Early expansion phase 1975–76 Tanzim
militiamen made their first public appearance in May 1973 at
Beirut during the
Bourj el-Barajneh clashes, when the
Lebanese Army High Command indirectly called them to assist regular troops in preventing
PLO guerrillas from entering Army-controlled areas. It was not until the
1975–76 civil war however, that the MoC/
Tanzim was faced with a situation where it had to carry out its own military operations to plug the gaps in the front. The discipline and organizational abilities displayed by the MoC at the opening months of the civil war, allowed the movement to engage in the formation of the Christian rightist parties and militias alliance that eventually would become in January 1976 the
Lebanese Front. Conversely, its 200-strong
Tanzim militia, led jointly by
Fawzi Mahfouz and
Obad Zouein, saw the heaviest street fighting ever in
East Beirut, including the
Battle of the Hotels and the sieges of
Karantina and
Tel al-Zaatar. At the later battle they reportedly contributed with 200 militiamen, allegedly Lebanese Army soldiers in disguise. The
Tanzim helped the
Lebanese Army in January 1976, by volunteering ostensibly to defend and protect more than half a dozen army barracks located in the Christian districts of
East Beirut, including the
Defense Ministry and Army HQ complex at
Yarze. Moreover, the movement saw this as an opportunity to expand its own military forces by attempting to incorporate defectors from the regular Army and seize weapons, equipment and vehicles from its barracks. Hence by March 1976 the
Tanzim ranks swelled to 1,500 armed men and women backed by a small fleet of
all-terrain vehicles or
technicals and some transport trucks fitted with
heavy machine-guns,
recoilless rifles and
Anti-Aircraft autocannons. During that same month, they were heavily committed in the battles for the
Mount Lebanon region, East Beirut, the
Matn District and the
Aley District against the
Lebanese National Movement/Joint Forces' (LNM-JF) and
Lebanese Arab Army's (LAA) "Spring offensive", being frequently employed as a "fire brigade" to fill gaps at the front, notably at
Achrafieh,
Tayyouneh-Lourdes,
Kahale,
Sin el Fil, and
Ayoun es-Simane to name but a few, sustaining heavy casualties in the process. Integrated into the
Lebanese Forces in 1977,
Tanzim's
militiamen later again played a key role in the eviction of the
Syrian Army out from the Christian-controlled
East Beirut in February 1978 during the
Hundred Days' War, where they manned the
Fayadieh-
Yarze sector of the
Green Line.
Reversals and re-organization 1976–79 Syria's military intervention in June 1976, and its tacit endorsement by
Georges Adwan (who combined the MoC's presidency with that of
secretary-general of the
Lebanese Front at the time), however, caused the movement to factionalize, splitting into a pro-Syrian element headed by Adwan himself and a radical anti-Syrian majority gathered around Mahfouz and Zouein. An attempted coup orchestrated by Adwan, in which the latter tried to take over the
Tanzim Dekwaneh's military HQ resulted in a deep rift within the organization. Both Mahfouz and Zouein, which opposed Adwan's position and behaviour, played a crucial role in preventing further internal bloodshed among the group member's (despite the fact that Adwan had murdered
Tony Khater, a fellow
Tanzim member) by regaining control of the movement, and ousting Adwan from the MoC/
Tanzim leadership board in late that year. Eventually, the movement's representation in the
Lebanese Forces' Command Council was subsequently bestowed by
Bachir Gemayel upon Mahfouz, with Zouein being appointed the new
Tanzims secretary-general, and in 1977 the new leadership prudently allowed the
Tanzim military wing to be absorbed into the Lebanese Forces. Although their numbers dwindled in the late 1970s, the MoC remained politically autonomous and managed to retain its position as one of the four partners in the
Lebanese Front. In 1979 the movement finally went on public as a
political party by declaring its manifesto at the inauguration ceremony of the
Tabrieh cedar memorial (
Arabic: غابد الشهيد |
Ghabet el-Chahid) in honor of its 135 martyrs, presenting itself under the title
Tanzim: Lebanese Resistance Movement – (T) LRM (
Arabic: التنظيم: حركة المقاومة اللبنانية |
Tanzim: Harakat al-Muqawama al-Lubnaniyyah) or
Tanzim: Mouvement de Resistance Libanais (T-MRL) in
French.
The later years 1979–1990 With the political demise of the
Lebanese Front in the late 1980s, the LRM began to take part in the foundation of the
Central Bureau of National Coordination – CBNC (
Arabic: المكتب المركزي للتنسيق الوطني |
Al-Maktab al-Markazi lit-Tansiq al-Watani), best known as
Bureau Central de Coordination Nationale (BCCN) in
French, an umbrella organization regrouping several small, predominantly Christian political groupings and associations that rallied in support for
General Michel Aoun's military interim government, with members of the
Tanzim Commanding Council
Roger Azzam and
Pierre Raffoul rising to the leadership of the new force. Their vocal opposition to the Syrian-sponsored
Taif Agreement led them to actively support Aoun's ill-fated
Liberation War in 1989-1990, which forced the movement to go underground for some time and threw most of its leaders into exile. Despite this, many former
Tanzim members chose to remain in Lebanon and continued to carry out their militancy within the BCCN throughout the 1990s, later helping in the establishment of the
Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), a wider anti-Syrian Christian political coalition led behind the scenes by the exiled Aoun. During the March 2005
Cedar Revolution, the BCCN-FPM alliance played once more an active part in the demonstrations that brought an end to the
Syrian military presence in Lebanon. Upon the return of Aoun from exile in April that year, the FPM was established as the official Aounist political party, an act that deprived the BCCN of its main ''raison d'être
. Inevitably, the movement factionalized, and within a few months it announced publicly its own dissolution. Both the LRM – which virtually ceased its activities by the mid-1990s – and the At-Tanzim'' militia no longer exist. ==The Tanzim Party==