SUMMARY

The Shiite infighting in the late 1980s and early 1990s stood between Amal (Afwâj al-Muqâwmat al-Lubnâniyya: Lebanese Resistance Detachment) and Hezbollah (Party of God). The groups were fighting to become the dominant Shiite actor in Lebanon, which had been ravaged by armed sectarian conflict since the 1970s. Both parties also received external support, Amal from Syria and Hezbollah from Iran. The violence between the two groups had started following a Hezbollah kidnapping near Tyre, in south Lebanon, in 1988. The kidnapping had taken place in an Amal controlled territory and Amal took it on its own responsibility to find the perpetrators.

In the following year, 1989, new clashes started on 1 January. This time Hezbollah, encouraged by its supporter Iran, wanted to take advantage of the situation with a weakened Amal which had just signed an agreement with PLO. The Ta’if agreement signed by the remaining members of the 1972 Lebanese parliament in September 1989 to end the conflict in Lebanon, increased the cleavage between Amal and Hezbollah. Amal members took seats in the government while Hezbollah kept denying the legitimacy of the government, and hence remained outside. Both parties were heavily armed and most of the clashes took place in the form of, more or less, regular warfare. In some of the clashes Hezbollah was also assisted by members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and in some of the fighting in Beirut the Syrian forces helped curb the violence.

The non-state conflict between Amal and Hezbollah is first included in UCDP data in 1989. In January of that year violent clashes flared up in several villages and towns in Lebanon, which resulted in over 25 battle-related deaths.