page_title: Mountain War (Lebanon)
section_title: Clashes with the Druze in the Chouf
hierarchical_section_title: Mountain War (Lebanon) / Background / Clashes with the Druze in the Chouf
caption_attribution_description: This is the building that was destroyed in October 1983 by a suicide truck bomber. That happened about a year after this photograph was made.
context_page_description: The Mountain War, also known as the War of the Mountain and Guerre de la Montagne in French, was a subconflict between the 1982–83 phase of the Lebanese Civil War and the 1984–89 phase of the Lebanese Civil War, which occurred at the mountainous Chouf District located south-east of the Lebanese Capital Beirut. It pitted the Christian Lebanese Forces militia and the official Lebanese Armed Forces against a coalition of anti-government Muslim leftist militias led by the Druze Progressive Socialist Party, backed by the Palestine Liberation Organization and Syria. Hostilities began when the LF and the LAF entered the predominantly Druze Chouf district to bring back the region under government control, only to be met with fierce resistance from local Druze militias and their allies. The PSP leader Walid Jumblatt's persistence to join the central government and his instigation of a wider opposition faction led to disintegration of the already fragile LAF and the eventual collapse of the government under President Amin Gemayel.
context_section_description: The first engagement between the Druze PSP/PLA and the LAF occurred on 14 July, when a Lebanese Army unit accompanying an IDF patrol was ambushed by Druze guerrillas. Fourteen Lebanese soldiers and two Druze militiamen were killed in the attack, and in response the artillery units of Jumblatt's PLA shelled on 18th, 20th, 22nd and 23rd the Christian-held neighborhoods of east Beirut (in which over 30 people were killed and 600 injured, mostly civilians) and U.S. Marines positions at Beirut International Airport in Khalde, wounding three Marines. In between, the Lebanese Army engaged for the first time between 15 and 17 July the Shia Amal militia in West Beirut over a dispute involving the eviction of Shi'ite squatters from a schoolhouse.
  On 23 July, Jumblatt announced the formation of a Syrian-backed coalition, the Lebanese National Salvation Front (LNSF) that rallied several Lebanese Muslim and Christian parties and militias opposed to 17 May Agreement, and fighting between the Druze PLA and LF and between the Druze and LAF, intensified during the month of August. Intense Druze PLA artillery shelling forced the Beirut International Airport to close between 10 and 16 August, and the Druze PSP/PLA leadership made explicit their opposition to the deployment of LAF units in the Chouf. The U.S. Marines compound came under further Druze PLA shell-fire on 28 August, this time killing two Marines, which led the Marines to retaliate with their own artillery, shelling the Druze positions in the Chouf with 155mm high-explosive rounds. This incident marked the beginning of the shooting war for the U.S. military forces in Lebanon. Although President Gemayel accused Syria of being behind the Druze shelling and threatened to respond accordingly, artillery duels between the LAF and Druze militias continued sporadically until a ceasefire came in effect on late August.
caption: The United States Marine Corps barracks at Beirut International Airport, 1982.
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