Nutshell summary of the Lebanese civil war
by Frank Brown, March 2004
(based on information in 'From Beirut to Jerusalem' by Thomas Friedman)


The country currently known as Lebanon is a middle-eastern state situated on the Mediterranean Sea.  
It's neighbors are Syria to the north and east, and Israel to the south.  

The Maronites are an Eastern Christian church founded in Syria around the 5th century by a monk named Maron.
The Druse are a splinter sect of Islam whose exact religious beliefs are a communal secret.
The Sunnis are the majority Muslim sect, who believe Muhammad's successors should be elected.
The Shiites are a significant minority Muslim sect who believe Muhammad's successors should come from
his descendants exclusively.  All of these groups have significant populations in the area.

With the collapse of the Turkish Ottoman empire at the end of World War I, control of the Syria and Lebanon 
areas of the middle east fell to France.  In 1920 Maronite leaders convinced France to set up a Lebanese 
state which the Maronites and other smaller christian sects allied to them would dominate.  In order to make 
the state more economically viable the Maronites asked France to include not only their traditional Mt. Lebanon 
enclave (about 80 percent christian/20 percent Druse) but also predominantly Sunni Mulsim cities of the coast: 
Beirut, Tripoli, Sidon and Tyre, as well as Shiite Muslim regions of south Lebanon: the Akkar and Bekaa Valley.
In this 'greater Lebanon', the Maronites and other christian sects comprised slightly more than 51 percent of
the population.

The Sunnis and Shiites, despite initial reluctance (they preferred to be a part of arab Syria), eventually 
reached a political agreement with the Christians in 1943 that enabled Lebanon to become independent.
This unwritten 'National Pact' stipulated the Lebanese president would always be a Maronite, the parliament 
would always have a 6:5 ratio of christians to mulsims, the prime minister would always be a sunni and the 
speaker of parilament always a shiite.  Thus the christians, sunnis and shiites all shared power in the 
national government.

This arrangement worked as long as the Christians made up roughly half of the population.  But by the 1970s
the muslim and druse populations had grown to approximately two-thirds, the christians had shrunk to one-
third, and the shiites became the largest single community in the country.

The muslims demanded political reforms giving them a proportional share of power; the maronites refused.
The maronites formed private armies, including the Phalangist militia and the Tigers militia.  The
muslims and druse formed their own private armies in response.

About this time the PLO was kicked out of Jordan and was looking for a new base of operations.  
You guessed it - they went to Lebanon, where they were welcomed by lebanese muslims and druse
who thought the PLO would help them in their struggle against the Maronites.  The christians
wanted to throw the PLO out of the country like Jordan had done.  The muslims opposed any
crackdown on the PLO.  This created a political deadlock in the lebanese government, which
was just fine with the PLO.

Bingo: civil war (the war ended in 1990).