Suleiman Frangieh: The president who witnessed the outbreak of Lebanon's civil war

He was succeeded by his grandson Kabalan Frangieh, who held the job until 1913. During this period, his son Suleiman Kabalan Frangieh was born on 15 June 1910.

Suleiman Frangieh studied at the Freir School in Tripoli and in Aintoura (Keserwan district). He began his career in the import-export business before venturing into politics via his brother Hamid, a respected nationalist and one of the founding fathers of Lebanon's independence from the French Mandate.

He walked in Hamid's shadow for years and only debuted in politics after his early withdrawal, succeeding him as MP for Zhgarta in 1960.

Suleiman learned plenty from Hamid, who had first entered parliament in 1934 and later joined the government of Riad al-Solh in 1944. He was a four-time foreign minister as well, but more importantly, he nominated himself for president in 1952 but lost to Camille Chamoun.

The Miziara Church Massacre of 1957

On 16 June 1957, a massacre was committed at the Miziara church in Zgharta, where 22 people were shot, 11 from the Doueihi family. This was just two weeks before parliamentary elections in Zghorta and fingers pointed to Suleiman Frangieh, who was forced to flee to Syria.

There he would meet a young air force pilot named Hafez al-Assad and they would establish a friendship that would last a lifetime.

Frangieh was amnestied in 1960 and returned to Lebanon. 

That August he was named minister of telecommunications in the cabinet of Prime Minister Saeb Salam during the presidency of Fouad Chehab, an iron-willed general-turned-politician who introduced sweeping reforms at home and shifted his country toward Egypt and its president, Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Both steps won Chehab popularity with Lebanese Muslims but created resentment within his native Maronite Christian community.

Many of its leaders argued that Arab affairs did not concern them, opting to distance themselves from the burning issue of the day: the Palestinian resistance, led at the time by Yasser Arafat, commander of the recently established Fateh Movement who would soon become chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). 

Fouad Chehab's successor Charles Helou was a mild-mannered man of letters, not given to extremes, under whom Frangieh served in different capacities.

This was under the government of Prime Minister Abdullah al-Yafi, an old-school Beiruti notable famed for his financial integrity and political impartiality. Yafi would appoint Frangieh to his next cabinet in October 1968, where he was named minister of public works, transportation, and education.

Yafi's successor Rashid Karami, who hailed from one of the old families of Tripoli, appointed Frangieh as minister of economy in November 1969.

A country on the verge of explosion

Lebanon at the time was on the verge of explosion, despite a solid decade of economic growth and prosperity.

As military regimes sprung up throughout the Middle East, Lebanon was the only country in the region with freedom of speech, a healthy banking sector, a vibrant press, and much sought-after prestigious institutions of higher education like the American University of Beirut (AUB).

Major capital had found its way to Lebanon after nationalisation laws were issued in Syria, first under Gamal Abdel Nasser and then under the Ba'ath rule, seizing companies, factories, and private banks.

Businessmen who managed to escape the socialist dragnet in Egypt and Syria found no better place to put their money than Lebanon, coined at the time as the "Switzerland of the East."

But there was another side to Lebanon — a darker side which few cared to notice. As wealth increased, so did poverty and need.

A poverty belt began to form around the Lebanese capital, with suburbs that were soon to be penetrated by Arafat and the PLO. Running through this "belt" were three Palestinian refugee camps (Tal al-Zaatar to the east, Sabra and Shatila and Bourj el-Barajneh westward) where money was plenty, and people were armed to the teeth.

As time went by, their weapons travelled outside of the camps and began showing up on the streets of Beirut, raising the ire of Lebanese nationalists — among whom was Suleiman Frangieh.

Frangieh's fears of a Palestinian take-over were shared by other Christian leaders like ex-president Camille Chamoun and Sheikh Pierre Gemayel, leader of the oldest and best-organised Christian party in Lebanon, the Lebanese Phalange.

It also put him at daggers-end with a broad coalition of Lebanese heavyweights who were backing the Palestinians, led by Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt.

Despite his alliance with Arafat, Jumblatt considered Frangieh as more moderate than his Christian allies, and it was his vote that tipped the balance in Frangieh's favour when he nominated himself for the presidency against central bank governor and Fouad Chehab-protégé Elias Sarkis.

Unfortunate timing

Suleiman Frangieh was elected president that summer and began his term on 23 September 1970. This was 18 years after his brother's failed bid at becoming president in 1952.

But the timing could not have been worse for the 60-year-old Lebanese leader. In 1972, over 15,000 state-employed schoolteachers went on strike, demanding better pay. Arms continued to pour into the Palestinian camps.

Meanwhile, in March 1973, the leader of the Amal movement, Musa al-Sadr, staged a major rally in Baalbak attended by over 50,000 of his followers, with the slogan "Weapons are the Decoration of Men." He too, like Kamal Jumblatt, was strongly affiliated with Arafat and the PLO.

President Frangieh, with support from his prime minister and old friend Saeb Salam, promised to stage a "revolt from above" before the one from below would break out and bring down the entire order.

They never did.

Palestinian provocations continued throughout the winter, resulting in steady clashes with the Lebanese army.

On the night of 9 April 1973, Israel launched an operation right in the heart of Beirut, sending special agents on speedboats into the city where they ambushed and killed three senior Palestinian leaders in their homes in the up-scale neighbourhood of Verdun.

The Verdun Massacre took Lebanon by storm, dividing the country like no time before.

This was a turning point where the Lebanese state felt compelled to choose between supporting or distancing themselves from the Palestinian fidayeen. Frangieh went for the second option and on 3 May 1973 he ordered the army to strike at Bourj el-Barajneh camp, less than a month after the Verdun Massacre.

That July, Christian arms emerged to counter those of the Palestinians, carried by the Lebanese Phalange in al-Dekwaneh.

On his part, Kamal Jumblatt accused the Christian parties of wanting to "liquidate" the resistance, advocating for the arming of Arafat's allies throughout the country. The more the Christians took a hardline stance on Arafat and the PLO, the more Muslim groups seemed to rally around and embrace them.

Frangieh and Hafez al-Assad

On 7 January 1974 Frangieh travelled to the border town of Chtoura to meet his old friend Hafez al-Assad. Frangieh came to power in September 1970, less than two months before al-Assad staged a coup in Damascus, becoming first prime minister, then president by March 1971.

Al-Assad's trip to Lebanon was the first for a Syrian president in 18 years, and the only time that he ever visited his neighbour country during his 30-year rule.

The two men signed a defence pact, and the Syrian president pledged to come to Lebanon's defence, should it be attacked by Israel over rising Palestinian militarism.

All hell breaks loose

The Lebanese civil war broke out on 13 April 1975 over the shooting of a bus carrying Palestinians in Ain El Remmaneh. It was attacked by militants from the Lebanese Phalange, triggering a cycle of violence that would grip the nation for the next 15 years.

While the pretext for the war was the Ain El Remmaneh shooting, its real reasons were far more deeply rooted in Lebanese history, and they included historic Muslim-Christian rivalries and tensions, which all flared up under the guise of who supports the Palestinians and who argues for a Christian Lebanon.

Arafat was only one angle to the multi-layered conflict, often used to simplify the struggle between Muslims and Christians of Lebanon.

Arms showed up – in astronomically high numbers – in the hands of all the major players in Lebanon, including Frangieh himself, who commanded a personal militia called al-Marada, headed by his son and perceived heir, Tony Frangieh. 

Tony was just 35 when the civil war broke out in 1975 and had succeeded his father in parliament since 1970.  As law and order collapsed, these militias took the law into their own hands, setting up roadblocks and checkpoints throughout the country.

Banks were stolen, markets razed, and ordinary citizens were shot for simply being members of another sect or religion. Lebanon collapsed into complete chaos and watching the scene unfold was the president of the republic.

Cabinet ministers began to resign, one-after-another, bringing down the cabinet of Rachid Solh in May 1975. Frangieh created a military government headed by retired General Nur al-Din al-Rifaii, with the hope that it would restore law and order — but it failed.

The Constitutional Document of 1976

On 7 February 1976, Frangieh travelled to Damascus to meet with President al-Assad. Upon returning to Lebanon, he announced the Constitutional Document on 14 February, initiating what was supposed to be a complete rehaul of the Lebanese political system.

The document confirmed what Lebanon had practised since 1943, dividing the presidency, premiership, and speakership of parliament among Maronites, Sunnis and Shiites respectively.

It also empowered the premiership at the expense of the presidency, mandating parliament, rather than the head of state, to name a prime minister while suggesting an equal division of parliamentary seats between Christians and Muslims.

It was flatly rejected by everybody who mattered in Lebanese politics.

Kamal Jumblatt went to Damascus for talks with al-Assad, who said to him: "Why are you escalating the fighting? The reforms in the Constitutional Document give you 95% of what you want. What else are you after?"

According to al-Assad's British biographer Patrick Seale, Jumblatt snapped: "To get rid of the Christians who have been on top of us for 140-years!"

Three months later, President Frangieh invited the Syrian army to enter Lebanon, with the hope that they would protect Christians and help bring down Yasser Arafat.

During the interim period between debunking the Constitutional Document and entry of the Syrian Army, a coup was staged in Beirut by Brigadier General Abdel Aziz al‐Ahdab, a native of Tripoli who occupied Lebanese Television in Tallet al-Khayyat, issuing a series of communique that commanded Frangieh to resign and called for early presidential elections.

The ill-planned coup was eventually foiled by other army units and failed to bring down Frangieh. What it did lead to was the abrupt collapse of the Lebanese army.

The Ehden Massacre of 1978

Like other Christians, Frangieh was concerned about the future of his community, explaining why he had originally worked with men like Camille Chamoun and Pierre Gemayel, co-founding the Lebanese Front, but would soon part ways after Gemayel flouted the notion of a Christian canton in Mount Lebanon.

The political disagreement would soon turn violent, triggering street battles between the militias of Frangieh's Marada and Gemayel's Phalange.  

In the pitch of night, 1,200 Phalangists attacked the Frangieh family mansion in Ehden on 13 June 1978, murdering the president's son Tony, along with his wife and infant daughter.

Without a doubt, it was the saddest day of President Frangieh's entire life, and it came less than two years after he left office in September 1976. The leadership of the Marada Movement would go to the president's second son Robert, and at a later stage of the conflict, to his grandson Suleiman, the current presidential candidate.

Post-presidency

Post-presidency Suleiman Frangieh continued to be active in Lebanon, despite his advanced age. In 1983, with Syrian backing, he allied himself with Rashid Karami, Walid Jumblatt, and Nabih Berri, creating the National Salvation Front (NSF) to bring down the 17 May 1983 Agreement with Israel, which had been initiated by his successor, Amin Gemayel.

That October he travelled to Geneva with Jumblatt and Karami to attend roundtable negotiations with their rivals, chaired by President Gemayel, which failed to end the violence.

When Amin Gemayel's term ended in 1988, the Syrians gave serious consideration to restoring Frangieh to the presidency, despite his old age (he was 78 by then). He didn't mind, of course, and actually announced his candidacy on 17 August 1988.

However, the Lebanese chamber failed to achieve a quorum and, consequently, the presidential seat went to army commander Michel Aoun, in the capacity of prime minister — a post to which he was appointed by President Gemayel, 15 minutes before his term ended in September 1988.

It was an illegal post given that by the 1943 National Agreement, the premiership ought to be held by a Sunni Muslim, not a Christian Maronite. Aoun would continue to occupy Baabda Palace, waging war against the Syrians who eventually overpowered and ejected him in October 1990.

President Suleiman Frangieh lived long enough to witness all of this. He died at the American University Hospital less than two years later on 23 July 1992 at the age of 82.

After a state funeral, he was laid to rest in Ehden, next to his son Tony.