Michel Aoun: The Petain of Lebanon

On October 13, 1990, Israel gave the Syrian air force permission for the first time ever to fly over Lebanon and dislodge General Michel Aoun from the presidential palace in Baabda, east of Beirut. Michel Aoun escaped by fleeing to the French Embassy basement, while his soldiers were being gunned down with Syrian bullets in the back of their heads.

 

Syrian soldiers in the presidential palace on October 13, 1990 after evicted Michel Aoun fled to the basement of the French embassy

 

 

Since Lebanon's independence from the French mandate in 1943, Syria refused to recognize Lebanon's right to exist as an independent nation and refused to exchange embassies; it finally was forced to do so in 2009 after the Assad regime assassinated Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, which led to the eviction of the Syrian occupation forces by an angry Lebanese population. To this day, Syria refuses to delineate its land and maritime borders with Lebanon, continues to undermine Lebanon's stability via its proxies (e.g. Hezbollah), holds thousands of Lebanese citizens in its jails after their enforced disappearance from the streets of Lebanon at the hands of Syrian Intelligence Services, and drains the Lebanese economy with large-scale smuggling across the lawless border of fuel, medicines, flour and other necessities. The Baathist regime of Assad believes that Lebanon is not a country or a nation, but merely a Syrian province. Syria does to Lebanon exactly what Putin of Russia does to Ukraine.

After destroying various regions of Lebanon in his "War of Liberation" against Syria between 1988 and 1990, Michel Aoun went into exile in France in 1991 and returned to the country in 2005. In 2006, he switched camps: From an enemy of Syria and a discreet friend of Israel, Aoun became an ally of Syria's Assad and Hassan Nasrallah's Hezbollah and an enemy of Israel. After using the Lebanese Army to crush his enemies domestically, the new Syrianized Aoun declared that the Lebanese Army was "incapable" of defending the country in a nod of approval to Hezbollah's weapons.

Michel Aoun with Syrian butcher Bashar Assad whose regime assassinated dozens of Lebanese politicians, journalists, civil society activists and clergymen, whose army occupied Lebanon for 3 decades, and who continues to hold thousands of Lebanese citizens in his jails.

Thanks to Hezbollah's forced paralysis of Parliament for close to two and a half years, Aoun became Syria's candidate to the Lebanese presidency and was elected as president in 2016. His term is coming to an end this October 31, 2022, leaving behind him a devastated country: Dysfunctional institutions, no government, Hezbollah again paralyzing Parliament and preventing the election of a new president, absolutely non-existent infrastructure (no running water, no electricity...), a decimated national currency, paralyzed judicial investigation into the Beirut Port explosion caused by Hezbollah's storage of explosive materials, lawless border with Syria: incoming mercenaries, weapons and drugs, and outgoing medicines, flour, fuel, etc.

And the only thing that Aoun has time to do as he is packing is, this past Tuesday October 25, 2022, to award Syria's Ambassador to Lebanon, Ali Abdel Karim Ali, the National Order of the Cedar at the rank of Senior Officer, on the occasion of the end of his duties "in appreciation of his efforts in consolidating relations between the two brotherly countries". Since his appointment in 2009, the Syrian ambassador has done absolutely nothing to repatriate the 2 million Syrian refugees his own government has savagely displaced into Lebanon. He has not helped in locating the 17,000 kidnapped and jailed Lebanese in Syria's notoriously brutal prisons, etc. NOTHING. Yet, the Syrian puppet President of Lebanon, Michel Aoun, is giving him an award.

Michel Aoun (right) awarding Syrian ambassador,  Ali Abdel Karim Ali, the National Order of the Cedar, Senior Officer rank

During the Aoun rebellion against the Syrian regime from exile in the 1990s and early 2000s, he was compared to French president de Gaulle facing the German occupation from his exile in London.

As the sun sets on an aging Michel Aoun, history will more likely retain the more apt comparison of Aoun with French Maréchal Philippe Petain who, after becoming a national hero for his victory at the Battle of Verdun in World War I against the Germans, became an ally and a puppet President serving the occupying Germans during World War II. After the war, he was tried in a court of law and convicted of being a traitor to his country.

There are no functioning courts of law in Lebanon to try Aoun. Only history will be his judge.