Membership and political organization

Its membership was overwhelmingly left-wing and professed to be secular, although the fairly obvious sectarian appeal of Jumblatt's Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) and some of the Sunni Arab nationalist organizations in some cases made this claim debatable. However, to say that the LNM was an all-Muslim organization would be a gross oversimplification. Its main ideological positions were: the abrogation of sectarianism, political and social reforms, the clear proclamation of the Arab identity of Lebanon, and increased support for the Palestinians. In order to coordinate the military and political actions of the LNM an executive structure, the Central Political Council – CPC (Arabic: Majliss Tajammu al-kinda) or Bureau Politique Central (BPC) in French, was set up shortly after the outbreak of the hostilities at the town of Aley, a mountain tourist resort in the Chouf District, which became the military headquarters of the Front. The Council was presided over from its inception by Kamal Jumblatt of the PSP, with Mohsen Ibrahim of the OCAL appointed as Executive Secretary; after Kamal's death in 1977, he was replaced by his son Walid Jumblatt, who led the LNM until 1982.

Among the participants in the LNM were the Lebanese Communist Party (LCP), the Communist Action Organization in Lebanon (CAOL or OCAL), the PSP, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party in Lebanon (SSNP), both a Syrian-led Ba'ath Party branch and an Iraqi-led Ba'ath Party branch, al-Mourabitoun (a Nasserist group) and several other minor Nasserist groupings. Several Palestinian organizations joined the LNM, notably many from the Rejectionist Front. Both the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) were active participants.

The Shia Amal Movement, although supporting some of the LNM's positions, did not join it formally.^[2]

Minor groups

Above and beyond this, an 'alphabet soup' of other lesser-known smaller Parties were associated with the LNM, namely the Revolutionary Communist Group – RCG, the Lebanese Revolutionary Party – LRP, the Front of Patriotic Christians – PFC, the Democratic Lebanese Movement – DLM, the Movement of Arab Lebanon – MAL, the Arab Revolutionary Movement – ARM, the Partisans of the Revolution, the Vanguards of Popular Action – VPA, the Organization of Arab Youth – OAY, the Units of the Arab Call – UAC, the Movement of Arab Revolution – MAR, the Sixth of February Movement, the 24 October Movement – 24 OM, the Lebanese Movement in Support of Fatah – LMSF, the Union of Working People's Forces – UWPF, the Union of Working People's Forces-Corrective Movement – UWPF-CM, the Knights of Ali, the Black Panthers, etc.

Most of them were marginal political organizations of revolutionary or populist trend (Arab nationalist, libertarian/anarchist, liberal/idealist, radical socialist, Marxist–Leninist, Hoxhaist, Trotskyist, or Maoist) that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and despite their rather limited base of support, they were quite active. Anti-status quo, Pan-Arabist, and pro-Palestinian in policy, they strived for a social revolution that would transform Lebanese society, therefore sharing the same objectives as the leading LNM secular parties – the recognition of Lebanon as an Arab country and unwavering support for the PLO.

However, apart this minority of committed idealists, the vast majority of the remainder 'movements' were actually façades or 'shops' (Arabic: dakakin) – slightly politicised neighbourhood militias operating under grandiose pseudo-revolutionary labels – set up by PLO factions (mainly Fatah) in a misguided effort to widen its base of local support among the unemployed Lebanese urban youth. In most cases, their small, poorly disciplined, ill-equipped militia establishments were ad hoc formations made of lightly armed and largely untrained Christian or Muslim youths that rarely surpassed the 100-300 fighters' mark – about the size of an understrength company or battalion. Some groupings were lucky enough to possess a few technicals armed with heavy machine-guns and recoilless rifles but others, for the most part, fought on foot as light infantry, with small arms pilfered from the government forces, acquired on the black market or obtained via the Palestinian factions. Those groups either unable or unwilling to raise their own militias played a political role only by engaging in propaganda activities, keeping themselves out of the 1975-76 savage street battles and sectarian killings, with some of their militants preferring instead to join the medical relief agencies organized by the LNM.

The decline of the LNM in the late 1970s, culminating in its collapse in the aftermath of the Israeli invasion of June 1982, sounded the death toll for many of the minor Lebanese leftist organizations. As the war progressed, many of these small factions – at least the more politically oriented ones – were destroyed in the violent power struggles of the 1980s. For the most part forced to go underground, some evolved to Islamic fundamentalist groups, whilst the less politicized simply degenerated into criminal street-gangs that engaged in assassinations, theft, smuggling, and extortion. As a result, only a small fraction of the truly ideologically committed groupings managed to survive the war to re-emerge in the 1990s as politically active organizations.

Military strength and organization

At the beginning of the war in 1975, the different LNM militias were grouped into a military wing, designated the "Common Forces" (Arabic: القوات المشتركة, Al-Quwwat al-Mushtaraka), but best known as "Joint Forces" (LNM-JF), which numbered some 18,900 militiamen (not including allied Palestinian factions). Manpower was distributed as follows: the PSP militia (the People's Liberation Army) and the LCP militia (the Popular Guard) each had 5,000 men; the SSNP militia had 4,000 men; the pro-Syria Ba'athists and pro-Iraqi Ba'athists had 2,000 and 1,500 men respectively. The others militias shared the remainder.

This number was to increase in the following months with the inclusion of 21,900 Palestinian guerrilla fighters from both the Rejectionist Front (RF) and mainstream PLO factions, later joined by 4,400 Lebanese regular soldiers from the Lebanese Arab Army (LAA) led by Lieutenant Ahmad al-Khatib who went over to the LNM-PLO side in January 1976. In the end, the LNM-PLO-LAA combined military forces reached an impressive total of 45,200 troops by March that year, aligned against the 12,000-16,000 right-wing troops their Lebanese Front adversaries were able to muster.

Sponsor countries and organizations

The LNM-JF received financial aid and arms from many countries such as Syria, Libya, Iraq and South Yemen, in addition to Palestinian support; besides lending their political backing and contributing with their organizational skills, experienced Palestinian cadres from RF and PLO groups provided weapons, equipment, and in many cases, military leadership to the Lebanese leftist militias. In addition, they also provided training, which was conducted at the refugee camps in the major cities or at PLO bases in southern Lebanon, mainly in the Beqaa Valley (a.k.a. "Fatahland").