Lebanese Front

The Lebanese Front (| Jabhat al-Lubnaniyya) or Front libanais in French, also known as the "Kufur Front", was a coalition of mainly Christian parties formed in 1976, during the Lebanese Civil War. It was intended to act as a counter force to the Lebanese National Movement (LNM) of Kamal Jumblatt and others.

The Lebanese Front was presided by the charismatic former president of Lebanon, Camille Chamoun, and its main participants were Pierre Gemayel, the founder and leader of the then largest political party in Lebanon, the Kataeb Party, president Suleiman Franjieh, who had just finished his presidential years in office. It also included first class intellectuals, such as distinguished professor of philosophy Charles Malik who had received 63 honorary doctoral degrees before presiding the United Nations General Assembly, and Fouad Frem al-Boustani, the president of the Lebanese University. The front also included religious figures such as Father Charbel Qassis, who was later replaced by Father Bulus Naaman the “head of the permanent congress of the Lebanese monastic orders”Rabinovich, The war for Lebanon (1984), p. 233.. For a brief while the poet Said Aql was a member.

As soon as the war erupted in Lebanon, and before the Lebanese Front was formed, many of the future leaders of the Lebanese Front organized their political parties into militias, most notably Camille Chamoun’s National Liberal Party, Pierre Gemayel’s Kataeb Party, and......
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