Michel Aoun

Born in 1935 to a Maronite family in Haret Hreik, Aoun graduated from the Military Academy in 1955 and rose to become Lebanon's youngest army commander in 1984. Four years later, as civil war fractured the state, outgoing President Amine Gemayel appointed him interim Prime Minister of a military government - a move that split the country between rival administrations. On 14 March 1989, Aoun launched the War of Liberation against Syrian forces, rejected the Taif Agreement, and survived an assassination attempt before Syrian troops stormed his strongholds in October 1990, forcing him to surrender at the French Embassy and flee to Paris. In exile he founded the Free Patriotic Movement and testified before the U.S. Congress; he returned in 2005 after Syria withdrew, won a parliamentary seat, signed a memorandum with Hezbollah in 2006, and visited Damascus in 2008. A 2016 reconciliation with former rival Samir Geagea cleared his path to the presidency, where he served until 2022 - his final years shadowed by the 2019 uprising and Lebanon's economic collapse.