Dany Chamoun

Dany Chamoun (Arabic: داني شمعون) (August 26, 1934 – October 21, 1990) was a prominent Lebanese politician. A Maronite Christian and the younger son of former President Camille Chamoun, Dany Chamoun was also a politician in his own right, and was known for his opposition to the occupation of Lebanese territory by foreign forces, whether Syrian or Israeli.

Biography
Dany Chamoun was born at Deir el-Qamar. In 1975, he was made Secretary of Defense of the National Liberal Party, which was led by his father, and founded the Tigers Militia (Noumour el Ahrar in Arabic, because the middle name of his father was Nemr, which means tiger), which played a major role in the early years of the Lebanese Civil War before being eliminated as a military force in 1980 by a rival Christian militia, the Lebanese Forces, led by Bachir Gemayel. For a time, Chamoun and Gemayel became bitter rivals, and Chamoun moved his office to Muslim-dominated West Beirut. He temporarily quit politics.
Chamoun was a supporter of the nationalist Christian cause at heart, however, and he soon returned to the cause to which he, like his father, had dedicated his life. He served as General Secretary of the National Liberal Party from 1983 to 1985, when he replaced his father as the party leader. In 1988, he became President of the Lebanese Front - a coalition of nationalist and mainly Christian parties and politicians that his father had helped to found. The same year, he announced his candidacy for the Presidency of Lebanon to succeed Amine Gemayel (Bachir's brother), but Syria (which by this time occupied some 70 percent of Lebanese territory) vetoed his candidacy.
Gemayel's term expired on 23 September 1988, without the election of a successor. Chamoun declared his strong support for General Michel Aoun, who had been appointed by the outgoing President to lead an interim administration and went on to lead one of two rival governments that contended for power over the next two years. He strongly opposed the Taif Agreement, which not only gave a greater share of power to the Muslim community than they had enjoyed previously, but more seriously, in Chamoun's opinion, formalized what he saw as the master-servant relationship between Syria and Lebanon, and refused to recognize the new government of President Elias Hrawi, who was elected under the Taif Agreement.

Assassination
On 21 October 1990, Chamoun, along with his German-born second wife Ingrid, and his two sons, Tarek (7) and Julian (5), were assassinated. Tamara Chamoun was able to hide in a closet with the housemaid during the assassination. In what is qualified as an "unfair trial" by several organizations such as Amnesty International, Samir Geagea, a rival Christian leader, was subsequently tried for the murder. The fairness of the trial was challenged by Chamoun's brother, Dory (Dany's older brother who replaced him as leader of the National Liberal Party) declared publicly on 25 April 2005 that he believed Geagea to be innocent and demanded a new investigation to uncover the real assassins, whom he suspected of being Syrian agents.
Dany Chamoun has two surviving daughters, one of whom (Tracy) is a prominent human rights activist, who still accuses Geagea of having slaughtered her family.

Camille Nimr Chamoun

Camille Nimr Chamoun (Arabic: كميل نمر شمعون, Kamīl Sham'ūn) (b. April 3, 1900 - d. August 7, 1987) was President of Lebanon from 1952 to 1958, and one of the country's main Christian leaders during most of the Lebanese Civil War (1975 - 1990).

Early years
Camille Nimr Chamoun was born at Deir el-Qamar on 3 April 1900, into a prominent Maronite Christian family. He was educated in France and became a lawyer. He was first elected to the Lebanese parliament in 1934, and was reelected in 1937 and 1943. A champion of independence from France, he was arrested on 11 November 1943, and was imprisoned in Rashaïa castle, where he was held for eleven days, along with Bishara el-Khoury and Riad el-Solh, who were to become the first President and Prime Minister, respectively, of the new republic. Massive public protests led to their release on 22 November, which has since been celebrated as the Lebanese Independence Day.
Chamoun was reelected to parliament, now called the National Assembly, in 1947 and 1951. He was frequently absent, however, as he served as ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1944 to 1946, and as ambassor to the United Nations thereafter.

Revolt of 1958
When President Bishara el-Khoury was forced to resign amid corruption allegations in 1952, Chamoun was elected to replace him. Near the end of his term, Pan-Arabists and other groups backed by Nasser, with considerable support in Lebanon's politically disadvantaged Muslim community, attempted to overthrow Chamoun's government in June 1958 after Chamoun tried to illegally seek another term as president. Chamoun appealed to the United States for help under the new Eisenhower Doctrine, and American marines landed in Beirut. The revolt was squashed, but to appease Muslim anger, Gen. Fuad Chehab who although Christian enjoyed considerable popularity in the Muslim community, was elected to succeed Chamoun. The American diplomat Robert D. Murphy, sent to Lebanon as personal representative of President Eisenhower, played a significant role in persuading Chamoun to resign and Chehab to take his place.

Founding the NLP

On his retirement from the presidency, Chamoun founded the National Liberal Party (al-Ahrar). As the leader of this party, Chamoun was elected to the National Assembly again in 1960, much to the consternation of President Chehab. He was defeated in 1964, due to changes to the boundaries of his electoral district, which he and his supporters protested as deliberate gerrymandering. He was reelected to the National Assembly, however, in 1968, and again in 1972 - Lebanon's last parliamentary election held in his lifetime. Following the election of 1968, the National Liberal Party held 11 seats out of 99, becoming the largest single party in the notoriously fractured National Assembly. It was the only political party to elect representatives from all of Lebanon's major religious confessions.

During the Civil War
In the 1970s and 1980s, Chamoun served in a variety of portfolios in the Cabinet. This was during the Lebanese Civil War (1975-90), in which Chamoun and the NLP participated through the party's militia, the "Tigers" (in Arabic, nimr means tiger). In the early stages of the war, he helped found the Lebanese Front, a coalition of mostly Christian politicians and parties, whose united militia - dominated by the Kataeb Party - became known as the Lebanese Forces (LF). Chamoun was chairman of the Front in 1976-78.
Though initially aligned with Syria, and inviting its army to intervene against the Muslim-leftist Lebanese National Movement (LNM) and its Palestinian allies in 1976, Chamoun then gravitated towards opposition to the Syrian presence. In 1980, the NLP's Tigers militia was virtually destroyed by a surprise attack from Chamoun's Christian rival, Bashir Gemayel, and the LF forces under his command. After the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, Chamoun decided to enter a tactical cooperation with Israel, in order to oppose what he considered a Syrian occupation.

[edit] Death and legacy
In 1984, Chamoun agreed to join the National Unity government as Deputy Prime Minister, a post he held until his death in Beirut on 7 August 1987, at the age of 87. He is remembered as one of the main Christian nationalist leaders, and one of the last significant figures of Lebanon's pre-war generation of politicians, whose political influence was eclipsed during the war by that of younger militia commanders and warlords.
Camille Chamoun was survived by his two sons, Dany and Dory, both of whom followed in his footsteps as NLP leaders and politicians in their own right.

Timeline
1900: Born in Deir el-Qamar.
1934: Elected to the National Assembly.
1944: Lebanon's envoy to the United Kingdom.
1946: Chief Lebanese representative to the United Nations.
1952: Lebanese President after Bishara el-Khoury has to resign after corruption charges
1958, June: Calls for American support in a Communist-inspired Muslim uprising during the Lebanon Crisis
1958, September: steps down in favor of Fuad Chehab
1974: Helps to found the Lebanese Front
1984: Joins the national unity government.
1987: August 7: Dies in Beirut.

Who are the Ahrar.

The National Liberal Party (NLP, Arabic: حزب الوطنيين الأحرار , literally Hizbu-l-waTaniyyīni-l-aHrār) is a political party in Lebanon, established by President Camille Chamoun in 1958. It is now under the leadership of Dory Chamoun, his son.
The party has adopted a hard line in regard to the preservation of Lebanese independence, and to the safeguard of the distinctive liberal practices in Lebanon with respect to freedom of expression and opinion and religious freedoms. Like most Lebanese political organization, it has a sectarian basis; the NLP is mainly supported by Christians. (For more information on this, see Demographics of Lebanon)
In 1968, the party joined The Helf Alliance formed with the two other big mainly Christian parties in Lebanon: the Kataeb of Pierre Gemayel, and National Bloc of Raymond Eddé. During the Lebanese Civil War of 1975-90, the NLP was aligned with the mainly Maronite Christian alliance who fought the Lebanese National Movement (LNM). It had its own armed militia, the Tigers. In 1976, the NLP joined with the Kataeb Party (Phalange) and the Lebanese Renewal Party (LRP) to form the Lebanese Front, a political coalition. This was parallelled by the joining of the militias under a central command, the Lebanese Forces, headed by Phalange leader Bashir Gemayel. In 1980, Gemayel turned on the Tigers, and in a surprise attack in Safra eliminated the militia. The NLP has survived as a party, however. Nevertheless, with the death of Camille Chamoun in 1987 and the assassination of his successor and son Dany in 1990, combined with the rise of the Lebanese Forces as political party, it seems that the NLP's political influence has considerably declined comparing to the 1960s and 1970s.
In 2005 the NLP was part of the Qornet Shehwan Gathering, opposed to the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, but later left because of what it alleged was "corruption" in this gathering.