On 7 October, Hanf writes, 20,000 Syrian soldiers entered Tripoli, after pro-Syrian groups had in September 1985 attacked the Tawheed movement then holding the city; some 250,000 civilians fled.

In Hanf's account Berri offered the Christians a choice: a census to reset sectarian proportions, or an end to proportionality. Asked by Jumblatt why Syria dealt with Hobeika, Khaddam reportedly said everyone in Lebanon was a murderer.

Fisk dates it 1 October 1985, de Clerck and Malsagne September. Arkady Katkov was killed. Fisk thinks Sunni fundamentalists wanted Moscow to make Syria halt its Tripoli offensive against Tawheed. The others' release is credited probably to the KGB and Syria by de Clerck and Malsagne, to Syrian mediation by Hanf.

Hanf says that once the Tripartite Agreement had been signed, on 28 December 1985, Hobeika turned Lebanese Forces units against militias loyal to President Gemayel and the Kataeb.

For Gemayel, says Traboulsi, the accord robbed the presidency of its arbitrating role; they last met on 13-14 January 1986.

Historians date Geagea's takeover to 15 January 1986 (de Clerck and Malsagne; Picard's chronology dates Gemayel's rejection of the accord to the same day). Traboulsi's narrative gives 12 March 1986 instead. De Clerck and Malsagne put the dead at about 800, far above the 100 given here. Hobeika was flown out by army helicopter after an army mediation backed by the patriarch, was briefly exiled in France, then settled in Zahle under Syrian protection.

Hanf dates the main offensive, by SSNP fighters with Syrian support toward Bikfaya (at Douar and on the Baskinta-Bikfaya road), to the second half of February; it was stopped by the Lebanese army.

Hanf writes that Prime Minister Karami joined Jumblatt and Berri in boycotting cabinet sessions chaired by Gemayel, whose resignation the two had demanded after the Tripartite Agreement failed.

Picard places the wave of killings of Communist and pro-Iraqi Baath leaders in January 1986.

The meetings produced no agreement (Hanf).

Fisk dates Frank Reed's kidnapping to 9 September.

He was shot in the head 25 m from the ambassador's office, a day after the rue de Rennes attack in Paris (7 dead, 55 wounded).

Dates differ: 27 September (de Clerck and Malsagne), 29 September (Hanf), or by 26 September (Ménargues). Hanf has the Lebanese army halting an attack launched across the green line from West Beirut, after which former comrades killed a few hundred of Hobeika's men.

Historians describe the collapse of real wages behind such decrees: against 1974, the statutory minimum wage kept 13 percent of its buying power at the end of 1986 (Hanf, after Abou Rjaily and Labaki).

The third 'war of the camps' had begun in the south at the end of September 1986; fighting resumed in the Beirut camps in December. By early January 1987 it had cost over 500 dead and 2,000 wounded, by a French diplomatic estimate. The books describe Amal's adversaries as PLO fighters, mostly loyal to Arafat.

Hanf mentions the failed attempt on Chamoun's life early in 1987 and notes that he died in August of that year.

Counts differ: Hanf, after Abou Rjaily and Labaki (figures to late 1987), counts about fifty foreigners kidnapped in Lebanon, including twenty Americans and nine Frenchmen. The figure of 18 French nationals may include people who were not kidnapped; its basis is not known.

Traboulsi dates the break between the two presidents to their meeting of 13-14 January 1986, when Gemayel rejected the Syrian-sponsored Tripartite Accord.

De Clerck and Malsagne call 1987's currency crisis the gravest since independence, the pound losing up to 90 percent of its value; on Banque du Liban figures (Hanf), it fell from about 35 to the dollar in 1986 to some 520.