| Guardians of the Cedars | |
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| حراس الأرز | |
 Logo of the Guardians of the Cedars (1974–1990) (remastered version 2022). The motto can be loosely translated as "At your service, Lebanon". | |
| Leaders | Etienne Saqr |
| Dates of operation | 1975–1990 |
| Country | Lebanon |
| Headquarters | Achrafieh (Beirut),Sabbah |
| Active regions | East Beirut,Mount Lebanon,South Lebanon |
| Ideology | Lebanese nationalism Ultranationalism Ethnic nationalism Social conservatism Anti-communism Anti-Palestinianism Secularism Anti-Pan Arabism Phoenicianism |
| Political position | Far-right |
| Slogan | "At your service, Lebanon". |
| Status | Outlawed |
| Part of | Lebanese Renewal Party Lebanese Front Lebanese Forces |
| Allies |  Israel Defense Forces (IDF) (1975-1990) Kataeb Regulatory Forces Al-Tanzim South Lebanon Army (SLA) |
| Opponents |  Lebanese National Movement (LNM)Lebanese Arab Army (LAA).svg) Amal Movement Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Hezbollah Jammoul Syrian Arab Armed Forces |
| Battles and wars | Israeli–Lebanese conflict Lebanese civil war |
| Designated as a terrorist group by | Ba'athist Syria |
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Subdivisions |
TheGuardians of the Cedars (GoC;Arabic:حراس الأرز;Ḥurrās al-Arz) was aLebanese nationalist party and formermilitia in Lebanon. It was formed byÉtienne Saqr (also known with thekunya "Abu Arz" or "Father of the Cedars") and others along with the Lebanese Renewal Party in the early 1970s. It operated in theLebanese Civil War under the slogan:Lebanon, at your service. The militia was explicitlyanti-Palestinian, and gained a reputation for brutality againstPalestinian fighters.
The Guardians of the Cedars started to form a militia in the years leading up to the Lebanese Civil War and commenced military operations in April 1975.
In September 1975, Communiqué No. 1 was issued to denounce advocates of the partition of Lebanon. The second communiqué contained a bitter attack on thePalestinians. The third articulated the party's stance on the issue of Lebanese identity: Lebanon should dissociate itself from Arabism. The party spread its messages by means ofgraffiti in EastBeirut, including slogans againstSyria, thePalestinian Resistance, andPan-Arabism, sometimes with violent anti-Palestinian tones, as in the slogan على كل لبناني ان يقتل فلسطينياً ("It is a duty for each Lebanese to kill a Palestinian").[1][2][3][4]
The Guardians of the Cedars joined other pro-status quo, mainlyChristian Lebanese, militias in 1976 to form theLebanese Front.
In March 1976, they confronted Palestinian and leftist forces in WestBeirut. A Guardians unit was also dispatched toZaarour, above the mountain road toZahlé, to supportPhalangist forces. In April, Guardian fighters held a line in the area ofHadath,Kfar Shima, andBsaba, south of Beirut, against a coalition of Palestinian,PSP, andSSNP forces.
In the summer of 1976, the Guardians were among the first militias to assaultTel al-Zaatar, the last remaining Palestinian refugee camp in east Beirut. The camp fell after a 52-day siege.
The actions of the Guardians and their allies following the capture of the camp have been widely reported as amounting to amassacre of many of its civilian inhabitants. During this battle,Saqr led a unit of Guardians force toChekka, where Christian civilians were being sieged by leftist-Palestinian forces, and fought off the Palestinian forces.
The Guardians and allied Christian militias then invaded theKoura region in northern Lebanon and reachedTripoli, to support Christian residents trapped by fighting. In 1978 as part of the Lebanese Front they did small attacks on the Syrian army in Beirut and again in 1981 in theBattle of Zahle. This came after the alliance between the Phalanges and most Christian groups with the Syrians had taken a twist.
During the war, the Guardians earned a reputation for specializing in cruelty. Militia members usually tied Palestinian prisoners to the backs of taxis and then dragged them up the motorway intoJounieh. Their carcasses would then be flung into a dried-up riverbed. Commanding his followers to slay all Palestinians, Saqr once stated, "If you feel compassion for the Palestinian women and children, remember they arecommunists and will bear new communists".[5]
In 1985 the Guardians of the Cedars mounted a fierce defense ofKfar-Fallus andJezzine, battling Palestinians and Shiite-Druze militias and protected thousands of Christians in South Lebanon.
Towards the close of the 1980s, and continuing to 2000, most of the remaining fighting in Lebanon occurred in the south, inside the Israeli-occupied zone, under the Southern-Lebanese-Army influence led bySaad Haddad and later byAntoine Lahd, the latter who had close ties with theNational Liberal Party (Al Ahrar in Arabic). The Guardians and other militias were largely reorganized into theSouth Lebanon Army, preserving much of the early ideology while adopting new military tactics.
The LRP militia began to be quietly raised in 1974 by Sakr in his capacity as president of the Party, though it was only in September 1975 when they made their existence public in an official communiqué as the Guardians of the Cedars. Headquartered at the main LRP party' Offices inAshrafieh and personally commanded by Sakr, the GoC initially numbered some 500 men and women[6] trained byKayrouz Baraket, a youngLebanese Army officer, and equipped with obsolete firearms purchased on theblack market. Although the membership of the GoC was exclusivelyMaronite, Sakr allegedly maintained a loyal personal bodyguard made up ofLebanese Shia Muslims, but little is known about them. The collapse of the Lebanese Army in January 1976 allowed Sakr to recruit army deserters and seize some heavy equipment from its barracks andInternal Security Forces (ISF) Police stations, swelling the GoC ranks to 3,000-6,000 uniformed militiamen armed with modern small-arms. Besides being provided with funds and training by theKataeb Party and theAl-Tanzim, the Guardians also claimed to have received direct aid fromIsrael as early as 1974. They were the only faction of theLebanese Front that never received any military aid fromSyria, which is hardly surprising, given their strong anti-Syrian views.
They fielded a mechanized force consisting of a singleM50 Super Sherman medium tank, someBTR-152[7] andM113 armored personnel carriers,[8] a fewM42A1 DusterSPAAGs andChaimite V200[9] armoured cars backed bygun trucks ortechnicals. The latter consisted ofUAZ-469,Land-Rover series II-III,Santana Series III (Spanish-produced version of the Land-Rover series III),Toyota Land Cruiser (J40),Dodge Power Wagon W200,Dodge D series (3rd generation),Jeep J20 pickup trucks,GMC Sierra Custom K25/K30,Chevrolet C-10/C-15 Cheyenne andChevrolet C-20 Scottsdale light pickups, plusChevrolet C-50 medium-duty trucks andGMC C4500 medium-duty trucks,GMC C7500 heavy-duty trucks andM34 2½-ton 6x6 cargo trucks[10][11][12] armed withheavy machine guns (HMGs),recoilless rifles andanti-aircraftautocannons.
In stark contrast to other Christian factions, the LRP/GoC despised any illegal activities such asdrug-trafficking,extortion or looting, and their leader Sakr never sought to establish an autonomous personal fiefdom. Although the Guardians' claimed that they did not center their military operations on 'turf', they did maintain strongholds at theMaronite quarters ofEast Beirut, the adjacentMatn District (Laqluk, nearAkoura), theBatroun District (Tannourine), the easternKeserwan District (Ayoun es-Simane) and theJabal Amel region (Kfar Falous,Jezzine,Marjayoun,Qlaiaa,Ain Ebel andRumeish). In May 1979 they even clashed with the NLPTigers Militia in Beirut for control of theFurn esh Shebbak andAin el-Rammaneh districts, and for the town ofAkoura in theByblos District.[13]
The Guardians hold to several key beliefs:
This has led the Guardians of the Cedars to maintain that Lebanese people are not Arabs. The political consequence of this stance advocates the 'de-Arabization' of Lebanon. Similarly, followers draw a distinction betweenArabic and 'Lebanese', aiming to restore the form created by Lebanese philosopherSaid Akl. The Guardians of the Cedars have adopted positions hostile toPan-Arabism. This is believed to be the main reason why they did not grow as a party in Lebanon outside the Maronite community.
Saqr himself had fought against pan-Arab forces back in theLebanon Crisis of 1958. During that timeCamille Chamoun entered Lebanon in theBaghdad Pact led by the US, but faced stiff resistance from a huge section of the Lebanese people, and this later led to the failure of this alliance.
After heavy Palestinian involvement in theLebanese Civil War, the Guardians cultivated ties with theIsraeli military, receiving weapons and support. Some followers maintain that this was a collaboration of necessity, and not an ideological agreement with the Israelis. Others disagree, claiming that collaboration with Israel was based on the conviction that there was a commonality of interest between the two countries. Other similarly aligned militias, such as thePhalangists,Ahrar and theTigers, also cooperated semi-secretly withIsrael. This cooperation was later emphasized by Saqr who said: "Lebanon's power is in Israel's power, and Lebanon's weakness lies in Israel's weakness".
This alliance with Israel played a major role in banning the party, and expelling its members who mostly fled to Israel. Saqr, who now lives in Nicosia, Cyprus, has since admitted that Israel has been funding the group throughout its existence, even before the war began. Saqr is now considered as a traitor to the Lebanese government, alongside the likes ofAntoine Lahad who resided in Tel Aviv under Mossad protection until his death in 2015.[14]
According to an Israeli military observer Haim 'Arev, the soldiers of the Guardians of the Cedars were the best and most experienced fighters among the militias that constituted the Lebanese Front. He draws a direct connection between the patriotic ideology of the Guardians and the superior battle capacity of their fighters. He states that while the Guardians were among the smaller parties of the Lebanese Civil war, its idealistic men and women were soldiers of the best caliber. Later, in Southern Lebanon, the Guardians fighters had a reputation for being exceptionally motivated and among the toughest fighters in the ranks of the SLA.[15]
TheFront of the Guardians of the Cedar – FGoC (Arabic: الجبهة لحراس الأرز transliterationAl-Jabhat li-Hurras el-Arz), sometimes known by its Arabic acronym,JIHA, was a pre-dominantlyChristian right-wing grouping that appeared in 1974. Apparently a splinter of the Guardians of the Cedars, they held similar views to those of this party – expressed just prior to the war in anti-Palestinian graffiti bearing the 'JIHA' signature scrubbed in the walls ofeast Beirut's buildings – very little is known about this small and obscure organization. Estimated at about 100 members, the JIHA operated mainly in the eastern sector of the Lebanese Capital during the1975-77 phase of the Lebanese Civil War, but nothing was heard from them afterwards. It is assumed that they might have been re-absorbed into the GoC or by theLebanese Forces in 1977.
The GoC was strongly anti-Palestinian, and argued for the forcible removal of all Palestinians and other non-Lebanese (e.g. Syrians) from Lebanon, both civilians and armed fighters. GoC leaderSaqr summed up the organization's attitude to Palestinians in an interview with theJerusalem Post on July 23, 1982:
"It is the Palestinians we have to deal with. Ten years ago there were 84,000; now there are between 600,000 and 700,000. In six years there will be two million. We can't let it come to that." His solution: "Very simple. We shall drive them to the borders of brotherlySyria ... Anyone who looks back, stops or returns will be shot on the spot. We have the moral right, reinforced by well-organized public relations plans and political preparations."
However, in contrast to the policies of many other sectarian militias (such as theKataeb), and to their own attitudes towards Palestinians, the Guardians took some care to avoid the impression ofreligious conflict. The party, while essentially a Christian militia and in violent conflict with mostMuslim militias during the war, was formally secularist as it publicly stressed this secularnationalist identity that both Muslims and Christians could share.
1989 saw the Guardians once more fighting theSyrians alongside theLebanese Army in support of the military interim government of GeneralMichel Aoun. In a statement in 1990, the GoC greeted theoccupation ofKuwait bySaddam Hussein by asserting that "Arabism is the undisputed lie of the 20th century." The Guardians called upon the people to rally around the leadership of General Aoun, and demanded the withdrawal of Lebanon from theArab League.
As the Lebanese Civil War drew to a close in 1990, political changes weakened the right-wing movements which had existed in earlier decades. In October 1990, as part of the end of the war, the reorganized Lebanese government forced Prime MinisterAoun out of power under Syrian demands and commands. From this year on, Syria occupied Lebanon until its withdrawal in 2005.
Samir Geagea'sLebanese Forces militia capturedEtienne Saqr because he had supportedAoun. During this incident, he suffered an unspecified injury. He was forced to seek refuge inJezzine, and finally left Lebanon for Europe after Israel pulled its forces out of Lebanon. Several other members of the Guardians are presently wanted by the Lebanese government, in order to answer for war-crimes.
From the end of the civil war in 1990 until the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 the Guardians of the Cedars formed an element of the now-defunctSouth Lebanon Army. Since that date their military operations have ceased and they operate solely politically, campaigning to remove the Syrian presence in Lebanon. In common with the Christian and Sunni-dominatedMarch 14 Alliance, the party has expressed its support for theSyrian uprising.[16][17][18]
Today, the reorganized Guardians of the Cedars is a legal and fully functional political party; lately, the termMovement of Lebanese Nationalism (Arabic: حركة القومية اللبنانية transliterated asHarakat al-Qawmiyya al-Lubnaniyya) abbreviated asMLN[19] was added to its name and it is now known asThe Guardians of the Cedars Party - Movement of Lebanese Nationalism (inArabic حزب حراس الأرز- حركة القومية اللبنانية).
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