Michel Aoun

President Michel Aoun (2015)

Michel Aoun ( Arabic ميشال عون Mischal Aun , DMG Mīšāl ʿAwn ; Born September 30, 1933 or February 18, 1935 in Haret Hreik , Greater Lebanon ) is a Lebanese officer and politician. He has been President of Lebanon since October 31, 2016; According to the National Pact of 1943,this office isalways occupied by a Maronite Christian .

Military training

After studying at the military academy in Beirut, he became an officer and in his career he rose to become the youngest commander in chief of the Lebanese army at the age of 48. He went through additional military training in Châlons-sur-Marne in France (1958), Fort Sill in Oklahoma in the USA (1966) and at the École supérieure de guerre in France (1978-80).

Role in the Lebanese Civil War 1980–1988

During the Lebanese civil war , he defended the Baabda presidential palace when the Israeli troops marched in in 1982 . After the Israeli invasion , he refused to cooperate with the Israeli commanders. In 1983 he defeated an association of militias at Souk el Gharb and became commander-in-chief of the Lebanese army that was newly established by the French, US and Italian peacekeeping forces.

The "Guerre de Liberation" 1988–1990

In September 1988 General Aoun was appointed Prime Minister by the outgoing President Amin Gemayel until a new election. This appointment was not without controversy, since the office of prime minister in the so-called National Pact of 1943 is intended for Sunnis . From a purely constitutional point of view, however, the president could actually have appointed a Christian, as there was a corresponding precedent with General Fuad Schihab in 1952 , when he, also as chief of the army, was appointed interim premier after the overthrow of Béchara el-Khoury and made possible the election of Camille Chamoun as president. Aoun was only recognized as prime minister in part of the country. The chief of the Shiite Brigade of the Army, General Jabr Lofti , like other Muslim leaders, refused entry into Aoun's cabinet. In contrast, however, the old Shiite defense minister Adel Osseiran (Adil Ussayran) Aoun assured his loyalty. In the course of the mass protests in favor of Aoun, up to 10,000 Christian and Muslim students and young people were around the presidential palace occupied by Aoun in Baabda, where they demonstrated peacefully for the general. Well-known artists and songwriters also performed at these rallies.

At the end of the civil war, Aoun's 12,000 to 15,000-man army fought against the 10,000 to 12,000-man Forces Libanaises , a Christian militia, and in 1989 declared war on Syria , which established itself as an occupying power. As a result, the Lebanese army split again after just a few years.

In the period from 1989 to 1990, especially in the Christian-controlled areas of Lebanon, there were mass protests, mostly young people, who grew up in the civil war, for the "general", who was also extremely popular at the time among Muslim Lebanese, and who shared the rhetoric of anti-communist civil movements in Eastern Europe with the the Palestinian " Intifada " cleverly linked. ("De Prague à Beyrouth - un seul combat - La Liberté: Alexandre Dubcek - Michel Aoun").

In the fall of 1990, however, neither Israel nor the United States , with whom Aoun had fallen out because he rejected the Taef agreement arranged by Saudi Arabia and the great powers, had any interest in the general's victory. They therefore did not intervene when Syria and its Lebanese allies stormed the presidential palace in Baabda in October 1990, officially heralding the end of the 15-year civil war.

During the Syrian offensive against Aoun, Dany Chamoun and his German wife Ingrid and their young children were also murdered. Chamoun, whose Tiger militia had been destroyed by the Kata'ib in 1980 , was the head of the National Liberal Party and president (since 1988) of the u. a. Founded by his father Camille Chamoun and the philosopher and politician Charles Malik , the Lebanese Front was one of the main political pillars of Aoun in the Christian camp, in contrast to the Frangié family, who were on the side of Syria, and the "Forces Libanaises". During the fighting, which was among the bloodiest of the civil war, around 5,000 people were killed.

Exile in France 1990–2005

After the Syrian assault on the presidential palace in Baabda in October 1990, Aoun went to the French embassy as a refugee and later exiled to France, and from there pursued a policy against the occupation of Lebanon by Syria until his return. In particular in the 1990s and until the end of his exile in 2005, Aoun was supported in the USA by right-wing and neoconservative politicians such as Newt Gingrich and Joseph Lieberman , the pioneers of George Bush’s policy towards Syria, Iran and Iraq from 2001 onwards “Democratization of the Arab world based on the American model” and was a welcome guest in Washington.

Political role in Lebanon from 2005 to 2016

After the withdrawal of the Syrian troops , which ended in April 2005, Aoun returned to Lebanon on May 7, 2005 from 15 years of exile. With his new party, the " Free Patriotic Movement " (CPL), he took part in the parliamentary elections. The CPL party basically pursues the goals that Aoun had already advocated during the Guerre de Liberation : a Lebanon independent of the influences of other powers. However, Aoun surprised friends and opponents with his alliance with formerly pro-Syrian forces ( Michel Murr ) and Hezbollah against the political bloc of the Hariri family. Aoun, who apparently sought a majority with these alliances to obtain the office of president in November 2007, which he finally achieved in 2016, is in contrast to his role model Fuad Schihab , who turned down the presidency in 1970 rather than getting involved in the political haggling allow.

Michel Aoun has been running Orange TV since July 2007 , which he used to exert political influence.

President since 2016

Michel Aoun has been President of Lebanon since October 31, 2016. To this end, he had concluded an alliance with the Shiite Hezbollah and had given Saad Hariri the votes he needed to become prime minister. After Hariri's resignation as a result of the protests in Lebanon in 2019 , Aoun will play a key role in the formation of a new government. Aoun believes that Lebanon must now switch from a denominational to a bourgeois state as the demonstrators demand a technocratic government .

Private

Michel Aoun has been married to Nadia El-Chami since 1968 and has three daughters.

literature

• Daniel Rondeau, Chronique du Liban rebelle 1988–1990 , Bernard Grasset, Paris 1991, ISBN 2-246-44641-4
• Jean-Paul Bourre, Génération Aoun - Vivre libre au Liban , Éditions Robert Laffont, Paris 1990, ISBN 2-221-06754-1
• Carole Dagher, Les paris du Géneral , Editions FMA, Beirut 1992
• Theodor Hanf , “Staatszfall - Der Weg zu die Dependency 1988–1990”, in: Ders., Coexistence in War - State Disintegration and Formation of a Nation in Lebanon , Nomos, Baden-Baden 1991, ISBN 3-7890-1972-0 , p . 704–753 (detailed description of Aoun's "Liberation War")

Web links

• “It's not spring, it's hell” - Interview with Aoun in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from January 11, 2013 on the Arab Spring .

Individual evidence

1. ^ An overview of life and work of newly elected President Aoun Lebanese Government
2. ↑ Portrait of Michel Aoun Munzinger people
3. ↑ Stephen Zunes: Congress and Lebanon , in: The Huffington Post , June 17th, 2008.
4. ↑ Lina Khatib: Image Politics in the Middle East: The Role of the Visual in Political Struggle, 2012, p. 28 ( limited preview in the Google book search)
5. ↑ Michel Aoun: Lebanese Parliament elects new president after two years , Der Spiegel , October 31, 2016
6. ↑ Lebanese President Aoun calls for 'non-sectarian' system. Al Jazeera, November 1, 2019, accessed November 3, 2019 . 
7. ↑ Biography on tayyar.org ( Memento from September 18, 2009 in the Internet Archive )