Lebanese Youth Movement (MKG)

The Lebanese Youth Movement – LYM (Arabic: حركة الشباب اللبنانية | Harakat al-Shabab al-Lubnaniyya), also known as the Maroun Khoury Group (MKG), was a Christian far-right militia which fought in the 1975-77 phase of the Lebanese Civil War.

Origins
The LYM was founded in the early 1970s as an association of Maronite right-wing university students by Bashir Maroun el-Khoury (nom de guerre "Bash Maroun"), the son of the former head of the Dekwaneh district of East Beirut, Naim el-Khoury.

Political beliefs
Being violently anti-communist and anti-Palestinian, the group's ideology stemmed from the extremist Phoenicist theories espoused by the Guardians of the Cedars.

Civil war 1975-77
The LYM/MKG joined the Lebanese Front in 1975-76 and raised its own militia with training, funds and weapons being provided by the Kataeb Party and Israel. It consisted of about 500-1,000 fighters, backed by a small armoured force made of ex-Lebanese army Panhard AML-90 armoured cars and Land-Rovers fitted with US M18A1 57mm recoilless rifles and heavy machine-guns. Personally commanded by Bash Maroun, they usually operated in the Ras-el-Dekwaneh, Ain el-Rammaneh and Mansouriye districts, manning the local sections of the Green Line, but also fought in other areas, earning a reputation of fierce combatants.

Controversy
However, they were also renowned for their brutality – In January 1976, a force of 100 LYM militiamen took part in the sieges and subsequent massacres of the Palestinian refugee camps situated at the town of Dbayeh in the Metn, and at Karantina, al-Maslakh and Tel al-Zaatar in East Beirut. The cruelty displayed by MKG members’ in these and other atrocities, earned them the unflattering nickname “The Ghosts of the Cemeteries” – Bash Maroun’s men were normally seen wearing necklaces made from human body parts cut from their victims. The MKG was subsequently absorbed into the Lebanese Forces in 1977, thereafter ceasing to exist as an independent organization.