Historians 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'.

Hanf: 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.

Totals 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.

Colonel 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).

Hanf: 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'.

Aoun 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).

Hanf notes the blockade had little support even outside the enclave, as civilians rather than Aoun's soldiers bore it. On 28 September 1990, he records, Lahoud's troops tightened it by taking every checkpoint around Aoun's area; Aoun's followers protested daily there and at Baabda.

Hanf: on 4 December 1990 soldiers started clearing the Green Line barricades, the Lebanese Forces having left Beirut on 3 December except for 300 men at their Karantina headquarters and in the port.

Hanf says 300 Lebanese Forces militiamen stayed at Karantina and the port after the December 1990 withdrawal, and dates the army's entry into the Fifth Basin and other militia ports to 11 March 1991.

Hanf: Omar Karami was asked on 20 December 1990 to form a government after Hoss quit on the 19th; Hrawi had settled its make-up with the Syrians in Damascus on 15 December, excluding Hoss and Speaker Husseini.

Hanf lists the parties left out of the Karami cabinet of 24 December 1990: Hezbollah, the National Liberals, Aoun's supporters and the Communists. With 30 ministers it was Lebanon's largest. Berri, Jumblatt, Geagea, Hobeika, Suleiman Frangieh, Abdallah el-Amin and Assad Hardan, seven militia chiefs, joined as ministers of state without portfolio. After the Lebanese Forces protested at its make-up, Geagea urged the Christian ministers to resign; only his two colleagues followed. It won confidence on 9 January 1991.