Aoun, the controversial leader who refused to yield
Hussein Dakroub/The Daily Star/October 31/16
BEIRUT: Love him or loathe him, there is no denying that general-turned-politician Michel Aoun has been a central yet controversial figure in Lebanon’s modern history. His own career, characterized by violence, rigidity, exile and popular support, will be coming full circle Monday when Parliament appears set to elect him as president, returning him to Baabda Palace, the same palace he fled from 26 years ago to seek refuge in France.
Known for his tough and unyielding stances on crucial issues such as the country’s national unity and sovereignty, and his fierce struggle for Christian rights in the public administration, Aoun, in the eyes of his supporters, symbolized the fight for freedom and independence.
But, in the eyes of his critics, Aoun is an egomaniac who will stop at nothing to gain power and who has always sparked a nationwide controversy over the means he uses to achieve his political goals, at the top of which is his long-cherished dream of being elected president.
In addition to fiery speeches, the Free Patriotic Movement, founded by Aoun and now headed by his son-in-law Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, has resorted over the past few months to the tactics of threatening the government and the FPM’s opponents with street protests, boycotting Cabinet and Parliament sessions and walking out of national dialogue meetings with the aim of fulfilling the party’s demand for equal power sharing between Muslims and Christians.
Nonetheless, the ultimate aim behind the FPM’s recent uproar and orchestrated campaign over what the party termed “injustice” inflicted on the Christians, was Aoun’s long-standing dream of being elected to the country’s top Christian post.
Weeks before former Prime Minister Saad Hariri announced on Oct. 20 his endorsement of Aoun’s nomination in a move that seemed to have secured a sufficient parliamentary majority for his election to the presidency, the FPM had threatened to stage street demonstrations across the country to protest alleged marginalization of Christians in the government and state posts. Many politicians in the March 14 coalition had accused the FPM of employing these tactics with the aim of exerting pressure on its opponents to accept Aoun’s presidential bid.
As head of the second biggest bloc in Parliament, Aoun has cast himself as the largest representative within the Christian community in general, and the Maronite sect in particular. Aoun’s 23-member parliamentary Change and Reform bloc is the largest group of Christian MPs.
He used the argument that the president should be representative of the majority of Christians in the country as a means to forge ahead with his drive to be elected head of state.
Born in the southern Beirut suburb of Haret Hreik on Feb. 18, 1933, Aoun, a Maronite Christian, finished his secondary education at the College Des Frères in Furn al-Shubbak and enrolled in the Military Academy as a cadet officer in 1955. Three years later, he graduated as an artillery officer in the Lebanese Army. Following a series of military promotions, he was appointed an Army commander in 1984.
In September 1983 during the Civil War, Aoun’s predominantly Christian 8th Mechanized Infantry Battalion fought the pro-Syrian Shiite, Druze and Palestinian forces in Souq al-Gharb, a decisive battle that prevented the mountain town from falling into the hands of the alliance.
However, Aoun, in the eyes of his critics, gained notoriety when he headed a military transitional government between 1988 and 1990, during which he launched two unsuccessful but deadly wars against the Syrian army in Lebanon and the Lebanese Forces militia that resulted in the deaths of thousands of Lebanese and Syrian soldiers, militiamen and civilians.
Even when he went into self-imposed exile in France between 1991 and 2005, Aoun championed calls for Syria’s pullout from Lebanon by working with some U.S. congressmen on enacting an anti-Syria legislation, the 2003 Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act.
At the end of his six-year term on Sept. 23, 1988, and after Parliament failed to meet to elect a successor, outgoing President Amine Gemayel dismissed the government of Prime Minister Salim al-Hoss and appointed a six-member interim military government headed by Aoun.
The interim government, was composed of three senior Muslim officers and three senior Christian officers, but the Muslims refused to serve, leaving Aoun’s government only with its Christian members.
This left Lebanon to be ruled by two rival governments: One headed by Aoun and another headed by Hoss, who refused to step down before the election of a new president.
A fierce opponent of the Syrian military presence, Aoun, bunkered in a basement at the Presidential Palace in Baabda, launched a self-proclaimed “War of Liberation” against the Syrian army on March 14, 1989, that also targeted residential areas in Muslim west Beirut.
The ill-fated war came a few months before Muslim and Christian MPs signed an Arab-brokered political deal in the Saudi city of Taif, known as the Taif Accord, to end the 1975-90 Civil War.
Aoun staunchly opposed the Taif Accord, mainly because it curtailed the Maronite president’s powers and shifted them to the half-Muslim, half-Christian Cabinet, and accused the MPs who signed it of treason.
Aoun, as head of an interim military government, dissolved Parliament and later refused to recognize the two presidents elected after the Taif Accord: Rene Muawad, who was assassinated a few weeks after his election in a car bomb explosion on Nov. 24, 1989, and Elias Hrawi, on the argument that the two were elected president by a dissolved assembly. Hrawi responded by dismissing Aoun as Army commander and appointed Gen. Emile Lahoud in his place. Hrawi also ordered Aoun to leave Baabda Palace, but Aoun rejected the dismissal and refused to leave the palace.
He escaped an assassination in September 1990 when a Communist Party member fired at him using a pistol but missed during one of Aoun’s appearances in front of supporters in Baabda.
Finally, with an American and Arab green light, the Syrian Army on Oct. 13, 1990, bombarded the Baabda Palace with airstrikes and artillery fire, forcing Aoun to flee to the nearby French Embassy.
He and his family stayed at the French Embassy for several months before he was granted an exile in France in 1991.
Aoun stayed in France for 14 years before returning to Lebanon on May 7, 2005, a few weeks after Syria withdrew its army from Lebanon under local and international pressure, ending nearly three decades of its domination over the country. The Syrian withdrawal came more than two months after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in a massive bombing in Beirut on Feb. 14, 2005.
Aoun won a landslide victory in Christian areas in general elections held merely weeks after his return, winning some 70 percent of votes there and clinching 21 parliamentary seats.
He won more seats in the 2009 elections, making his Change and Reform bloc, with 27 members, the largest Christian bloc in Parliament.
Since his return to Lebanon from France, Aoun has formed some unusual alliances with pro-Syrian parties. That seemed odd for a man who fought the Syrians.
In 2006, he signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, forging a major political alliance that has endured ever since. The alliance culminated in Hezbollah joining Aoun in blocking the Parliament to meet to elect a new president other than Aoun for nearly two-and-half years.
Despite a bloody history with the regime of the late Syrian President Hafez Assad, father of the current president, Bashar Assad, Aoun visited Syria in 2009 on a fence-mending trip and was the guest of the Syrian leader for a few days.
When the uprising against the Syrian regime broke out in March 2011, Aoun announced his support for the war on terror there, implicitly voicing backing for the government’s relentless war on rebels fighting to topple the regime.
The FPM founder has said that if he is elected president, he would support Hezbollah retaining its arms until a permanent settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict is reached.
Aoun also reached an understanding with his former arch-foe, Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea, in January that led the latter to endorse the FPM founder’s presidential bid.
The two rival Christian parties last year reached a Declaration of Intent that paved the way for a historic reconciliation between Aoun and Geagea, putting an end to years of bitter rivalry and a bloody feud between the two Maronite leaders.
The two parties fought a devastating war in Christian areas in January 1990 when Aoun, using a section of the Army, launched what was known as “a war of elimination” against the Lebanese Forces militia.
The inter-Christian fighting, which lasted more than six months and deepened the split within the community, left at least 2,000 people dead.
Since his return to Lebanon, Aoun and his FPM have launched scathing diatribes against top Sunni leaders, in particular the late Rafik Hariri and his son, Saad, blaming their policies for the rampant corruption in the public administration, endemic budget deficits and the deteriorating economic situation.
In one of his speeches, Aoun affiliated the Lebanese Sunni community with extremist groups like Daesh (ISIS) and the Nusra Front, drawing harsh responses from Future Movement officials.
However, talks between the FPM and the Future Movement in the past two years, including meetings between Aoun and Hariri, have melted the ice between the two sides and eventually led Hariri to endorsing the FPM founder’s presidential bid on Oct. 20. Coming 11 days before a crucial Parliament session to elect a new head of state, Hariri’s dramatic move has apparently secured the presidency for Aoun.
In a televised speech on Oct. 16 addressing an FPM rally to commemorate his ejection from Baabda Palace in 1990, Aoun adopted a conciliatory tone toward his political opponents, namely the Future Movement and its March 14 allies. He stressed that respecting the Constitution and the country’s equal power-sharing formula between Christians and Muslims is the key to building a proper state.
Aoun and other FPM officials have demanded strict adherence to the National Charter’s power-sharing formula. They argued that despite the charter, Christians in the country are politically marginalized and that, while Muslim sects have the freedom to choose their leaders to the top posts, namely the premiership and the speakership, Christians don’t have this right to select their representative to the presidency.
Aoun is married to Nadia Al Chami. They have three daughters: Mireille, Claudine and Chantal. In addition to Arabic, Aoun speaks French, English, Italian and Spanish.
