Strength 2,000 fighters | Originated as 5,000 fighters | |
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Active 1924-1990; briefly in 2006 Groups Lebanese Communist PartyLebanese National Movement (LNM), Lebanese National Resistance Front (LNRF) Headquarters Zarif (Beirut), Houla (Southern Lebanon) | ||
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).
Contents
- Origins
- Military structure and organization
- Illegal activities and controversy
- The Popular Guards in the 1975 1990 civil war
- Resistance to the Israeli occupation
- List of combat operations
- Weapons and equipment
- Pistols
- Carbines and Assault Rifles
- Machine guns and autocannons
- Sniper rifles
- Rocket launchers and grenade systems
- Mortars
- Artillery
- Vehicles
- Uniforms and insignia
- References
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 to help defend the border villages located in South Lebanon. The "Popular Guard" was officially established on January 6, 1970, 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 Guard militia initially received covert support from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 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 militamen 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.
Military structure and organization
Initially made up of just 600-700 poorly armed militiamen, 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), 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 Sidon, Tyre and Nabatiyeh 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.
The Popular Guards' in the 1975-1990 civil war
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), and the PLO at the Battle of the Hotels in Downtown Beirut, where they engaged the Lebanese Front militias.
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 in 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, the Lebanese Army, 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 (KDP).
In December 1986, the Popular Guards joined the 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; aka 'Tawheed') at the Battle of Tripoli.
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-Arab 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.
Pistols
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 ex-Lebanese Army olive green fatigues. OG US M-1965 field jackets were worn in cold weather. Usual headgear consisted of 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.