Lebanese Forces - Executive Command

The Lebanese Forces - Uprising or LFU ("Al-Quwwat al-Lubnaniyya -Intifada") was a Zahle-based split-off of the LF led by Elie Hobeika, who sought refuge in the Syrian-controlled Beka’a valley with his supporters after being ousted from east Beirut in January 1985. Renamed Lebanese Forces - Executive Command (LFEC) in 1986 and financed by Syria, Hobeika and its men conveyed little or no support at all from the Greek-Catholic citizens of Zahle, who preferred to lend their backing to the mainstream Lebanese Forces. Regarded as a pro-Syrian proxy faction, the LFEC became known for their violent behaviour and involvement in profitable criminal activities - Hobeika, after stealing and raping many of Zahle's women, run from its Headquarters at the Qadiri Hotel in central Zahle an illegal international telecommunications’ center and a drug-trafficking network in the Beka’a valley. The group is also suspected of being behind the March-July 1986 car bomb campaign that rocked both west and east Beirut, allegedly carried out in collusion with the Syrian intelligence services. During the 1988-89 “Liberation War” they fought alongside Druze and Palestinian militias against the Auonist troops at the second battle of Souk el-Garb, and later assisted Syrian forces in capturing Gen. Auon’s HQ at Ba’abda in October 1990, reportedly committing atrocities and engaging in loothing. By the late 1980s the LFEC numbered some 1000 men, mostly Maronites, of which 300 operated in west Beirut whilst the remainder were kept in reserve at Zahle. Apart from a few armed jeeps and gun-trucks, the militia had no armoured vehicles of their own but usually relied on the Syrian 82nd Armd Bde stationed at the Beka’a for armour and artillery support. Although the LFEC was forced to disband shortly after the end of the war, many of its former members provided a cadre to the private security company set up and headed by Hobeika until his death by a mysterious car bomb explosion in Beirut in January 2002.

"'References----"'• Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War Fisk, Robert (2001) ISBN 0-19-280130-9