The Amal Movement is a conservative-populist Shia political party in Lebanon which was founded in 1969 by Imam Musa al-Sadr and MP Hussein el-Husseini. The party was founded as a secular and egalitarian party which appealed to people of all confessions and religions, especially the Shia community, which was the poorest and most neglected group in Lebanon. The party's original name was "The Movement of the Dispossessed", promising to fight for peace and equality for all people and combat dispossession. In 1975, "The Movement of the Dispossessed" merged into the new Amal Movement party. In 1978, al-Sadr's disappearance and Israel's invasion caused a Shia outcry which boosted the Amal Movement's popularity, and the Iranian Revolution in 1979 also inspired the Amal Movement's growth, as more Lebanese Shi'ites adopted the Ayatollah Khomeini's brand of Shia revivalism. During the Lebanese Civil War, the displacement of 300,000 Shi'ites from South Lebanon and Syrian support transformed the Amal Movement into the most powerful Shi'ite resistance movement at the start of the conflict, and its militia reached 14,000 fighters at its zenith. In the War of the Camps, Amal fought against the PLO, and it later fought a violent war with the Islamist Hezbollah militant group (partially founded by religious Amal members who left after Nabih Berri's takeover) immediately afterward, leading to Syrian intervention. In 1989, the Amal Movement accepted the Taif Agreement to end the civil war. In September 1991, after the war's end, 2,800 Amal troops joined the Lebanese Army. Amal was a strong supporter of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon to provide security, and, after Rafic Hariri's assassination in 2005, Amal opposed the Syrian withdrawal and did not take part in the Cedar Revolution. Amal was often criticized as corrupt, and it continued to maintain a private militia which fought in every major battle of the 2006 Second Lebanon War with Israel. By the 2010s, the Amal Movement had allied itself with its former Hezbollah rivals, as well as the Progressive Socialist Party.
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