Other foreign powers
Besides Syria and Israel, a many other states were active in Lebanon. Most Arab states tried to counter the Syrian influence one way or another and therefore supported one or more parties. Egypt supported the Maronites to weaken both Syria and the Palestinians because they objected to the peace negotiations between Egypt and Israel. When it became clear that the Syrians were going to intervene in favour of the Maronites, President Sadat sent the PLA brigade stationed in Egypt to help the Palestinians against Syria.
The conservative Arab oil states of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates supported the Maronites in what they saw as a struggle between the right and the international left. After the massacres by the Maronite militias, this support dried up however.
89 Saudi Arabia would later play a very important role in peace negotiations, for instance, at the conference in Riyadh where the decision was taken to send the Arab Deterrent Force and especially later at the negotiations about the Ta’if Treaty which would end the civil war.
The most important Arab sponsors besides Syria were Iraq and Libya. Iraq supported the ALF and the pro-Iraqi Baath plus the National Movement as a whole. Libya mainly supported the PFLP and al-Murabitun (MIN).
Iran began supporting all kinds of Palestinian and Lebanese movements after its revolution, particularly Hezbollah and Tawhid. After the Israeli invasion, Iran sent a few hundred members of its Revolutionary Guards to the Bekaa Valley.
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Besides their indirect presence in Lebanon, troops from Arab states, among them Libya and Sudan, were represented in the ADF. The result was that a number of regional conflicts were fought in Lebanon. The fighting between the ALF and Amal, for instance, was connected to the Iraqi-Iranian war and Amal came to blows with al-Murabitun as well over the disappearance of Imam Musa al-Sadr in Libya. Pro-Syrian and pro-Iraqi organisations also clashed regularly. There was even an armed confrontation between Libyan and Sudanese troops of the ADF after the president of Sudan accused Libya of involvement in an attempted coup against him.
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The United States mostly played a part in the background at first, through its support to Israel and by mediation. From 1983 onward, the US started meddling in Lebanon directly. After the massacres in Sabra and Shatila another Multi National Force was sent to west Beirut. At the same time, the Americans were setting up a new Lebanese army. In September, US ships, among them the aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower and the battleship USS New Jersey, took up positions near the Lebanese shores.
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Although the Americans claimed neutrality, they sided with the Maronites in the struggle between Maronites and Druze in the Shouf Mountains, with the battleship USS New Jersey carrying out heavy bombardments against Druze and Syrian positions. The response came in the form of bomb attacks against US targets in Lebanon. On 24 October 1983, 241 US Marines were killed in a bomb attack against their headquarters.
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In February of 1984, the American troops were withdrawn.
After the US withdrawal, Syria and Israel were left as the most important foreign powers in Lebanon. The struggle for dominance between those two powers will be discussed in the next chapter as this is closely connected to the rise of sectarian and fundamentalist parties among the Muslim population.