Communist Action Organization in Lebanon

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The Communist Action Organization in Lebanon (COA) or Organization of Communist Action (Arabic munażżamatu-l-‘amali-sh-shuyū‘ī fī lubnān, French Organisation de l'Action Communiste du Liban, OCAL) is a Marxist-Leninist political party and former militia group in Lebanon.

[edit] Membership

It was one of Lebanon's few multi-sectarian parties, incorporating Christians, Muslims and Druze, but its main base was among Shi'a Muslims.[1] In the 1980s, it had a membership of about 2000.[2]

[edit] History of the COA

The COA was formed through the merger of the Organization of Socialist Lebanon and the Movement of Lebanese Socialists in 1970, under the leadership of Muhsen Ibrahim. These groups included veterans of the Lebanese branch of the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM), a radical Pan-Arab group which had splintered into national factions in the late 1960s. The COA criticized the Lebanese Communist Party led by George Hawi for 'reformist tendencies'[3], but held unsuccessful talks on a party merger in the mid-1970s.

The COA was involved in the Lebanese Civil War, on the side of the Lebanese National Movement (LNM), of which Ibrahim was Executive Secretary. However, the LNM dissolved after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the expulsion of the PLO from Beirut in 1982. As Syria strengthened its hold on Lebanon, the COA was forced underground, since it refused to give up its alliance with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) of Yassir Arafat, who was opposed to the Syrian President Hafez al-Assad. The COA had strong relations to the Marxist Palestinian faction of Naif Hawatmeh, Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), and was involved with that group's party newspaper al-Hurriya (Liberty).[4]

During 1982-2000, the COA allied to the Shi'a Islamist Hizbullah movement in its campaign of guerrilla warfare against Israeli occupation of South Lebanon.