Fuad Schihab

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Fuad Schihab (1961)

Fuad Schihab ( French Fouad Chéhab ; Arabic فؤاد شهاب, DMG Fuʾād Šihāb ; born on March 19, 1902 in Beirut ; died on April 25, 1973 ibid) was President of Lebanon from 1958 to 1964, and previously General of the Troupes Spéciales du Levant (Lebanese voluntary organizations on the Allied side in World War II) and from 1944 to 1958 Commander in Chief of the Lebanese Army .

Origin, commander of the Lebanese allied troops in World War II (1902–1944)

Flag of the Schihabs

Schihab was born in 1902 into a Maronite- Christian family of aristocratic origin. The ancestors were the famous emirs of Lebanon at the beginning of the 19th century, a part of the Schihab dynasty converted from the Druze faith to Christianity . The Druze Shihabs had immigrated to Lebanon from the Hejaz in the 10th century , and were originally Sunni Muslims who were members of the Koreishite tribe (from which the Prophet Mohammed came).

Schihab quickly made a career within the Troupes Spéciales du Levant , Lebanese and Syrian auxiliaries of the French army, formed in the French mandate from 1930 . In the early 1930s he met General Charles de Gaulle when he was working as a military instructor in Beirut.

During the Second World War, Schihab commanded the troupes , which had already formed an important part of the Free French Army from 1942 , and consisted of a total of 22,000 volunteers from Lebanon and Syria (in 1942 they made up over 20% of the total troops of the Free French Army (approx. 100,000 men)). Troupes were among the Free French units in the battle of Bir Hakeim against the German Africa Corps .

In the course of the preparations for the invasion of Normandy in 1944, Schihab's Troupes provided replacement units at the Battle of Monte Cassino , so that other Allied troop units could withdraw from Italy and liberate French territory from England.

Commander of the Lebanese Army 1944–1958

From 1944, Schihab was the first commander in chief of the newly formed Lebanese army. In 1952 he refused to use the army against an uprising that forced President Béchara el-Khoury to resign. General Schihab was named interim prime minister who, four days later , enabled the election of a new president, Camille Chamoun .

Even during the brief first Lebanese civil war of 1958 , in which Christian and Muslim militias fought over whether Lebanon should remain independent or become part of the Nasser United Arab Republic , the army under Schihab's command remained neutral and prevented strategic positions such as Airport and government building by the parties to the civil war.

Presidency 1958–1964

To put down the uprising, President Chamoun requested American assistance. US President Dwight D. Eisenhower (who had operated with Schihab's volunteer forces in North Africa and southern Italy from 1943 to 1944) sent the Marine Corps . Nasser was an ally of the Soviet Union, in Washington's view the uprising was an attempt to incorporate pro-Western Lebanon into communist power, so military intervention was required according to the Eisenhower Doctrine . The Marines got the situation under control relatively quickly.

After the fighting ended, Washington had an interest in getting a strong, pro-Western figure at the top of Lebanon who was recognized as a leader by the Muslims. Fuad Schihab became the compromise candidate and was elected by the Lebanese parliament with a large majority. When he was inaugurated, he declared "The revolution has no winners and no losers".

Schihab offered to resign in 1960, after only two years of his six-year term, but was persuaded by influential politicians in parliament to stand in office until the end of 1964. After a coup attempt by the pro-Syrian "National Socialist Party" PSNS had to be put down again in 1961 , Schihab expanded the so-called "Deuxieme Bureau" (the domestic secret service), which in turn caused hostility from the political left around Kamal Jumblat as well from the " Kata'ib " (Falange) party led by Pierre Gemayel , both of whom accused him of wanting to establish a military regime in Lebanon.

Overall, the period 1958–1964, which was shaped by the politics of " Shihabism ", was one of the most successful phases in Lebanese history after independence, both economically and politically.

Life since 1964, political impact in Lebanon

In 1964, Schihab opposed a constitutional amendment that would have allowed him a second term, leaving the office to his political friend and companion, the writer and philosopher Charles Helou . In 1970, Schihab rejected the presidency again, declaring Lebanon virtually incapable of reform, too deeply entangled in the old feudal structures to create an efficient modern state. He supported the candidacy of the technocrat Elias Sarkis , a financial and economic expert , who lost to the za'im (chief) of the Maronite Frangie clan, Suleiman Frangieh , which ruled the Lebanese north . The pro-Syrian Frangieh immediately dismantled the internal security organs established by Shihab, which, in addition to the Cairo Agreement , which two years earlier had given the Palestinian militias unhindered freedom of operation in southern Lebanon, dealt a fatal blow to Lebanon's political stability. From 1973, the PLO became a relevant military force in Lebanon, and in 1975 civil war broke out, which was to last for 15 years.

Fuad Schihab did not live to see the beginning of the war, he died on April 25, 1973, almost exactly two years earlier, in Beirut. He was 71 years old.

Political legacy

His political friend Elias Sarkis could not be elected president until 1976. Although he performed the miracle of keeping a large part of the state institutions intact and the currency stable in the middle of the civil war (the Lebanese pound only lost massively in value after the end of his tenure in 1982), he was no longer able to take power from the now Land ruling various militias and foreign occupation forces.

General Michel Aoun , who reorganized the Lebanese army in the 1980s and was appointed interim prime minister in 1988, like Schihab in 1952, and held this post until 1990 without being recognized by the pro-Syrian parties that (for the The only time of the civil war) formed a counter-government, and returned after 15 years of exile after the Syrians withdrew in 2005, is seen by many Lebanese as the new Fuad Schihab. Certainly both have a lot in common, such as their popularity with the population of both religious groups. However, during the crises of 1958 and 1961, Schihab showed considerably more judgment and a realistic feeling for his own strengths and possibilities than Aoun during the anti-Syrian "war of liberation" from 1988 to 1990.

In 1997, various personalities from politics and public life founded the Fuad Schihab Foundation , which is committed to maintaining the political legacy of the statesman, whose ideas have gained new meaning in a phase of uncertainty. After the end of the Cold War in 1990, which also meant the end of the Lebanese civil war, during which the Lebanese had been presented with the bill for 15 years that they had not listened to the warnings from Schihab in the 1960s, it initially looked for one peaceful, prosperous future for Lebanon in a pacified Middle East, in which the cedar state was able to reconnect to the "heyday" of the Schihab presidency between 1958 and 1964. Unfortunately, this illusion was shattered with the murder of Prime Minister Hariri and the massive Israeli military attacks of 1996 and 2006 at the latest. These excesses of violence, to which thousands of Lebanese civilians fell victim, have unmistakably demonstrated to Lebanon that it has again become a passive theater of war in the new conflict between Western hegemony and the Islamist opposition in the Middle East because it failed again, as General did Since the fifties, Schihab has repeatedly called for a prayer wheel to subordinate the antagonistic forces in the country to an orderly state power based on the rule of law.

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personal data
SURNAME Shihab, Fuad
ALTERNATIVE NAMES فؤاد شهاب (Arabic); Shehab, Fuad; Chéhab, Fouad
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Lebanese President
DATE OF BIRTH March 19, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Beirut
DATE OF DEATH April 25, 1973
Place of death Beirut