Camille Chamoun

Camille Chamoun

Camille Nimr Chamoun ( Arabic كميل نمر شمعون, DMG Kamīl Nimr Šamʿūn ; * April 3, 1900 in Dair el-Qamar ; † August 7, 1987 in Beirut ) was President of Lebanon from 1952 to 1958 and a Christian leader during the Lebanese Civil War .

Early years

Camille Nimr Chamoun was born to a prominent Maronite family. So was his uncle Auguste Adib Pacha z. B. two-time Prime Minister of the country. Chamoun became a lawyer and was first elected to the National Assembly in 1934 . He was re-elected in 1937 and 1943; in 1943 he was also appointed Minister of the Interior. He favored independence from France and was arrested on November 11, 1943 and imprisoned in the Rashaia Tower for eleven days, along with Béchara el-Khoury and Riad as-Solh , who were to become the first presidents and prime ministers of independent Lebanon. Massive public protests led to her release on November 22, 1943; this day has since been celebrated as Lebanese Independence Day.

Chamoun was re-elected to the National Assembly in 1947 and 1951. He was often absent, as he was also Lebanon's ambassador to Great Britain from 1944 to 1946 and then envoy to the United Nations .

1958 uprising

→ Main article : 1958 Lebanon crisis

When President Bechara el-Khoury was forced to resign on political corruption charges in 1952, Chamoun was elected to replace him. Towards the end of his tenure, Pan-Arabists and other groups supported by Gamal Abdel Nasser tried to overthrow the Chamoun government in June 1958 with the support of the politically disadvantaged group of Sunni Muslims . Chamoun asked for help from the United States and American marines landed in Beirut. The uprising was put down. To allay Sunni anger, General Fuad Schihab was elected to succeed him, as he enjoyed considerable popularity in the Muslim community. The American diplomat Robert Murphy was sent to Lebanon as the personal representative of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and played an essential role in convincing Chamoun to resign.

Foundation of NLP

After his resignation, Chamoun founded the National Liberal Party ( al-Ahrar ). As chairman of this party, he was re-elected to the National Assembly in 1960. In 1964 he was defeated due to changes in the boundaries of his constituencies, which his supporters labeled inadmissible gerrymandering , but he was re-elected to parliament in 1968 and then in 1972. The 1972 elections were the last to take place in his life. After the 1968 elections, the National Liberal Party won eleven of the 99 seats, making it the largest parliamentary group in the notoriously fragmented parliament. It was the only Lebanese party for which representatives of all major denominations were elected.

Civil war

→ Main article : Lebanese Civil War

During the 1970s and 1980s, Chamoun held various ministerial offices. He was involved in the civil war through the party's militia, the Tiger Militia (in Arabic nimr means tiger ). In the early stages of the civil war, he was a co-founder of the Lebanese Front , a coalition of mostly Christian politicians and parties whose united militia came to be known as the Forces Libanaises . From 1976 to 1978 Chamoun was chairman of the front, which was dominated by the Kataeb party.

Although initially focused on Syria and in 1976 called on the Syrian army to intervene against the left-wing Muslim Lebanese National Movement (LNM) and its Palestinian allies , Chamoun then tended to reject the Syrian presence. In 1980 the NLP militia was destroyed by an attack by Chamoun's Christian rival Bachir Gemayel and the LF was subjugated under his command. After the Israeli invasion in 1982, Chamoun opted for tactical cooperation with Israel to counter what he believed to be a Syrian occupation .

Death and legacy

In 1984, Chamoun joined a government of national unity as deputy prime minister and held this position until his death; he was also finance minister in this cabinet. On January 7, 1987, he was unsuccessfully assassinated, in which four people were killed by a car bomb in Beirut. Chamoun died of a heart attack that same year.

In his political time he was considered a tough opponent of Syrian influence in Lebanon, as a result of which bloody power struggles broke out in the country. He was also considered one of the most important Christian nationalists of Lebanon and was one of the last influential pre-war politicians in the country during the civil war, in which otherwise younger militia commanders and warlords gained influence.

Camille Chamoun left two sons, Dany Chamoun (murdered in 1990) and Dory Chamoun , who also became politicians.

literature

• Camille N. Chamoun , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 38/1987 of September 7, 1987, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The New York Times: Camille Nimer Chamoun, 87; A Lebanese Leader 43 Years August 8, 1987
2. ↑ L'Impartial, January 8, 1987, p. 1
3. ↑ ^{a b} Spiegel.de Edition 33/1987 , accessed on April 6, 2011