Word: militia
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Jordan was not willing to permit democratic institutions to function. The King handled his interrogators skillfully. To identify with, if not coopt, Palestinian rage over events in Lebanon, the King called for the creation of a People's Army, a sort of militia of all Jordanians, both men and women, trained to defend the country. Considering the danger that such an army could turn against its creator, it was a risky proposal...
...Jerusalem's support for Major Sa'ad Haddad, the Christian commander who has acted as an Israeli surrogate in southern Lebanon for the past six years. Haddad said last week that unless a peace treaty with Israel is signed, he will refuse to in corporate his militia into the Lebanese army as part of an overall Gemayel plan to disband the various Christian factions in the country...
Liberator. Warlord. Patriot. Power-mad. Those are some of the terms that Bashir Gemayel's deeply riven countrymen have used to describe their President-elect during his years as a leader of the Christian militia forces. Part political idealist and part storm trooper, Gemayel, 34, has shown he will use whatever means necessary to achieve his nationalist goals. His supporters argue that Lebanon's dire condition requires just that sort of toughness. Opponents claim that he is a fierce political animal dedicated to narrow sectarian aims...
Gemayel made his reputation for ruthlessness by the way he imposed his leadership over the diverse Christian militia groups during and after the 1975-76 civil war. In June 1978, Gemayel's forces lashed out brutally against former President the Suleiman Franjieh, who was one of his chief political opponents among the Christian population. In a lightning raid on the Franjieh summer resort village of Ehden, Phalangist soldiers murdered the ex-President's son and political heir Tony, along with his wife and two-year-old daughter. Gemayel coldly dismissed the episode as a "social revolt against feudalism...
Gemayel launched his military career when he was still a boy. During the brief age war of 1958, he officially joined the Phalangist militias at the age of eleven. He began regular military training two years later, and by 1969 was commander of a 100-man militia in his family's native village of Bikfaya, east of Beirut. Educated by the Jesuits, Gemayel took a law degree at St. Joseph's University of Beirut in 1971, but abandoned a short-lived law practice at the onset of Lebanon's civil war. In 1976 he became commander...