Hugo Blanco

_— The new cease fire in the Lebanon will not solve the conflict. U:S. imperialism will not allow it to.

The article below by Phil Hearse is taken from the September 30th British weekly ‘Socialist Action’.

American intervention in the Lebanon marks a new stage in the struggle between the forces of imperialist-backed reaction and the forces of Arab nationalism which has been underway in that country for 25 years. But without any doubt it is one of the most complex struggles anywhere.

In Lebanon today there are five foreign armies, the P.L.O., the Lebanese Army and dozens of different militias involved in the struggle. If the most dramatic aspect of the fight today is the escalating involyment of US imperialism, then the war is overlaid with numerous conflicts. In order to disentangle these disputes we have to look at aspects of Lebanon's history.

Avconvenient starting point ts the revolt by the Druze people in 1958, Lebanon had been dominated by Christian interests:the constant struggle between Muslims and the Christian communities derived from this basic fact of Christian dominance. Lebanon itself is an artifical creation of imperialism;the product of the French British carve up of Syria in 1919.

Since the middle ages the area has been a _ patchwork of conflicting religious communities. The Maronite Christians preserved their identity and exclusiveness by denying that they were Arabs. The Maronites weirdly claim to be descendents of the Phoenicians. Ever since the successive invasions of the Levant by the Crusaders, they looked to the West, and in the 19th and 20th centuries to Western imperialism, for protection and support.

For centuries the region around Mount Lebanon (the ‘Mountain’ and the mythical homeland of the Maronites), was dominated by Druze landlords and chieftans. The Maronites, mainly peasant farmers and labourers, were liberated by the French intervention in 1863. from Druze domination, Three main communities co-exist in Lebanon today Christians, Sunni Muslims and Shi'a Muslims. The Druze sect which dominates the Chouf mountains is an exclusive order of ‘initiates’ - itself a_ split from tt: Shi’a branch of Islam on for mercy ~ en Since the foundation of independent Lebanon in 1943 the confessional character of the state has been enshrined in the constitution. Each community with a certain number of seats in the parliament, the President a Christian, the vice-president a Sunni Muslim.

The Shi'ites, as relative late comers to the region, have shared power less despite their domination of the southern part of the country. At various times the Christians have attempted to exploit the divisions between Sunni and Shi’ites Muslims today with less success, although there are still Shi'ite Muslims in the Christian militia of Saad Haddad.

However the constitutional confessionalism of the state failed to prevent conflict between the Christian rulers and the dispossessed Druze and Muslim peoples.

The conflict between them was overlaid in the early 1970s by the arrival in Lebanon of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian fighters and _ refugees, evicted from Jordon after ‘Black September’ in 1970. Although the PLO headquarters were formally in Cairo, Lebanon was a ‘front line’ state from which [stael could be attacked.

In 1973 the Israelis mounted commando = attacks on the PLO offices in Beirut, in which three top leaders of the PLO were killed. Muslims and Palestinians mounted huge aemonstrations against the Christian government of Sleiman Franjiech, accusing the government of complicity with the Israeli attacks. “ The scene was being set for civil war, which duly broke out in 1975 In the mid-1970s the Phalange party of Pierre Gemayel with its ruthless militia, became the predominant Christian force. In the 1975-6 civil war the Christian militias fought the Lebanese National Movement, an alliance of the Druze Progressive Socialist Party led by Kamal Jumblatt, the Palestinians, the Nasserist militias, the Lebanese Communist Party and numerious other left and nationalist forces.

Kamal Jumblatt In this struggle, despite terrrible Christian massacres of Palestinians and Muslims, the National Movement got the upper hand. Without doubt, in 1976 the Christians were on the verge of an_ historic defeat It was prevented by the intervention of the Svrian army. dressed up as the ‘Arab peace keeping force’.

The Syrians above all wanted a government in Lebanon under its own patronage - the Nationalist Movement and the Palestinians represented a force too much outside its control. While in 1976 _—itthe Christians saw the Syrians as allies (Franjieh has remained their ally to this day), this alliance proved temporary and fragile.

The Phalangist objective remained the establishment of a-state dominated by themselves. Their opportunity came with the Israeli invasion, which propelled Bashir Gemayel leader of the Phalangist militia, to the presidency. power in that country. brought against him. of the Fourth International. 1)President F. Belande Terry, Casa de Gobierno, Lima, Peru. 2)Presidente, Camera de Deputadors, Lima, Peru.

Copies to Socialist Republic. CIARAN MAC NAMIDHE., veruvian revolutionist Hugo Blanco - an elected member of Perus parliament is once again the victim of the reactionary regime which holds On August 29: Aanco was suspended from parliament on the pretext that he accused General Clemente Noel, military commander of the Ayacucho region, of being an assassin. General Noel has been responsible for widespread execution of peasants and the bombing of villages. So notorious are Noel’s crimes that at the beginning of this year, the prosecutor of Ayacucho province demanded that charges be Blanco’s suspension is contrary to the rules of the Peruvian parliament itself as well as being a denial of his democratic rights. Blanco believes it is motivated by the regime’s desire to crush all democratic organisations including Partido Revolucionario de los trabajadores |Revolutionary Workers Party] of which Blanco is a member. The PRT is the Peruvian Section One of the most alarming aspects of this affair is that Blanco suspension deprives him of parliamentary immunity. A target of many assassination: attempts Blanco was sehtenced to 25 years imprisonment in 1963 as a leader of the Quechua Indians. He was freed in 1970 following an international defence campaign organised by the Fourth International.

Telegrams and letters of protest are necessary and urgent. They should be sent to Hugo Blanco Daniel Ortega, Sandinista leader of the Nicaraguan revolutionary government bitterly denounced United States war moves in Central America when he addressed the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, September 27. By arming, equipping, and bankrolling counter-revolutionaries based in Honduras the US is_ effectively waging war on Nicaragua. Ortega condemned US strategy as “military aggression, more economic.aggression, more slander campaigns, more attempts to isolate us internationally".

The Sandinista leader explained that the defeat of the Nicaraguan revolution would mean “crushing the possibilities of change in Central America and would maintain the situation of injustice and lack of freedom".

SOCIALIST REPUBLIC aor Photomontage: CATH TATE Paper of PEOPLES’ DEMO Army ‘oo ne

----- pull-quotes -----

for Lebanon The massacre at Karatina, 1976. Muslim woman begs hooded Phalange militia man