The ADP traced back its origins to an earlier leftist students' organization called the Alawite Youth Movement (AYM) (Arabic: حركة الشباب العلوي | Harakat al-Shabab al-Alawiyya) or Mouvement de la Jeunesse Alaouite (MJA) in French, originally formed in 1972 at Tripoli by Ali Eid, a former teacher. As its name implies, the AYM drew its support from the ShiaAlawite minority sect of Lebanon, even receiving the personal backing of Rifa'at al-Assad,[1]Syria's vice-president at the time and himself a member of that sect. During the early war years, the AYM kept itself outside the LNM-PLO alliance, but in 1977–78 the movement joined the Patriotic Opposition Front (POF) (Arabic: جبهة المعارضة الوطنية | Jabhat al-Muearadat al-Wataniyya), a pro-Syrian multiconfessional coalition of Lebanese notables and activists founded in Tripoli by the MP Talal El-Merhebi (elected in 1972), Souhale Hamadah, Rashid Al-Muadim, George Mourani, and Nassib Al-Khatib, with Ali Eid being elected vice-president of the new formation.[citation needed]
However, internal disagreements soon led to the dissolution of the alliance at the early 1980s, when Eid and some of its ex-coalition partners went to form in 1982 the ADP, choosing the Sunni Muslim lawyer Nassib Al-Khatib as their first secretary-general, later replaced by Ali Eid in 1985.[citation needed] In the process, the AYM was absorbed into the new party and became its youth branch.[citation needed]
The ADP raised in July 1981 with Syrian support its own militia,[7] the Arab Red Knights – ARK (Arabic: الفرسان الحمر العربي, romanized: Al-Fursan al-Hammur al-Arabi) or Red Knights for short. Trained by Rifa'at's Defense Companies, they were also known as the 'Pink Panthers' due to their green- and raspberry-colored lizard camouflage uniforms.[8] Commanded by Ali Eid the ARK initially aligned just 500 militiamen,[9] but subsequently grew to 1,000 well-armed male and female fighters, organized into infantry, signals, medical and Military Police 'branches', plus a motorized corps made of gun trucks and 'technicals'. The latter consisted of UAZ-469 light utility vehicles, Jeep CJ-5 and Jeep CJ-8 (civilian versions of the Willys M38A1 MD jeep),[10]Santana 88 Ligero Militar jeeps, Land-Rover series II-III and Toyota Land Cruiser (J40) light pickups equipped with heavy machine-guns, recoilless rifles and Anti-Aircraftautocannons. The ADP/ARK operated mainly in Northern Lebanon, with its main stronghold in the adjacent Alawite-populated Jabal Mohsen, a sub-urban strategic high ground area overlooking the whole city of Tripoli though they also claimed to control some of the Alawite villages of the Akkar District right up to the Lebanese-Syrian border.
Illegal activities and controversy
By the mid-1980s, allied with the Lebanese Communist Party (LCP) Popular Guards' militia, the Red Knights also controlled the city's commercial harbour and oil refinery – the second largest deep-waters port of Lebanon – in collusion with the director of Tripoli's harbour Ahmad Karami and corrupt Syrian Army officers. The National Fuel Company (NFC) headed jointly by businessmen Maan Karami (brother of late prime-minister Rachid Karami) and Haj Muhammad Awadah, run in the behalf of the ADP and LCP a profitable fuel smuggling ring that stretched to the Beqaa Valley.[11]
The post-war years
After the end of the civil strife in October 1990, the ADP was disarmed and its leader Ali Eid was elected in 1991 to the newly established Alawite seat in the Lebanese Parliament. Prior to this, no Alawite had been elected to the Lebanese parliament.[12] The Party seems to have revised its traditional pro-Syrian stance in the 1990s, in favour of a moderate, cautious neutralist posture in the current sphere of Lebanon's internal politics.
In 2005 it was rumoured[by whom?] that Rifa'at al-Assad was reviving the Red Knights militia in Tripoli.[13] It rearmed during the 2007 Lebanon conflict, after it was revealed that the Islamist group Fatah al-Islam had planned to attack the Alawites of Tripoli.[14] It was active during the 2008 Lebanon conflict, now led by Ali Eid's son Rifaat, being between 1,000 and 2,000 men strong. During the 2008 conflict, where Sunnis and Shias fought throughout Lebanon, Rifaat said in an interview: "We're the most convenient targets, the stand-in for Hezbollah, our problem can only be solved when the Shiites and Sunnis solve theirs."[15] As many as 9,000 Alawites fled their homes during the conflict.[16] Despite years of operating freely a militia throughout Tripoli, the Lebanese Army later severely cracked down on the ADP's military wing starting in April 2014. This forced most militants to surrender to the Internal Security Forces (ISF) and led the group's leaders/commanders to flee in order to avoid the possibility of life in prison.[17]
During the Syrian civil war, spillover from that conflict has led to further tensions between the ADP and neighbouring Sunni IUM militants.[18]
On 29 March 2014, Rifaat and Ali Eid Left Lebanon to Syria.
And on April 10, 2014, the Lebanese Military Investigative Judge Riyad Abu Ghayda issued an arrest warrant in absentia for the pro-Assad figure Rifaat Eid and 11 of his associates over their alleged involvement in clashes on the northern city of Tripoli. Abu Ghayda's warrants are based on articles in the Penal Code that could lead to the death penalty.
^"Rifaat founded the Red Knights in northern Lebanon in the early 1970s and they were eventually instrumental in helping Yasser Arafat to slip by sea to Tripoli in 1983..."Naharnet
^"Sporadic fighting in Tripoli between the Alawite ADP forces and anti-Syrian Sunni Moslem groups has continued throughout the 1980s. Open conflict between the ADP and anti-Syrian Sunni groups broke out in the streets of Tripoli in 1981–82, largely in response to the conflict in Syria between the Sunni majority and the Alawites who constitute the ruling elite." [1]
^"False Security". Time. (September 3, 1984). p. 21 (box). Archived from the original September 30, 2007. "the pro-Syrian Arab Democratic Party, whose militiamen are sometimes called the Pink Panthers because of their raspberry-colored fatigues".
^Makdisi and Sadaka, The Lebanese Civil War, 1975–1990 (2003), p. 44, Table 1: War Period Militias.
^Neville, Technicals: Non-Standard Tactical Vehicles from the Great Toyota War to modern Special Forces (2018), p. 9.
^Traboulsi, Identités et solidarités croisées dans les conflits du Liban contemporain; Chapitre 12: L'économie politique des milices: le phénomène mafieux (2007), parte III.
Fawwaz Traboulsi, Identités et solidarités croisées dans les conflits du Liban contemporain; Chapitre 12: L'économie politique des milices: le phénomène mafieux, Thèse de Doctorat d'Histoire – 1993, Université de Paris VIII, 2007. (in French) – [3]
Fawwaz Traboulsi, A History of Modern Lebanon: Second Edition, Pluto Press, London 2012. ISBN978-0745332741
Leigh Neville, Technicals: Non-Standard Tactical Vehicles from the Great Toyota War to modern Special Forces, New Vanguard series 257, Osprey Publishing Ltd, Oxford 2018. ISBN9781472822512
Moustafa El-Assad, Civil Wars Volume 1: The Gun Trucks, Blue Steel books, Sidon 2008. ISBN9953-0-1256-8
Rex Brynen, Sanctuary and Survival: the PLO in Lebanon, Boulder: Westview Press, Oxford 1990. ISBN0 86187 123 5 – [4]
Samer Kassis, 30 Years of Military Vehicles in Lebanon, Beirut: Elite Group, 2003. ISBN9953-0-0705-5
Samir Makdisi and Richard Sadaka, The Lebanese Civil War, 1975–1990, American University of Beirut, Institute of Financial Economics, Lecture and Working Paper Series (2003 No.3), pp. 1–53. – [6]
William W. Harris, Faces of Lebanon: Sects, Wars, and Global Extensions, Princeton Series on the Middle East, Markus Wiener Publishers, Princeton 1997. ISBN978-1558761155, 1-55876-115-2
