Michel Aoun

Biography

Michel Aoun is a Lebanese army officer and politician who was president of Lebanon from 2016 to 2022. A Maronite Christian from the Haret Hreik area of Beirut, he trained at the Lebanese military academy and studied further in France, including at the École supérieure de guerre. He rose through the army during the civil war and was named its commander in 1984.

In 1988, when parliament failed to elect a successor to President Amine Gemayel, the outgoing president appointed Aoun to head a military government, which rivalled a civilian government in West Beirut. He rejected the 1989 Taif Agreement and fought both the Syrian army and the Lebanese Forces until Syrian troops drove him from the presidential palace in October 1990. He spent the next fifteen years in exile in France, from where he led the Free Patriotic Movement.

Aoun returned to Lebanon after Syria's withdrawal in 2005 and was elected to parliament. In 2006 his movement signed an understanding with Hezbollah, and it joined the opposition protests that paralysed central Beirut until 2008. After a vacancy of more than two years he was elected president in October 2016. His term saw the 2019 protest movement, a deep financial collapse, and the Beirut port explosion of August 2020; it ended in October 2022 with no successor chosen.