Guardians of The Cedars - Military Structure and Organization

Military Structure and Organization

The LRP militia began to be quietly raised in 1974 by Sakr in his capacity as president of the Party, though it was only in September 1975 when they made their existence public in an official communiqué as the Guardians of the Cedars. Headquartered at the main LRP party’ Offices in Ashrafieh and personally commanded by Sakr, the GoC initially numbered some 500-1,000 men and women trained by Kayrouz Baraket, a young Lebanese Army officer, and equipped with obsolete firearms purchased on the black market. Although the membership of the GoC was exclusively Maronite, Sakr allegedly maintained a loyal personal bodyguard made up of Lebanese Shia Muslims, but little is known about them. The collapse of the Lebanese Army in January 1976 allowed Sakr to recruit army deserters and seize some heavy equipment from its barracks and Internal Security Forces (ISF) Police stations, swelling the GoC ranks to 3,000-6,000 uniformed militiamen armed with modern small-arms. They were backed by a mechanized force consisting of a single M50 Super Sherman medium tank, a few M42 Dusters and Chaimite V200 armoured cars backed by gun-trucks (Land-Rovers, Toyota Land Cruisers, GMC and Ford light pick-ups, plus US M35A2 2-1/2 ton cargo trucks) fitted with heavy machine guns (HMGs), recoilless rifles, and a few anti-aircraft autocannons.

Besides being provided with funds and training by the Kataeb Party and the Al-Tanzim, the Guardians also claimed to have received direct aid from Israel as early as 1974. They were the only faction of the Lebanese Front that never received any military aid from Syria, which is hardly surprising, given their strong anti-Syrian views.

In stark contrast to other Christian factions, the LRP/GoC despised any illegal activities such as drug-trafficking, extortion or looting, and their leader Sakr never sought to establish an autonomous personal fiefdom. Although the Guardians’ did not center their military operations on ‘turf’, they did maintained strongholds at the Maronite quarters of East Beirut, the adjacent Metn (Laqluk, near Akoura) region, the Batroun district (Tannourine), the eastern Keserwan District (Ayoun es-Simane) and the Jabal Amel region (Kfar-Fallus, Jezzine, Marjayoun, Qlayaa, Ain Ebel, and Rumeish). In May 1979 they even clashed with the NLP Tigers’ militia in Beirut for control of the Fern el-Shebak and Ain el-Rammaneh districts, and for the town of Akoura in the Metn.