Lebanese Youth Movement (MKG)
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The Lebanese Youth Movement – LYM (Harakat al-Shabab al-Lubnaniyya), also known as the Maroun Khoury Group (MKG), was originally an association of Maronite right-wing students founded by Bashir Maroun Khoury (nom de guerre "Bash Maroun"), the son of the former head of the Dikwaneh district of east Beirut, Naim el-Khoury. Influenced by the extremist ideology of the Guardians of the Cedars, the violently anti-communist and anti-Palestinian LYM/MKG joined the Lebanese Front in 1975-76 and raised its own militia with training, funds and weapons being provided by the Phalangist Party and Israel. It consisted of about 500-1000 fighters, backed by a small armoured force made of ex-Lebanese army Panhard AML armoured cars and Land-Rovers fitted with 65mm recoilless rifles and Heavy Machine-guns. Personally commanded by Bash Maroun, they usually operated in the Dikwaneh and Ain el-Rammaneh districts, manning the local sections of the Green Line, but also fought in other areas, earning a reputation of fierce combatants. However, they were also known for their brutality - In January 1976, a force of 100 LYM militiamen took part in the sieges – and subsequent massacres – of the Palestinian refugee camps of Karantina, Dbayyeh and Tel al-Zaatar, and the cruelty displayed by MKG members’ in these and other atrocities, earned them the unflattering nickname “The Ghosts of the Cemeteries” - Bash Maroun’s men were normally seen wearing necklaces made from human body parts cut from their victims (!). The MKG was subsequently absorbed into the Lebanese Forces in 1977, thereafter ceasing to exist as independent organization.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Denise Ammoun, Histoire du Liban contemporain : Tome 2 1943-1990, Fayard, Paris 2005. ISBN: 978-2213615219 (in French).
- Jean Sarkis, Histoire de la guerre du Liban, Presses Universitaires de France - PUF, Paris 1993. ISBN: 978-2130458012 (in French).
- Rex Brynen, Sanctuary and Survival: the PLO in Lebanon, Boulder: Westview Press, 1990.
- Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War, London: Oxford University Press, [ISBN 0192801309] (3rd ed. 2001).
- Samer Kassis, 30 Years of Military Vehicles in Lebanon, Beirut: Elite Group, 2003.
