Samir Geagea

Samir Farid Geagea (سمير فريد جعجع, Lebanese Arabic:, also spelled Samir Ja'ja'; born 25 October 1952) is a Lebanese politician and former Resistance commander who has been leading the Lebanese Forces party and dissolved Lebanese Forces (Lebanese Resistance) since 1986.

Born in Ain al-Remaneh in Beirut with origins from Bsharri, Geagea joined the Kataeb Party in his early years.

Geagea was born in the Ain el-Remmeneh district in Beirut on 25 October 1952 to a modest Maronite family from the town of Bsharri in northern Lebanon.

His father, Farid Geagea was an adjutant in the Lebanese Army.

He attended "Ecole Bénilde" elementary and secondary school in Furn el-Chebek, which was a free private school.

With the aid of a scholarship from the Khalil Gibran association, he studied medicine at the American University of Beirut and then at Saint Joseph University.

After the outbreak of civil war in 1975, Geagea interrupted his four years studies at the American University of Beirut.

He was an active member of the right-wing Phalangist Party, which became the main Christian fighting force upon the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975.

He is married to MP Sethrida Geagea.

Geagea steadily rose through the ranks and led several operations at the request of Bachir Gemayel, then commander of the Phalangist Kataeb Regulatory Forces militia.

In June 1978, following the murder of a Phalangist party leader in the North Lebanon called Joud el Bayeh in a power struggle with former president Suleiman Frangieh, Bachir Gemayel ordered Geagea and Elie Hobeika to co-lead a unit to capture the suspects who were taking cover in Frangieh's mansion in Ehden.

The incident is known as Ehden massacre.

The attacking force (which somehow went past over dozens of Syrian army checkpoints) was met with resistance on the outskirts of Ehden where Geagea was hit.

He was transported to Beirut and admitted to Hôtel-Dieu hospital in Achrafieh, Beirut where ironically he was doing his internship.

His right hand was partially paralyzed and he never continued his education.

Meanwhile, the military operation resulted in the murder of Tony Frangieh and his family.

Geagea was later transported to a hospital in France.

He led the Northern Front in the Lebanese Forces from 1979 to 1984.

Geagea was appointed head of the Lebanese Forces' (LF) militia northern Front in the early 1980s, where he commanded around 1,500 battle-hardened soldiers, drawn mainly from his native town of Bsharri and other towns and villages in Northern Lebanon.

Geagea led his men in fierce battles against the Syrian Army in El-Koura, Qnat.

From 1982 to 1983, Geagea commanded the Lebanese Forces against Walid Jumblat's Progressive Socialist Party militia, the Palestinians, and the Syrians in a battle for control of the Chouf mountains in central Lebanon.

In March 1985, after the deterioration of the Christian political situation in the eastern regions after the assassination of the Lebanese Forces leader Bachir Gemayel, he led, jointly with Elie Hobeika and Karim Pakradouni, an uprising that led to control of the political situation without any bloodshed.

Following the Israeli withdrawal from Sidon on 15 February 1985 Geagea launched an LF offensive from the Christian villages East and North of Sidon targeting Ain al-Hilwa refugee camp as well as the city itself.

By 24 April his fighters were forced to retreat resulting in the exodus of some 60,000 Maronites from the villages of Iqlim al-Kharrub.

On January 15, 1986, Geagea led a movement against the tripartite agreement sponsored by Syria to become the commander of the Lebanese Forces after the overthrow of Elie Hobeika, the head of the executive body at the time and one of the signatories of the tripartite agreement.

Geagea initially supported the "War of Liberation" declared by disputed Prime Minister General Michel Aoun against the Syrian Army.

On January 31, 1990, General Aoun declared war on the Lebanese Forces led by Samir Geagea under the name "elimination war".

On January 24, 1990, Geagea was appointed a Minister of State in the first post-war cabinet, led by Prime Minister Omar Karami.

Geagea rejected the position due to the flagrant control of the cabinet by the Syrian regime.

On 1 April 1990, during the War of Liberation, Elias Hrawi’s government mandated Fleet Admiral Elie Hayek to take over LF barracks in the governorate.

This was part of an agreement between Samir Geagea and Hrawi whereby the army would militarily and politically take over 2/3 of the canton (the remaining 1/3 being the Northern governorate and Achrafieh in East Beirut), but the militia’s 10,000 strong force would remain intact for the time being.

Michel Aoun, however, had publicly stated that he would not accept the handoff or any alliance between the LF and the Hrawi government.

Led by Samir Geagea, the Lebanese Forces agreed to the Taif Accord peace agreement that ended the civil war and ceded control of its territory and weapons to the army in 1991.

In accordance with the agreement, he immediately dissolved the military and security arm of the Lebanese Forces and surrendered all its military assets to the Lebanese Army.

But as Beirut was under the control of the Syrian army, the party members were under a lot of pressure and the Syrian army was not going to withdraw as set out in the agreement.

On May 16, 1992, Geagea was again appointed as a minister in the Rashid El Solh cabinet, only to refuse it again for the same reasons.

In 1994, Geagea was arrested and put on trial for bombing a church and political killings in the war.

He denied the accusations and claimed he was the target of a political prosecution fabricated by the Syrian-Lebanese security apparatus.

Geagea spent 11 years in solitary confinement, the only war leader to go to jail in Lebanon, while others benefited from an amnesty and took cabinet posts.

Following the Cedar Revolution, and the subsequent withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon, a newly elected Lebanese Parliament voted to grant him amnesty on 18 July 2005.