SUMMARY
National Salvation Front (NSF, officially known as Lebanese National Movement/LNM until 23 July 1983) was an armed group intermittently active in the Lebanese conflict over government that lasted 1975-1990. Lebanon has for a long time been a patchwork of different religious groups, with the most important ones in terms of size being the Christian Maronite, Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims and the Muslim Druze. In order to ensure political and confessional peace, Lebanon relied on an elaborate, albeit unwritten, political power-sharing arrangement upheld by the National Pact (Mithaq al-Watani in Arabic). The Pact (established in 1943) dictated that legislative power in the assembly would be shared 6:5 in favor of the Maronite, that the President would always be a Maronite, that the Prime Minister would always be a Sunni, and that the Speaker of the House would always be a Shiite. However, intergroup tensions in Lebanon was reaching a breaking-point approaching the mid-1970s, as the country’s less favored groups grew increasingly aggrieved by the political and economic domination of the Maronite and Sunni elites. These tensions were aggravated by the influx of Palestinian refugees from Israel, and the increasing influence of PLO in Lebanon. It was generally accepted that these tensions exploded following clashes between right-wing Christian militias and Palestinian fighters, a crisis that forced the Lebanese government to resign. Following this, Lebanon descended into a savage conflict 1975-1990, which was characterized by inter-sectarian strife. In simplified terms, the two main factions of the conflict were the Christian/Maronite right-wing groups and the Muslim/Druze left-wing groups, with the latter being supported by PLO and other Palestinian groups. It was in this context that NSF emerged.
The NSF was founded as a secular, progressive and avowedly non-sectarian political movement; during the [Lebanese civil war], it fought against the Christian/right-wing factions and against the Government of Lebanon. It was originally established as a primarily non-military organization in 1969, then under the name Front of National and Progressive Parties and Forces (Jabhat al-Ahzab wa al-Quwa al-Taqaddumiyya wa al-Wataniyya, or FNPPF). However, after the initial clashes of the Lebanese civil war, the FNPPF was remodeled as the LNM in April 1975. The LNM underwent a reorganization 1982-1983, after which the group became known as the NSF. It is thus worth noting that, in line with UCDP principles, the group is referred to as the NSF, rather than the LNM, in the data also prior to 1983.
The NSF was an umbrella (“front”) organization, and although member groups were mainly Muslim in composition, it would be an oversimplification to say that the movement was purely Muslim in orientation. Membership groups were instead mainly socialist and/or nationalist Arab. The LNM was composed of several different groups throughout the years of its existence, but the most important contributors were PSP (Progressive Socialist Party; mainly Druze), LCP (Communist Party of Lebanon), Baath party, SSNP (Syrian Social Nationalist Party) and the Independent Nasserite Movement (also known as the al-Mourabitoun). The NSF’s proclaimed goals clearly challenged the status quo of Lebanon’s government and political system, wishing to abrogate its confessional democracy, change the electoral law, reorganize the army (which was under Christian Maronite control), turn foreign policy towards a clear pro-Arab stance, and to staunchly support the Palestinian liberation movement.
Kamal Jumblatt, the Druze chief of PSP, led the NSF until he was assassinated by pro-Syrian factions from the SSNP in March 1977. Jumblatt’s son, Walid Jumblatt, succeeded him as leader of the group. While it was not possible to establish an exact figure, the NUF’s armed wing included more than 10 000 militiamen at the start of the conflict in 1975; however, it was suggested that this figure may have been as high as 25 000. The NSF’s manpower had decreased considerably by 1983, and its total armed force may have been as small as 800; other estimates did however suggest that the group still had thousands of fighters at this point. The decline of the NSF was largely attributed to the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon in 1982, which led to the expulsion of the NSF’s close ally PLO from the country. The Israeli invasion left the then-LNM in disarray, and prompted the reorganization of the organization into the NSF. On 2 July 1985, NSF joined forces with the Amal movement to create the National Union Front (NUF); NSF thus ceased to exist as an independent actor in the UCDP data after this date.
The NSF maintained a close relationship to several Palestinian factions, and it did on several occasions fight alongside fighters from PLO and the Rejectionist Front; NSF and PLO even maintained a “joint military command”, and an integrated fighting force known as the “Common Forces”. During 1976, Libya shipped both financial and material support to the al-Mourabitoun militia, one of the constituent groups of NSF. While it was initially opposed to the NSF and actively fought against it, Syria supplied the NSF (specifically the Progressive Socialist Party, PSP) with arms and logistics in 1983. The arms came mainly in the form of tanks and artillery.
