Army of Free Lebanon
Christian splinter faction of the Lebanese Army that came to play a major role in the 1975-77 phase of the Lebanese Civil War
The Army of Free Lebanon – AFL (Arabic: جيش لبنان الحر, romanized: Jayish Lubnan al-Horr), also known variously as the Colonel Barakat's Army (Arabic: جيش بركات, romanized: Jayish Barakat) or Armée du Liban Libre (ALL) and Armée du Colonel Barakat in French, was a predominantly Christian splinter faction of the Lebanese Army that came to play a major role in the 1975–77 phase of the Lebanese Civil War.
Emblem
Upon its formation, the AFL adopted as logo a rectangular (or square) red and blue "flash" with a stylized white Lebanese cedar tree in the middle, which was hastily painted on their armoured and transport vehicles; sometimes the motto "Free Lebanon" (Arabic: لبنان الحر | Lubnan al-Horr) written in Arabic script was painted alongside the flash on the hull and turret of the tanks. In alternative, a greenish-yellow stencil, bearing the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) coat-of-arms was also applied to their vehicles.
Origins
The AFL began to be established on January 23, 1976, in Beirut by Lebanese Colonel Antoine Barakat who declared loyalty to the then President of Lebanon Suleiman Frangieh. A Maronite from Frangieh's hometown Zgharta, Barakat rose with the troops of the Beirut Command (about 700 soldiers) in response for Lieutenant Ahmed Al-Khatib's rebellion two days earlier at the head of the breakaway Lebanese Arab Army (LAA). Another officer, the head of Jounieh garrison Major Fouad Malek, supported the Barakat-led faction, as did Major Saad Haddad the commander of the Marjayoun garrison in southern Lebanon. These three formations where eventually integrated into the "Army of Free Lebanon", whose creation was formally announced on March 13, 1976, by Col. Barakat at the Shukri Ghanem Barracks in the Fayadieh district of East Beirut.
Structure
Field organization
Headquartered at Shukri Ghanem Barracks, a major military facility situated at Fayadieh in the vicinity of the Ministry of Defense complex at Yarze, the AFL numbered some 3,000 uniformed regulars by 1978, mostly Christian Maronites and Greek-Catholics. Like the LAA, the AFL also maintained a flexible structure unlike the old regular Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), with the bulk of the force comprising some 1,500-2,000 soldiers from different Army units assembled into eight independent mixed combat groups (French: Groupements) of roughly company or battalion size.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Army of Free Lebanon” is christian splinter faction of the Lebanese Army that came to play a major role in the 1975-77 phase of the Lebanese Civil War. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Army, Free and Lebanon, not as a finished interpretation.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4794304. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1975, 1976 and 1978.
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This entry incorporates text from “Army of Free Lebanon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.