1970s that without an armed militia it would lose its political relevance.[1] Thus the "Popular Guard" was officially established on January 6, 1970, ostensibly in response to the occupation of Kfar Kila and Houla villages in the Jabal Amel region of southern Lebanon and the kidnapping of local villagers by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).

Prior to the war, the Popular Guards initially received covert support from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the USSR, Syria, Iraq, Libya and from well-connected left-wing sympathizers in Jordan, and some Eastern Bloc Countries, such as East Germany. Furthermore, the LCP started sending its militiamen to training camps in Jordan under the control of the Palestinian Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Jordanian Communist Party (JCP). Moreover, the LCP's links with the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) and the Syrian Communist Party (SCP) led them to forge close ties with the Ba'athist Iraqi and Syrian Governments to help train militants and purchase high-tech soviet arms.[2]

Military structure and organization

Initially made up of just 600-700 poorly armed militiamen,[3] by mid-1976 the Popular Guard's ranks had swelled to some 5,000 men and women (though other sources list a smaller number, about 3,000),[4] this total comprising 2,000-2,500 full-time fighters and 2,500-3,000 irregulars, mostly drawn from its youth branch organization, the Union of Lebanese Democratic Youth (ULDY), which had been established in early 1970. Organized into infantry, signals, artillery, medical and Military Police 'branches', the LCP militia was first headed by the Greek-Catholic George Hawi (whose nom de guerre was Abu Anis), but in 1979 PG command was passed on to Elias Atallah, a Maronite. Although it was active mostly in West Beirut and Tripoli, the LCP/PG also kept underground cells at the Koura District, and the Sidon, Tyre and Nabatieh Districts of the Jabal Amel region of southern Lebanon.

Illegal activities and controversy

The LCP/PG was mainly financed by the USSR and Syria, though it also received revenues from other 'unofficial' sources within Lebanon. In the mid-1980s, allied with the Red Knights militia of the Alawite Arab Democratic Party (ADP), they helped the latter to control Tripoli's commercial harbour and oil refinery – the second large deep-waters port of Lebanon – in collusion with the director of the city’s harbour Ahmad Karami and corrupt Syrian Army officers. The National Fuel Company (NFC) headed jointly by businessmen Maan Karami (brother of late prime-minister Rachid Karami) and Haj Muhammad Awadah, run in their behalf a profitable fuel smuggling ring that stretched to the Beqaa Valley.

After the return of George Hawi, the Popular Guard joined the Lebanese National Movement (LNM) – PLO Joint Forces. The LCP militia was soon involved in many street battles against the Christian right-wing militias of the Lebanese Front. On October 24, 1975, the Popular Guards fought alongside other LNM militias such as the Al-Mourabitoun and the Nasserite Correctionist Mouvement (NCM), the Lebanese Arab Army (LAA) and the PLO at the Battle of the Hotels in Downtown Beirut, where they engaged the Lebanese Front militias and the Army of Free Lebanon (AFL).

Following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon of June 1982, the LCP/PG went underground, participating actively in the formation of the Lebanese National Resistance Front (LNRF) guerrilla alliance in September that year and later joining the LNSF in July 1983. They fought at the 1983-84 Mountain War allied with the Druze People's Liberation Army (PLA) of the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP), Al-Mourabitoun and Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party (SSNP) militias in the Chouf District and at West Beirut against the Christian Lebanese Forces (LF) militia, the Lebanese Army and the Multinational Force in Lebanon (MNF).

When the War of the Camps broke out on May–April 1985 at West Beirut, it saw the LCP/PG participating – albeit reluctantly – in a military coalition that gathered the Druze PSP/PLA, and the Shia Muslim Amal Movement, backed by Syria,[5] the Lebanese Army,[6] and anti-Arafat dissident Palestinian guerrilla factions against an alliance of PLO refugee camp militias, the Nasserite Al-Mourabitoun and Sixth of February Movement militias, the Communist Action Organization in Lebanon (OCAL), and the Kurdish Democratic Party – Lebanon (KDP-L).

In December 1986, the Popular Guards joined the Arab Democratic Party (ADP), SSNP and Ba'ath Party militias in another military coalition backed by the Syrian Army, which contributed to the decisive defeat of the Sunni Muslim Islamic Unification Movement (IUM; a.k.a. 'Tawheed') at the Battle of Tripoli.[7]

Resistance to the Israeli occupation

On September 16, 1982, the Secretary-General of the LCP George Hawi and the Secretary-General of the OCAL Muhsin Ibrahim announced the creation of the LNRF, which rallied several Lebanese leftist and Pan-Arabist parties and armed factions to fight the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon.

Popular Guard underground guerrilla cells continued to operate in the Jabal Amel after the end of the civil war, fighting until 2000 alongside the Shia Hezbollah and other Lebanese armed groups against the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and their South Lebanese Army (SLA) proxies in the Israeli-controlled "security zone."

List of combat operations

Weapons and equipment

The collapse of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and Internal Security Forces (ISF) in January 1976 allowed the LCP/PG to seize some weapons and vehicles from their barracks and police stations, though most of its weaponry, heavy vehicles and other, non-lethal military equipments were procured in the international black market or supplied by the PLO, Syria, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania and the USSR.[9]

Pistols

Submachine guns

Carbines and Assault Rifles

Machine guns and autocannons

Sniper rifles

Rocket launchers and grenade systems

Mortars

Artillery

Vehicles

Uniforms and insignia

Popular Guard militiamen wore in the field ex-Lebanese Army olive green fatigues and camouflage uniforms (the latter being PLO patterns or U.S. Woodland BDUs), civilian clothes, or a mix of both. Civilian or military Parkas, OG US M-1965 field jackets and Pakistani Army olive-brown woollen pullovers (a.k.a. 'woolly-pulleys') provided with breast pockets and shoulder straps, were worn in cold weather. Usual headgear consisted of ex-Lebanese Army OG Baseball caps, Soviet brimmed, circular sun hats in khaki cotton (Russian: Panamanka), and black or red berets worn French-style, pulled to the left; a black-and-white or red-and-white kaffiyeh was also worn around the neck as a foulard.

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See also

Footnotes
  1. Rabinovich, The war for Lebanon (1989), pp. 78-79.
  2. "منتديات ستار تايمز". Startimes.com. 2008-11-04. Retrieved 2011-09-20.
  3. Makdisi and Sadaka, The Lebanese Civil War, 1975-1990 (2003), p. 44, Table 1: War Period Militias.
  4. McGowan, Roberts, Abu Khalil, and Scott Mason, Lebanon: a country study (1989), p. 242.
  5. Stork, Joe. "The War of the Camps, The War of the Hostages" in MERIP Reports, No. 133. (June 1985), pp. 3–7, 22.
  6. O'Ballance, Civil War in Lebanon (1998), p. 158.
  7. O'Ballance, Civil War in Lebanon (1998), p. 171.
  8. Herbert Docena (17 August 2006). "Amid the bombs, unity is forged". Asia Times Online. The LCP...has itself been very close to Hezbollah and fought alongside it in the frontlines in the south. According to Hadadeh, at least 12 LCP members and supporters died in the fighting.
  9. Dunord, Liban: Les milices rendent leurs armes (1991), p. 31.
  10. Kassis, Invasion of Lebanon 1982 (2019), p. 231.
  11. Kassis, Invasion of Lebanon 1982 (2019), p. 230.
  12. Neville, Technicals: Non-Standard Tactical Vehicles from the Great Toyota War to modern Special Forces (2018), p. 9.
  13. Kassis, Invasion of Lebanon 1982 (2019), p. 231.
  14. Mahé, La Guerre Civile Libanaise, un chaos indescriptible (1975-1990), p. 81.
  15. Dunord, Liban: Les milices rendent leurs armes (1991), p. 31.
  16. Kassis, Invasion of Lebanon 1982 (2019), p. 231.

References
  • Afaf Sabeh McGowan, John Roberts, As'ad Abu Khalil, and Robert Scott Mason, Lebanon: a country study, area handbook series, Headquarters, Department of the Army (DA Pam 550-24), Washington D.C. 1989. -
  • Edgar O'Ballance, Civil War in Lebanon 1975-92, Palgrave Macmillan, London 1998. ISBN 0-333-72975-7
  • Fawwaz Traboulsi, Identités et solidarités croisées dans les conflits du Liban contemporain; Chapitre 12: L'économie politique des milices: le phénomène mafieux, Thèse de Doctorat d'Histoire – 1993, Université de Paris VIII, 2007. (in French) –
  • Itamar Rabinovich, The war for Lebanon, 1970-1985, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London 1989 (revised edition). ISBN 978-0-8014-9313-3, 0-8014-9313-7
  • Jean Dunord, Liban: Les milices rendent leurs armes, RAIDS magazine n.º65, October 1991 issue. ISSN 0769-4814 (in French)
  • Jennifer Philippa Eggert, Female Fighters and Militants During the Lebanese Civil War: Individual Profiles, Pathways, and Motivations, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, 2018. –
  • Leigh Neville, Technicals: Non-Standard Tactical Vehicles from the Great Toyota War to modern Special Forces, New Vanguard series 257, Osprey Publishing Ltd, Oxford 2018. ISBN 9781472822512
  • Moustafa El-Assad, Civil Wars Volume 1: The Gun Trucks, Blue Steel books, Sidon 2008. ISBN 9953-0-1256-8
  • Samer Kassis, 30 Years of Military Vehicles in Lebanon, Beirut: Elite Group, 2003. ISBN 9953-0-0705-5
  • Samer Kassis, Véhicules Militaires au Liban/Military Vehicles in Lebanon 1975-1981, Trebia Publishing, Chyah 2012. ISBN 978-9953-0-2372-4
  • Samer Kassis, Invasion of Lebanon 1982, Abteilung 502, 2019. ISBN 978-84-120935-1-3
  • Samir Makdisi and Richard Sadaka, The Lebanese Civil War, 1975-1990, American University of Beirut, Institute of Financial Economics, Lecture and Working Paper Series (2003 No.3), pp. 1–53. –
  • Paul Jureidini, R. D. McLaurin, and James Price, Military operations in selected Lebanese built-up areas, 1975-1978, Aberdeen, MD: U.S. Army Human Engineering Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Technical Memorandum 11-79, June 1979.
  • Yann Mahé, La Guerre Civile Libanaise, un chaos indescriptible (1975-1990), Trucks & Tanks Magazine n.º 41, January–February 2014, pp. 78–81. ISSN 1957-4193 (in French)

Further reading
  • Jean Sarkis, Histoire de la guerre du Liban, Presses Universitaires de France - PUF, Paris 1993. ISBN 978-2-13-045801-2 (in French)
  • Samir Kassir, La Guerre du Liban: De la dissension nationale au conflit régional, Éditions Karthala/CERMOC, Paris 1994. ISBN 978-2865374991 (in French)
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