40 years on: US Marine Barrack Bombing in Beirut

US Special Envoy Philip Habib brokered an agreement to send 800 American troops to Beirut to monitor the withdrawal of the Palestinians. They arrived on 25 August 1982, with a mandate to complete their mission within 30 days.

However, the withdrawal was complete by the first week of September, and President Reagan recalled his troops on 10 September 1982. Four days later, hell broke loose with the assassination of President Bashir Gemayel, followed two days later by the horrendous Sabra and Shatila massacre, committed in retaliation by the Christian forces of Elie Hobeika.

Regan held a series of meetings at the White House between 18-20 September, where it was decided to re-send the marines to Beirut "with the mission of enabling the Lebanese government to restore full sovereignty over its capital; the essential precondition for extending its control over the entire country."

Celebrated US journalist Thomas Friedman, who was covering the Lebanon war for The New York Times, attributes Reagan's decision to guilt, arguing that Gemayel wouldn't have been killed if the Americans had not withdrawn so quickly from Beirut, Sabra & Shatila might have never happened.

One thousand five hundred American soldiers eventually returned to Lebanon, and Gemayel's brother and successor Amin invited them to train the Lebanese Army. Training in fact began in December 1982, greatly upsetting Gemayel's opponents, who included a wide array of Lebanese heavyweights like Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and Shiite leader Nabih Berri, then-commander of the Amal Movement.

The first message to Amin Gemayel came on 18 April 1983, when a suicide bomber drove his Chevrolet pickup truck into the front door of the US Embassy, killing more than 60 people.

Undaunted, Gemayel went ahead with his talks with the Americans, which accumulated with the lopsided 17 May 1983 peace agreement with Israel.

That turned what remained of Lebanon's political elite against him, with his prime minister Shafiq al-Wazzan commenting to a foreign dignitary: "I want you to know that this is the saddest day in my life. This is not an honourable agreement."

Islamic Jihad

Officially the Marine Bombing was claimed by an obscure group calling itself Islamic Jihad Organisation (IJO). A Shiite militia in the complex web of the Lebanese Civil War, it is often described as a precursor to Hezbollah.

Formed possibly in early 1983, presumably by Imad Mughnieh (who would soon become one of the founders of Hezbollah), it had recruited an Iranian national to drive the car into the Marine building, named Ismail Ascari.

From its base in Baalbak, the Islamist group was allegedly founded by Iran to expel the Americans and Israelis from Lebanon. This was four years into the Islamic Revolution, almost mid-way into the reign of Ayatollah Ruhollah al-Khomeini.

Shortly after the attack, it sent a communique to the Beirut office of Agence France Press, which read:

We are the soldiers of God. We are neither Iranians, Syrian, nor Palestinians, but Muslims who follow the precepts of the Quran. We said after that (the April embassy bombing) that we would strike more violently. Now they understand with what they are dealing. Violence will remain our only way.

Iranian officials have longed denied any connection to the group, and so did Hezbollah. At the same time, The New York Times doubted that it actually existed, writing: "Lebanese police sources, Western intelligence sources, Israeli Government sources and leading Shiite Muslim religious leaders in Beirut are all convinced that there is no such thing as Islamic Jihad."

IJO would take credit for a string of terrorist attacks in Lebanon and beyond, including the December 1983 bombings in Kuwait that targeted two embassies and the airport, and the 18 January 1984 assassination of American University of Beirut president Malcolm Kerr. The last operation claimed by IJO was in March 1992, striking at the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, nine years after the Marine Bombings.

Retaliation

In retaliation to the suicide attack on 23 October 1983, the French fired missiles against Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps positions in the Bekka Valley and Reagan wanted to do the same in Baalbak, under the advice of Vice-President Bush, State Secretary George Shultz, and National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane.

All of them were convinced that Iran was behind the Marine attack.

Defence Secretary Caspar Weinberger argued otherwise, however, claiming that it wasn't entirely certain to him that Iran had ordered the attacks.

Many years later, he would appear on a Frontline interview in September 2001, saying: "We still do not have the actual knowledge of who did the bombing of the Marine barracks at the Beirut Airport, and we certainly didn't then."

Weinberger claimed this lack of certainty was why the US response to the Marine Bombing came so late and feeble. The USS New Jersey battleship had arrived on the shores of Beirut in September 1983 but did not part in any combat operations until 14 December 1983, firing 11 projectiles towards Druze and Shiite targets in Beirut.

Aircraft from the USSF John F. Kenney came next, striking at Syrian targets in Lebanon, before USS New Jersey fired, over a nine-hour period, 300 shells against additional targets in the Bekka Valley.

But that pretty much is where the US retaliation ended. By February 1984, what remained of the Marines had begun withdrawing from Lebanon, due mainly to waning congressional support for the Lebanon mission.

Shortly after the Marine Bombings, the Islamic Jihad Organisation threatened that the "earth would tremble" unless the Americans and French left Lebanon by New Year's Day, 1984. The withdrawal was completed on 26 February 1984, two months after the Islamic Jihad's deadline had passed.