111101 entry from the books the books disagree: each version, with the date it gives
1990
January 1990
From the books
Aoun postpones indefinitely the elections he had called.
General Aoun's government had set elections for January 1990 when it dissolved parliament in November 1989. Since a vote could not be held anywhere, even where no foreign troops were present, Aoun postponed it indefinitely early in 1990.
The Hoss government stops paying the army and civil servants in Aoun's area.
Hanf argues that the financial sanctions imposed by Hoss's government set Aoun on course for a clash with the Lebanese Forces. Civil servants in his zone were told to leave government offices and the Central Bank was barred from paying his soldiers and officials; the only money left in the enclave was what the militia still raised as 'taxes'.
General Michel Aoun admits the existence, in France, of a bank account in his name, with the amount of 15 million dollars. However, he explains that this money is only used for the defense of his country.
Aoun has three officers arrested for dealing with General Lahoud.
Aoun accused three of his officers of plotting to put the Amchit garrison under General Emile Lahoud, the Hoss government's army commander, and to move south, and had them arrested; they had been in talks with Lahoud.
After having spent 43 days in the military casern of Ablah, President Elias Hraoui leaves the Bekaa and settles in Ramlet-el-Beida. The photographer of L'Orient-Le Jour and the Nahar, Georges Semerdjian dies while on the field.
Fighting breaks out between the army and the Lebanese Forces over a school in Furn al-Chebbak.
Both sides had Iraqi weapons. The spark was a school in Furn al-Chebbak, a strategic point between Baabda and East Beirut, which the Lebanese Forces had requisitioned and Aoun's government wanted back for the Ministry of Education. When the militia would not leave, the army fired, and heavy fighting broke out in many places within hours.
Fights opposing the Lebanese Forces and General Aoun’s army were reported and deprived certain regions of electricity, phone, and water.
What the books addHistorians date the start of this second round of fighting between General Aoun's army and Samir Geagea's Lebanese Forces to the last days of January 1990. De Clerck and Malsagne give 31 January, when the army tried to retake positions the militia held at Furn al-Chubbak; they add that the militia's own attack had been planned for 7 February. Hanf dates the first shots to 27 January, over a school in Furn al-Chebbak that the militia refused to hand back to the Ministry of Education. Picard's chronology gives 30 January. The fighting lasted until a ceasefire in May (accounts of its end range from March to July). Aoun's side called it the war for 'unifying the guns'; it is often remembered as the 'War of Elimination'.
Art and memory
artwork Aoun's paper L'Eveil wrote of a people 'born sixty days ago'; posters at the 1989-90 rallies around the Baabda palace cast him as Saint George killing the dragon.
testimony Among demonstrators polled at Baabda in early 1990, three quarters were under 40 and 95 per cent opposed the Taif decisions (Professor Labaki's unpublished survey, cited by Hanf).
The army garrison at Amchit surrenders to the Lebanese Forces.
Amchit capitulated to the Lebanese Forces on 31 January; they had struck the lightly held coastal garrisons while much of Aoun's army faced the Syrians on the enclave's edges.
The four Fouga-Magister aircraft seized at Halat went to General Lahoud's Qlayaat base as a goodwill gesture from Samir Geagea, who after losing Ain al-Rummaneh appealed to the 'legal authorities', the President and the Hoss cabinet. Hrawi's price: unreserved acceptance of the Taif Agreement and of the government's authority.
Residents of the Syriac quarter take refuge in a hospital basement.
The service basements of the Hôtel-Dieu de France in East Beirut sheltered 150 people from the Syriac quarter on the night of 1-2 February. Staff worked day and night for several days, then lived in the hospital until July.
Art and memory
testimony Emilie Rizk's Confluences article on the Rizk hospital cites the Hôtel-Dieu de France nursing sisters: during the 1990 fighting in East Beirut the hospital sheltered people from the Syriac quarter, and staff lived there until July.
The Sarba garrison and the Jounieh naval base fall to the Lebanese Forces.
Within a few days Geagea held the whole coast of the Christian enclave. Sarba and the Jounieh naval base capitulated to his militia; the smaller army unit in Beirut harbour went to West Beirut and joined General Lahoud.
February 3, 4
The army takes control of Dbayeh after a tough battle.
What the books addHanf: the army's counter-offensive of 6 February 1990 reached the coast near Antelias and took Dbayeh, home to Lebanese Forces barracks and the militia's finance department.
New dividing lines appeared in the Eastern region and the medias war raged. Hospitals suffered from a serious penury and the Lebanese continued to flee by thousands. That week, 417 were killed and 1,655 wounded.
What the books addTotals for the whole army-Lebanese Forces war differ. De Clerck and Malsagne count over 1,500 victims, fighters and civilians, and say the first three weeks claimed more than the six months of the 1989 war against Syria; the army alone lost 21 officers and 221 soldiers, about 100,000 people moved elsewhere in Lebanon and close to 200,000 went abroad. Hanf estimates about 1,000 dead and 3,500 wounded; Picard 1,000 dead and 3,000 wounded for January-July; Fisk 'well over a thousand' dead in Beirut from end January to end May.
Paul Fares proclaims a 'neutral army'; Lebanese Forces' Kleiat offensive stalls.
Colonel Paul Fares, out of the army for some weeks, proclaimed a 'neutral army' on the day the Lebanese Forces moved on the army's mountain position at Kleiat; soldiers from garrisons that had surrendered to the militia joined him. The offensive soon lost momentum.
The Kesrouan was now at the center of the Aoun-Geagea conflict. Despite all mediations and attempts to maintain the precarious truce, belligerents were fighting on the new front of Daraya, separating the Metn and the Kesrouan.
What the books addColonel Paul Fares declared himself head of a 'neutral army' on 10 February 1990, as a Lebanese Forces push on the army's Kleiat mountain position stalled (Hanf).
Despite Mgr Sfeir's pathetic call, a blaze of fire hits the 'Christian country'. The army takes control of Ain el Remmaneh.
What the books addHanf: after the army took Ain al-Rummaneh on 16 February 1990, having attacked the eastern suburbs on the 11th, the Lebanese Forces fell back to Ashrafieh through West Beirut. A Reuters reporter with the troops said it was 'like an earthquake had hit it'.
The Army evacuates 400 soldiers from the Adma base, surrounded for over two weeks. The evacuation takes place with the assistance of the Lebanese Red Cross.
What the books addAoun lost almost all his helicopters when the Lebanese Forces, as a diversion, besieged the Adma base in Kisrawan; the outnumbered commandos held out until a deal let them leave armed (Hanf).
The Baroness, a civilian ship transporting passengers from Cyprus to the Eastern regions, is attacked resulting in 1 death and 25 injured. The attackers remain unidentified and the liaison between Jounieh and Larnaca is temporarily interrupted.
Aoun offers to negotiate with Hrawi; Hrawi refuses.
In mid-March Aoun offered Hrawi talks, saying the latest battles proved the conflict could be settled 'only by dialogue'; Hrawi refused until Aoun accepted Taif. The two Christian camps' fire on each other's ports prolonged Syria's 1989 blockade.
Army push on Sin el-Fil and Nabaa; the intra-Christian war ends in deadlock.
Short of ammunition, and facing hard militia resistance in mined streets and houses, Aoun's troops stalled in Sin el-Fil and Nabaa. After little more than a month the war of movement became a stalemate, with Jbeil, Kisrawan, Ashrafieh and Karantina left to the Lebanese Forces, and the Metn, the Baabda area and the coast from Beirut to the Dog River to the army.
The Maronite Patriarch threatens to excommunicate Aoun and Geagea, as well as those how obey them, if they continue their fightings. The threat will remain vain despite its reiteration.
What the books addDe Clerck and Malsagne date Sfeir's threat to late April or early May 1990: Christian soldiers in Aoun's army faced excommunication, and their dead the denial of Christian burial. They list it among the pressures that halted the army's advance on the Lebanese Forces headquarters at Karantina. The original speaks of a reiterated threat.
Pastor William Robinson who was accused of planning the implantation of a Jewish colony and who was expelled from Lebanon, is killed on the bordering band in the South of Lebanon.
The army is stopped short of the Lebanese Forces headquarters at Karantina.
In April, Vatican, US and Israeli pressure stopped the army short of Karantina, the Lebanese Forces' headquarters, which it was preparing to storm after taking the Metn and upper Kisrawan in weeks of fighting that killed several hundred. De Clerck and Malsagne also cite the jamming of army radios by Israeli radars in militia hands, officers won over or bought by the militia, and Patriarch Sfeir's threat to excommunicate Christian soldiers.
Christians flee East Beirut for the western sector.
By Easter, Fisk writes, Christians were fleeing Aoun's enclave, most for Muslim West Beirut, where some had not been for fifteen years; 600 Maronite students returned to the American University. In 1982 West Beirutis had sheltered in the east; now, Hanf notes, tens of thousands of East Beirutis did the reverse.
The chief of the Lebanese Forces, Samir Geagea, joins President Hraoui, while General Michel Aoun turns to the Arab Troika. At the same time, the N.L.P. withdraws from the commandment of the Lebanese Forces.
What the books addHanf: Hrawi made unconditional acceptance of Taif the price of help when Geagea, after losing Ain al-Rummaneh, turned to the 'legal authorities' (Hrawi and the Hoss government) and passed four captured Fouga-Magister aircraft to General Lahoud's Qlayaat base. Aoun, low on fuel and ammunition, was supplied by the SSNP and Hobeika's pro-Syrian militia (Hanf); de Clerck and Malsagne also name Frangieh and Jumblatt.
While the blockade war rages between the Lebanese Army and the Lebanese Forces, the President of the Republic declines Geagea's offer to surrender to him the barracks of Jbeil and the Kesrouan.
Hezbollah attacks Amal in West Beirut; Syria restores order.
Renewed in Iqlim al-Tuffah in December 1989, the Amal-Hezbollah conflict reached the capital: by May 1990 Hezbollah could strike Amal in central West Beirut. Syria intervened again, restoring calm without letting either militia win.
The Lebanese Forces shell the Military Academy; its commander, General François Zein, is mortally wounded.
Lebanese Forces guns deliberately and repeatedly shelled the Military Academy, killing its commander, General François Zein, the most senior officer to die in the war. De Clerck and Malsagne see the army, with many Muslim officers and cadets, as a symbol of national unity and a prime target for the militia, whose 'military school' at Ghosta was losing Christian cadets to it.
A Vatican-mediated ceasefire between the army and the Lebanese Forces takes effect.
A Vatican-mediated ceasefire took effect between Aoun's army and the Lebanese Forces. Mutual exhaustion held it; their hatred did not abate, and the Christian enclave stayed divided between them through the summer.
