Gemayel: Ruthless Idealist

Liberator. Warlord. Patriot. Power-mad. Those are some of the terms that Bashir Gemayel’s deeply riven countrymen have used to describe their President-elect during his years as a leader of the Christian militia forces. Part political idealist and part storm trooper, Gemayel, 34, has shown he will use whatever means necessary to achieve his nationalist goals. His supporters argue that Lebanon’s dire condition requires just that sort of toughness. Opponents claim that he is a fierce political animal dedicated to narrow sectarian aims.

Gemayel made his reputation for ruthlessness by the way he imposed his leadership over the diverse Christian militia groups during and after the 1975-76 civil war. In June 1978, Gemayel’s forces lashed out brutally against former President the Suleiman Franjieh, who was one of his chief political opponents among the Christian population. In a lightning raid on the Franjieh summer resort village of Ehden, Phalangist soldiers murdered the ex-President’s son and political heir Tony, along with his wife and two-year-old daughter. Gemayel coldly dismissed the episode as a “social revolt against feudalism.” And in July 1980, Gemayel’s troops virtually wiped out the Christian militia of ex-President Camille Chamoun’s National Liberal Party for refusing to accept the Phalangist line.

The baby-faced Gemayel consciously cultivates a macho image, often appearing in public in military fatigues, his feet squared in the “at ease” position, his arms folded across his chest. To his Phalangist followers, he projects the personal magnetism of a combat leader who has fought and suffered with them on the battlefields. After his family, he is most comfortable with his troops.

The President-elect’s father Pierre Gemayel was the founder and original leader of the Phalangist Party, a hardline, fervently nationalistic faction of the country’s large Maronite Christian community. The youngest of six children, Bashir Gemayel enthusiastically embraced his father’s conservative ideology, which was inspired by the nationalist movements of Francisco Franco and Benito Mussolini.

Gemayel fervently believes that the departure of all foreign forces is a prerequisite to solving his country’s problems and forging national unity. He was particularly anxious to see the Palestinians go. Says an Arab diplomat who has known Gemayel for many years: “He is absolutely obsessed with the Palestinians.”

Gemayel launched his military career when he was still a boy. During the brief age war of 1958, he officially joined the Phalangist militias at the age of eleven. He began regular military training two years later, and by 1969 was commander of a 100-man militia in his family’s native village of Bikfaya, east of Beirut. Educated by the Jesuits, Gemayel took a law degree at St. Joseph’s University of Beirut in 1971, but abandoned a short-lived law practice at the onset of Lebanon’s civil war. In 1976 he became commander in chief of the Phalangist militias when his predecessor was killed in action. Soon afterward, he took charge of the Lebanese Forces, the unified command of all the Christian militias.

The man who lives by the sword has very nearly died by it. In March 1979, a bomb was defused in his car. In February 1980, his 18-month-old daughter and three bodyguards were killed by a car bomb that did go off. Nonetheless, Gemayel continues to appear openly in public and insists on driving around alone, although he changes cars as often as ten times a day as a precaution. His security measures will almost certainly be tightened now that he has reached the pinnacle of national power: in a violent land, Bashir Gemayel has many enemies.