Word: aoun
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...road leading up to the presidential palace, former headquarters of renegade General Michel Aoun, Lebanese army soldiers sat proudly last week atop hundreds of Soviet-made T-54 tanks, savoring the defeat of the mutinous general. Their presence testified to the Lebanese government's new hold on Beirut, but the symbolism was illusory. Beneath the Lebanese paper flags that the troops plastered on the tanks' turrets were Syrian army markings. The Lebanese soldiers were only window dressing, for the T-54s had been manned by Syrian troops in the offensive that dislodged Aoun two weeks...
...crisis stretches on, it becomes increasingly clear that members of the anti-Saddam alliance have their own goals to pursue. Last week, for example, Lebanese President Elias Hrawi asked Syria to help him rout his rival, General Michel Aoun, from his stronghold in Beirut's Christian enclave, thus giving Damascus the opportunity to complete its control of Lebanon at a moment when the world is distracted by other events in the Middle East. Syrian President Hafez Assad ordered thousands of troops to Beirut to beef up the 10,000 Syrian soldiers already there. On Friday a lone gunman shot twice...
Last Saturday at dawn Syrian forces opened a devastating air and artillery bombardment of Aoun's headquarters. But Aoun apparently had advance knowledge of the attack, and had already taken refuge in the French embassy. By noon, Lebanese forces loyal to Hrawi had taken over Aoun's fiefdom and the French were negotiating safe passage out of the country for the general. Aoun's defeat not only offered Assad unprecedented control over Lebanon but also gave him the satisfaction of defeating a man who had once got his weapons from the Syrian leader's most implacable foe: Saddam Hussein...
General Michel Aoun, the renegade Christian strongman who considers himself Lebanon's rightful leader, was spoiling for a fight. Irritated because his fellow Christians in the Phalangist militia were tacitly supporting a peace agreement giving authority to President Elias Hrawi, Aoun last week ordered his troops to attack Phalangist barracks. When the Phalangists struck back, the result was a civil war within a civil war that turned the Christian enclave of East Beirut into a free-fire zone. By week's end more than 140 civilians were dead...
...Aoun, who commands 15,000 troops, apparently underestimated the 10,000- strong Phalangists, who not only held their own but overran a naval base, a landing strip and an army garrison held by Aoun's forces...