ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Lebanon’s domestic conflict during the years 1958 through 1982. In 1958, only fifteen years after achieving independence, Lebanon experienced its first civil war. Subsequently, relative calm characterized the surface of Lebanese society until the conflict again exploded in 1975. However, even between the two periods of naked violence, Lebanon was rent with discord that involved the disintegration of the central government’s authority and deterioration of the legitimacy of all national institutions including the military. During the second civil war which lasted from May 1975 through October 1976, the country was physically devastated. Even though open hostilities ceased, the conflict still persisted although its character was substantially transformed.
