Kamal Jumblatt (6 December 1917 – 16 March 1977) was the leader of the Lebanese National Movement during the Lebanese Civil War, leading anti-Syria forces during the conflict, as well as fighting Israel. He was assassinated by the Syrian Social Nationalist Party near Mount Lebanon in 1977.
Biography[]
Jumblatt in 1976
Kamal Jumblatt was born on 6 December 1917 in Moukhtara, Mutasarrifate of Mount Lebanon, Ottoman Empire (present-day Moukhtara, Mount Lebanon Governorate, Lebanon) to a Kurdish Druze family. His father Fouad Jumblatt was assassinated on 6 August 1921 while Jumblatt was four. Jumblatt obtained a law degree at Saint Joseph University in Beirut in 1945, and he got involved in Lebanese politics. On 17 March 1949 he founded the Progressive Socialist Party, a socialist political movement in Lebanon supported mainly by Druze. In 1953, he became leader of the opposition against President Camille Chamoun, and in 1958 he led Lebanese opposition movements in rebellion against Chamoun. In Operation Blue Bat, the United States sent US Marine Corps troops to help Chamoun's government, putting down the uprising.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Jumblatt supported the Palestinian Fedayeen in their fight against Israel both due to ideological reasons and to gain the support of Palestinian refugees in the elections. Jumblatt united disenchanted Sunnis, Shi'a, and leftist Christians into a secularist, socialist, Arabist, and anti-sectarian opposition movement, which was ironically sectarian due to most of its supporters being Druze.
In 1975, at the start of the Lebanese Civil War, Jumblatt and the Lebanese National Movement gained control over 70% of the country with the assistance of his Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) allies in South Lebanon, but in 1946 40,000 Syrian troops invaded Lebanon and smashed his favorable position. In 1976 his sister Linda was killed when a group of armed men burst into his apartment in a failed assassination attempt on him.
Death[]
On 16 March 1977, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) and the Syrian Ba'ath Party, led by Rifaat al-Assad, assassinated him in the Chouf Mountains near Baklin in his car, with gunmen shooting him dead. His assassination left his son Walid Jumblatt as the main leader of the Druze militia and the Lebanese National Movement.