“Hakim”, Samir
Geagea threw his apology on the table as if to say: “am I the only lover that
the love consequences are thrown on my shoulders?” The Executive Committee of
the Lebanese forces Chief, Samir Geagea, presented, last Sunday morning during
a public meeting, transmitted directly by the media a "profound, sincere
and complete apology, for every wound, harm, loss, or unjustified damage we
caused, during the performance of our national duties, throughout the past
war". Geagea, by this public apology, recorded an unusual precedent in the
Lebanese political forum. Aloof of the explanatory discretions that accompanied
his request of forgiveness from God and people for crimes committed during his
career, his behaviour created a snow ball which still evokes contradictory reactions among allies and
adversaries. “Hakim” (Samir Geagea’s nickname) did it. He threw his apology on
the table. He threw it in the face of his political opponents, and they are
many. They are not necessarily the opponents who confronted and fought during
the civil war. Some of these became an ally and companion of struggle in “March
14” forces.
The specificity
of the apology, besides being a unique political act, is that it was arisen from
its presenter. The man, for a Lebanese group, is an unmatched war criminal, and
cannot be pardoned. As if he is the only responsible for the Lebanese events woes
and towards all the warring communities past and present. He is, for another
group, a victim, and a Saint, paid the price of war and peace. He inherited the
antagonisms and commissions of his party politics, and the circumstances he
faced encountered more hostility around him, so he was, and still be treated
unjustly, but he rises above injustice with pride and dignity. Other Lebanese group
consider him a militia leader in wartime. He is not different from other
leaders who became influential and took over the reins of the country in
peacetime. He deserves the chance that they got. But the difference between
Geagea and his “warlords colleagues” that he paid a price they did not pay. He
was jailed more than 11 years and expiated by this some of his sins. Today, he was
the first to present an apology which was unacceptable by those who rummage in
the past to continue stoning him. On the contrary, they considered this apology
as an accusation or admission of guilt and a golden opportunity to hold him
responsible of all Lebanon war crimes so that the poet words: “am I the only
lover that the love consequences are thrown on my shoulders?” apply on him.
But the autobiography of “the only lover” in
the country of rivalry, mutual hatred, prefabricated charges and the collapse
of values in the political discourse, is filled with what justify every group reaction
about this initiative.
Samir Geagea’s
Childhood
This biography starts
in Ain El Remmaneh, a southern suburb of Beirut, the place where the Lebanese war
broke out in 1975 with the BUS famous incident. There Samir was in autumn 1952,
in a Maronite family from Bsharreh on the highest peaks of Northern Lebanon.
His home was modest, consisting of a room, a kitchen and their facilities. (Ironically,
Geagea was the neighbour of his Christian rival General Michel Aoun who was
born in the nearness town Haret Hreik). The financial status of the family was
tight. The Father, Farid, is a first adjunct in the Army band, his mother, Mary,
is a housewife who raises her three children: Samir, Joseph, and Nohad. In his
childhood, Samir was restless at school, loved challenge and debate. Out of
school, he was crafty, and fond of organizing concerts in his village. He was
always focused on poor people, (the former Minister Karim Pakradouni compared
him with Robin Hood). So he dreamt of becoming a doctor to treat his home town
people and the poor for free.
Becoming a
political member
In 1969, he
joined the “Lebanese Kataeb” party, and received in 1971 a scholarship at the
American University of Beirut to study medicine, but stopped his studies and only
completed four years, to participate in the civil war in Lebanon in 1975.
In the summer of 1976 the first military stages
of the young man came out in Shekka battle in north Lebanon. After that, Samir
Geagea has emerged among the Kataeb supporters in the north, and began to
establish a military barracks in the area. At that time he was nicknamed as “Chief
Samir”. On February 9th, 1978, after the degeneration of the
conflict between “Al Marada Movement”, loyal to the late President Suleiman
Franjieh, and the Kataeb members, and the death of the Kataeb responsible in
Zgharta (Northern Lebanon), Joud Al Bayea, the late President Bashir Gemayel
decided to attack Ehden, the main stronghold of Franjieh family. He gave the
orders to Geagea and the former minister Elie Hobeika to attack the town. The
attack conduced to the death of the Minister Tony Franjieh, son of the former
president, his wife and one of his sons, while Tony's son, Minister Suleiman
Franjieh survived. In 1979, Geagea participated in a losing battle against the Syrian
forces. In 1983, he entered the Mountain war where he exposure with his
supporters a crushing defeat. He
withdrew and was sieged in Deir Al-Qamar town in the Chouf. His defeats
alternated in April, 1985 in East Sidon, and then in Iqlim Al Kharoub.
However, this defeats coupled with the
horrors of the civil war did not eliminate the man. It can be said that the actual
history of Geagea began after the assassination of Bashir Gemayel in 1982. He
accompanied at that stage the “Lebanese Forces”, which has suffered a
complicated labour that ended by taking its lead in January 1986, after an
uprising conducted by the “Lebanese Forces” against Hobeika after he signed the tripartite
agreement with Nabih Berri, “Amal Movement” leader, and Walid Jumblatt, the
leader of the Progressive Socialist Party, under Syria patronage. “Hakim” led hid uprising in alliance with the
then President Amin Gemayel and the Army Commander General Michel Aoun. They
were able to bring down Hobeika after a battle that caused death to hundreds of
Christians.
Samir Geagea’s alliances were not to live
long. Gemayel’s mandate period was full of open conflict between the two men, a
conflict that did not end when Gemayel submitted the authority to the then army
chief General Michel Aoun, who formed a transitional government in 1988 after
the parliament failed to elect a president. Shortly, he lured Geagea to the
fierce “cancellation war” against the Lebanese army led by Aoun, who was
seeking to dominate the Christian scene. This war led to disastrous
consequences for the Christians. After the Taif Agreement, the “Lebanese
Forces” turned into a political party as the rest of the warring militias.
Geagea was named Minister on December 24th, 1990 in President Omar
Karami government which approved the dissolution of militias and the collect of
weapons. Samir Geagea obeyed its decision and on March 21st, 1991 he
resigned from the government, and designated his representative Roger Dib in
his place. Geagea also resigned on May 16th, 1992 from the
Government of Prime Minister Rashid Solh. He did not hesitate in the summer of
the same year to boycott the first general parliamentary elections in
Lebanon in twenty years.
Imprisonment of Samir Geagea
But what Geagea accepted did not protect him.
In 1994 he was arrested and prisoned because of being accused of the bombing of
Our Lady of Deliverance church in Kesserwan. Only his files, among all other
warlords, were disclosed and tried for the assassination of the late Prime
Minister Rashid Karami and President of the “National Liberal Party” Danny
Chamoun. He was also accused of assassinating MP Tony Franjieh and his family
in Ehden. The Court sentenced him to death, and the sentence was commuted to
life imprisonment by a decision of the President of the Republic at the time, the
late Elias Hrawi. An adjudication to dissolve the “Lebanese Forces” was also
issued. Samir Geagea was released under a special amnesty issued by the new
parliament, which emerged after the withdrawal of the Syrian army from Lebanon
in 2005 and returned to his political activity. This is the general conspectus,
but in details, Samir Geagea’s biography is full of turning points, whether
they were pleasant or painful. Geagea, according to his close circle, has a mysterious
personality. He says that he is haunted by the history obsession. His comrades
say that he had a somewhat diffident personality, hates the chaos, dispersive
thought, and the political legends in the Christian community.
In one of his statements
he considers that he is not talented in the foolishness field of and charges
exchanges. He says: “there are a number of politicians that have a vault of
terms. And I don't know where they invent them from. Michel Aoun, for example,
reminds me of the socialists in the 60s, when they launch an attack on someone:
Imperial, colonial, Zionist, reactionary. Maybe you are the most progressive
ever, but if your positions do not correspond to theirs, they throw on your face
this jungle of empty words”. What he says about himself, does not match what is
said about him. Especially after the confrontation with Aoun, the “Lebanese
Forces” picture appeared sober and not beloved by many inhabitants of the areas
they control. Karim Pakradouni attributes in his writings this “intensive
hatred” to three reasons: “Geagea’s image for the public opinion is an image of
a man responsible of the displacement in the North and the mountain, while he
was not the only responsible for both of them. The Lebanese Forces imposed fees
and taxes, and that was not popular despite people benefited from them. The
third reason was that people were fed up of militias, while Samir Geagea took
the Lebanese Forces in charge only in 1986, 10 years after it was established. Aoun
succeeded to take advantage of this and appeared as the statesman who wants to
abolish the militias, so people drifted behind him.”
Maybe Geagea has been carried this
responsibility because the observers associate the history of the “Lebanese
Forces” to Bashir Gemayel, the founder, and Samir Geagea the constructor who
transformed the party into a real institution. Pakradouni has played an
important role, along with the two leaders at one stage. The relationship
between the two young men was tensed due to each one glitter, and it ranged between
admiration and competition. Pakradouni adds that “Samir Geagea has an
exceptional ability to cope with even the most difficult circumstances even with
the prison isolation and seclusion. He triumphed over his imprisonment as he assimilated
it, and the prison became a part of his personality, personal and leadership biography.
He is extremely mystical; he does not reveal his secret or his game, so
everyone was afraid of him. He does not like to argue a decision he adopted as he
may deeply studied. When he entered the prison, people were afraid of him more
than they loved him. After his imprisonment they loved him more than they were
afraid of him.”
Despite the continuous
accusations set against him as “an Israeli state” who accompanied Geagea during
the 80s, confirm that he dismantled the relations that existed earlier between
the “Lebanese Forces” and Israel, because it is a legacy from the Christian
forces and must be got rid of it, and they are a burden on the political
movement of the “Lebanese Forces”, so he did not develop them. In 1989 the
Israelis offered that he move to the occupied southern Lebanon known as the border tape to provide him with protection
after the international consensus on giving the Syrian regime the green light
to occupy Lebanon. But he refused and said to them: “I am not prepared to
protect your borders. I will not be another Saad Haddad. I am Samir Geagea”.
The Israelis did not like him and neither did he. He received numerous advices
to stay out of Lebanon after the Taef agreement, but he refused and preferred
to face what awaited him.
Besides
politics
Out of politics,
Samir Geagea likes classical music and the country Lebanese songs. And the jail
period provided an opportunity to plunge into reading. He loves literature,
history, political thought, philosophy and theology. At the prison, he explored
the mysticism literature. His marriage with his wife Sitrida gave him a
romantic aura, broke the intensity of the fighter who was. He met her in 1987 at
her uncle’s, MP Gebran Tawk residence. They married in 1991 on the impact of Gibran
Khalil Gibran words of “Together you were born, and together you stay”. After Geagea
entered the prison, the romantic aura continued, Sitrida has been busy fulfilling
responsibilities thrown upon her suddenly. She had not too many options, she
had to confront or leave. She chose the confrontation, and decided to stand by
his side. He is her love and her example. Throughout the period of his
imprisonment he was reminding the outside world of him through Greeting Cards Sitrida
persisted on sending them at the beginning of each year, writing on them
expressions to fit his circumstances. After 11 years and 3 months in prison,
Samir Geagea ended a new phase of his life characterized by sharp
confrontations. When I asked him after getting back his freedom about his
hatred against those who imprisoned him, he said that he bore a grudge in the
first two years of prison, and he was thinking of means of revenge. He was
innovating means after means. But then he reached a conviction that who
offended him no longer affects him. He felt that this conviction is capable of protecting
him from any harm hit him, or will hit him from any side.
The other
Samir Geagea
After his release, he said: Samir Geagea, who
was in the civil war, died in prison. I have nothing to do with the old Geagea
and the civil war stage. Who can achieve his objectives by politics does not need
to go to war. But Geagea returned to the cycle of war with different weapons. Now,
he only has his word in front of the murder charges and disloyalty that are aimed
at him. And his apology, which is still pending on the political conflict sling
in Lebanon, can be read in the two directions.
MP Elias Atallah says: “more than one
internal and external component entered the Lebanese civil war, killed tens of
thousands of victims, destroyed the state and published a culture of violence.
It is with the utmost arbitrariness that only a particular person or even one
particular organisation be accused of. Since the subject is the Lebanese Forces
and Samir Geagea, I think that many Lebanese parties exercised kinds of
violence similarly against each other’s. We experienced murders, assassinations,
physical and political liquidations. George Hawi was assassinated and before him
Mehdi Amel, Suheil Tawileh, Hussein Mroueh and many others who committed these
crimes is well known. But he did not apologize to us. There is no any different
formula from those who were killed by the Lebanese Forces or others”. Atallah
believes that focusing the campaign on one person is an unjust focus “Either we
open the war record and make accountable to all in a comprehensive manner, and
it seems that it is impossible, or either we move beyond the past, but not on adulteration,
but through recognition and apology”. He considers that “Samir Geagea imprisonment
was a political revenge, because the trial itself could be conducted against
more than one leader in Lebanon, and it did not, because the politics winds in
that time were intending a particular person. The most important thing is that Samir
Geagea acknowledged his mistakes. This does not harm him in any way. The
disaster is with whom consecrate themselves and consider themselves higher than
committing errors.”
Sana Jacks