With the out break of fighting in Beirut in 1975 and the division of the city, Samir Geagea had to leave AUB after five years of study. He then transferred to St. Joseph University, in East Beirut.
When the Palestinian-Muslim-leftist alliance attacked 1976 the Kura region in northern Lebanon, Samir Geagea interrupted his academic work to help defend the area. During the next few months, he reorganized the party militia in the north (Bshari, Kura, Zgharta). However, after the Syrian army entered the Kura at the end of the summer, he returned to his medical studies in Beirut.
In 1978, Samir Geagea again broke away from his studies. At the request of Bashir Gemayel, he agreed to return briefly to help the newly formed Lebanese Forces but he was wounded, moved to a hospital, and later transferred to France to recuperate.
When he returned to Lebanon, Geagea, now responsible for the Lebanese Forces and the Kataeb along northern front, moved to a convent in the upper mountains of Jubayl from where he opened training centers, and began the development of fortifications opposite Syrian positions. He established a headquarters at Qattara, an extremely isolated village high in the mountains, he remained in charge of this sector until early 1983.
In January 1983, the Lebanese Forces command council appointed Samir Geagea, who retained his responsibilities on the northern front, commander of its forces in the Shuf-Aley sector of Mount Lebanon, an area from which the Lebanese Forces were forced to retreat in September 1983.
Geagea returned to his headquarters in Qattara, where he developed, organized, managed, and carried out a training program for regional leaders in the Lebanese Forces.
Over the next few months public support for the Lebanese Forces started to decline so Samir Geagea, Karim Pakradouni, and Elie Hobeika (then the security chief of the Lebanese Forces) forced the resignation of the then commander of the Lebanese Forces, Fouad Abu Nadir. Elie Hobeika was named head of its executive committee, Geagea chief of staff.
On January 15, 1986, Samir Geagea led a movement that removed Elie Hobeika and due to the improprieties of the latter and, above all, to his having signed the "Tripartite Accord" with Syria. Every sector of Christian opinion was opposed to the accord.
Within months, he had reorganized the Lebanese Forces and established standardized bases of recruitment, selection, training, and promotion and founded the first formal Lebanese Forces military academy at Ghosta. At the same time, the Lebanese Forces became for the first time a political movement with clear-cut socio-economic objectives and programs and with friendly and cooperative ties to many foreign countries. The Lebanese Forces also began the most ambitious and systematic social welfare program ever undertaken in Lebanon and intended to help the disadvantaged and displaced.
In 1989, the Lebanese Forces agreed to adopt Taef Accord.
In 1991 the Lebanese Forces were disarmed and Geagea began to transform it into a purely political party. However, as a result of serious violations of the spirit and intent of Taef Accord, Samir Geagea became one of the accord's strongest critics and refused to accept government post and ministerial appointments.
In 1994 Geagea was imprisoned for "maintaining a militia in the guise of a political party, and for dealing with military weapons and explosives".
Samir Geagea has been in solitary confinement ever since.
Samir
Geagea,
born 1952
