JC 14 october 2011
Depending on whom you talk to, the Lebanese Christians, principally the Maronites allied with pro-Israel Geagea, will tell you the the Syrians massacred them, while the others, Greek orthodox, Armenians and Maronites now allied with Aoun and Frangie will tell you that the Syrian saved them from the Druze, the Sunni militias and the Palestinians.
The civil war in Lebanon was such a messy and complex war that violence, killings and excesses came from all the protagonists independently of their religion and political affiliation.
When the Maronites were on the verge of defeat in front of the Palestinians,the Druze and Sunnis militias, the Maronite Lebanese president Frangie called on Syria to intervene.
“In October 1976, Syria accepted the proposal of the Arab League summit in Riyadh. This gave Syria a mandate to keep 40,000 troops in Lebanon as the bulk of an Arab Deterrent Force charged with disentangling the combatants and restoring calm” (wikipedia)
The huge mistake was that the mandate was not limited in time and the Arab league never asked Syria to withdraw its troops.
Therefore the Syrian army “pacified” the country and settled in Lebanon. Some Syrian leaders, like Abdel Halim Khaddam, found that Lebanon was a good place to make money with corrupted Lebanese and intervene in the political directions of the country.
With time, the gratitude faded away and the resentment grew against Syria and the abuses and interference of its representatives in the political life of the country. We know the rest….
The Syrians responsible of crimes during that war were never indicted. The same applies to Christian Lebanese leaders responsible of horrendous massacres. In addition some of them are shamelessly still active in Lebanese politics. There has not been any thorough judicial investigation of the terrible crimes that happened during and after this war. This is why the murder of Hariri rallied the Lebanese who thought that finally some kind of justice was coming to their country.
Therefore the obituaries presented by Antoine of Christians killed should be completed by the obituaries of the Moslems, Druzes and Syrians soldiers who died during that war.
Then we could have the whole picture of the victims of that dirty war that no Lebanese want to remember.
http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/?p=12492&cp=7#comment-278667