Lebanon crisis 1958
The 1958 Lebanon crisis was a political crisis in Lebanon caused by political and religious conflicts. President Chamoun was accused of manipulating the election. He asked the US for help. The US 6th Fleet was marched. US troops landed in Beirut to support Chamoun. However, the Lebanese voted out of Chamoun's regime, his successor was General Fuad Schihab . Schihab rejected US military intervention. This forced the US to vacate the country again.
prehistory
Lebanon is characterized by its diversity of ethnic and religious communities and the associated tensions. In 1943 a “ national pact ” was concluded between the religious communities, which made denominationalism a political system. All religious communities were given the right to participate in state offices and authorities according to a fixed proportional key . The basis of the proportional representation was a census from 1932, from which the Maronites emerged as a majority, Shiites and Druze as a minority. Accordingly, the President of the Republic should always be a Maronite and the Prime Minister a Sunni. As part of their denominational affiliation, the religious communities also built political parties.
After the First Arab-Israeli War , Lebanon had to accept numerous Muslim refugees from Palestine. The Muslim population (Sunnis, Shiites) and that of the Druze increased more than the Christian population. Lebanon developed its economy and became an extensive city-state, Beirut a major city. While Maronites and Sunnis had both social climbers and still poor sections of the population, the Shiite farm workers from the south who had moved to the city formed a poor lower class, which was also not sufficiently represented politically. With these demographic and social changes, the political and confessional basis of Lebanon was also unbalanced.
Syria and Egypt proclaimed the United Arab Republic in 1958 . After the fall of the pro-Western head of government Faisal II in Iraq, Iraq was also considered another candidate under his new government, which paved the way for the formation of an Arab bloc. An Arab bloc questioned the subordination of the Arab world to Western interests. From the American point of view, there was a risk that it could also approach the Soviet Union.
1958 crisis
In 1958, the balance of power among the denominational parts of Lebanon collapsed. The opposition accused the Christian President Camille Chamoun of manipulating the election. He was destroying the national pact, in which a proportion of the denominations had been established. A civil war developed that lasted for several months. Chamoun asked for help from the United States and formally adopted the Eisenhower Doctrine .
Already in 1956, tensions between Lebanon and were Egypt emerged, had not canceled as the pro-Western President Chamoun diplomatic relations with the Western states, during the Suez crisis had attacked Egypt, and both Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Arab nationalists of Lebanon had against them. The Sunni Lebanese Prime Minister Rashid Karami supported Nasser in both 1956 and 1958.
Together with his two predecessors and allies Saeb Salam and Abdullah Aref al-Yafi , Karami led the "National Congress", which in 1957 met with Muslim dignitaries, Druze socialists , Lebanese communists , Maronite Chamoun opponents ( Frandschie Clan), the Maronite Patriarch and the Shiite Speaker of Parliament to form the "Front of the National Union" against Chamoun. While the army remained neutral, the front brought three quarters of the country under its control. The 159 days of heavy fighting between the supporters of Chamoun and the supporters of the Arab nationalists claimed around 4,000 lives among the Lebanese population. Other sources speak of 2,500 fatalities.
US military intervention
President Dwight D. Eisenhower responded on July 15, 1958 by authorizing Operation Blue Bat . The aim of the operation was to consolidate the pro-western Lebanese government against internal opposition and threats from Syria and the United Arab Republic . The plan was to first secure the airport and port to the south of the city and finally to occupy Beirut. The operation involved approximately 14,000 men, 8,509 of whom were US Army soldiers . These included a reinforced combat group from the 24th US Infantry Division stationed in West Germany and 5,670 soldiers from the US Marine Corps . During the intervention, one US soldier was killed by a sniper and three others died in accidents. The US troops did not intervene in the civil war but, after filling strategically important positions, brokered a peace solution between the parties behind the scenes.
President Eisenhower sent diplomat Robert D. Murphy to Lebanon as his personal representative. After the crisis ended in 1958, Rashid Karami formed a national reconciliation cabinet. President Chamoun was replaced by the previous commander-in-chief of the Lebanese army, General Fuad Schihab , whose army had remained neutral in the conflict and on whom all parliamentary groups were therefore able to agree. Shihab was regarded as a (Maronite) descendant of the (Druze-Muslim) Ottoman emirs of Lebanon among Lebanese of all religions and denominations. After his election as president, he declared: "The revolution has no winners and no losers." Eisenhower also accepted Schihab, who had fought at his side during the Second World War in North Africa and Sicily. By 1964, Fuad Schihab succeeded in facilitating a period of peace and prosperity never seen again in Lebanese history with his policy of Schihabism modeled on Charles de Gaulle .
literature
Books
- Mohammed Shafi Agwani: The Lebanese Crisis, 1958: A Documentary Study , 1965.
- Erika G. Alin: The United States and the 1958 Lebanon Crisis, American Intervention in the Middle East , 1994.
- Ulrich H. Brunnhuber: The Lebanon Crisis 1958. US intervention under the sign of the Eisenhower Doctrine? , Hamburg 1997. (German)
- Pierrick el Gammal: Politique intérieure et politique extérieure au Liban de 1958 à 1961 de Camille Chamoun à Fouad Chehab , Sorbonne University (Paris), 1991.
- Irene L. Gendzier: Notes from the Minefield: United States Intervention in Lebanon and the Middle East 1945-1958 , 1997
- Albert Hourani: The history of the Arab peoples , Frankfurt 1992, pp. 515-519
- Agnes G. Korbani: US Intervention in Lebanon, 1958 - 1982: presidential decisionmaking , 1991.
- Nawaf A. Salam: L'insurrection de 1958 au Liban , Sorbonne University (Paris), 1979.
- Jack Schulimson: Marines in Lebanon 1958 , Historical Branch, G-3 Division, Headquarters, US Marine Corps, Washington, Department of the Navy, United States Marines Corps, 1966.
- Edouard de Tinguy: Les Etats-Unis et le Liban (1957-1961) . Institute of Political Studies (Paris), 2005.
- Salim Yaqub: Containing Arab Nationalism, The Eisenhower Doctrine and the Middle East , 2003.
- US Army Center for Military History, The Lebanon Operation
items
- Fawaz A. Gerges: The Lebanese Crisis of 1958: The Risks of Inflated Self-Importance , Beirut Review, 1993, pp. 83-113.
- David W. Lesch: Prelude to the 1958 American Intervention in Lebanon , Mediterranean Quarterly, vol. 7, n ° 3, 1996, pp. 87-108.
- Ritchie Ovendale: Great Britain and the Anglo-American Invasion of Jordan and Lebanon in 1958 , The International History Review, vol. XVI, n ° 2, 1994, pp. 284-304.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Rathmann, page 56
- ↑ Lothar Rathmann (ed.): History of the Arabs - From the beginnings to the present , Volume 6, page 56ff. Akademie-Verlag Berlin 1983
- ↑ a b Theodor Hanf, Coexistence in War: Nomos, Baden-Baden, 1990, ISBN 3-7890-1972-0 , p. 156 f.