The Marada Movement
- Marada Movement is a Lebanese political party and a former militia active during the Lebanese civil war under the name of Marada Brigade. The Christian Maronite 'Northern Marada Brigade' were a militia organized by Suleiman Franjieh, president of Lebanon at the outbreak of the war, and was also known as the 'Zgharta Liberation Army,' after the hometown of Franjieh.
The National Assembly elected Frangieh to the Presidency of the Republic on August 17, 1970. When the Lebanese Civil War began, Frangieh maintained under the command of his son Tony. They were initially allied with the Kataeb and participated in the Lebanese Front. In early 1978 Franjieh became firmly pro-Syrian and stopped attending meetings with the Lebanese Front. After the killing of a Kataeb member in the district of Zgharta Zawie, the latest being Jude Al Bayeh, the Kataeb party decided to react and on June 1978 the Kataeb, launched an attack on Tony's summer mansion in Ehden and attempted to capture Ehden to secure it as a Kataeb Lebanese Forces base. Tony, together with his wife and infant daughter, was assassinated by militiamen from the Phalangist militia, Bashir Gemayel who ordered the attack denied being responsible for the killing. Frangieh vowed revenge.
Frangieh remained an ally of Syria. After Tony's assassination, Tony's brother Robert took control of the Marada. In 1982, Suleiman Frangieh, Jr, Tony's son became the leader of the Marada Brigades. Al-Marada was disarmed like other militias, under the 1989 Taif peace Accord, which silenced the guns of the civil war. Frangieh was State minister under the government of Omar Karami from 1990 to 1992. In 1992 Frangieh the grandfather died, and for the first time Frangieh was elected into the Lebanese Parliament as the youngest MP in history. He successfully got elected four times from 1992 to 2000 to the Maronite seat in Zgharta in his traditional family stronghold. He also occupied many Ministral positions. Frangieh was serving as Interior Minister in the Lebanese government, when Rafiq al-Hariri was assassinated on 14 February, 2005.
After the 2005, the Marada became member of the March 8 Alliance. In June 2006, Frangieh launched his reorganized al-Marada party in his hometown of Zgharta. The launching of al-Marada party coincided with the commemoration of the 1978 Ehden massacre.
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