Battle of Zahleh
The Battle of Zahleh (Arabic: معركة زحلة) took place during the Lebanese Civil War, between December 1980 and June 1981. During the seven-month period, the city of Zahle (Arabic: زحلة) endured a handful of political and military setbacks. The opposing key players were on the one side, the Lebanese Forces or LF (Arabic: القوات اللبنانية) aided by Zahlawi townspeople, and on the other side, the Syrian Armed Forces, then part of the peace-keeping Arab Deterrent Force or ADF (Arabic: قوات الردع العربية), aided by some Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) factions. Demographically, Zahleh is one of the largest predominantly Christian towns in Lebanon. Adjacent to the town's outskirts, the Bekaa valley (Arabic: وادي البقاع), spanning the length of the Syrian borders. Given Zahleh's close proximity to the Bekaa Valley, the Syrian Armed Forces feared a potential alliance between Israel and the LF in Zahleh. This potential alliance would not only threaten the Syrian military presence in the Bekaa valley, but was regarded as a national security threat from the Syrians' point of view, given the close proximity between Zahleh and the Beirut-Damascus highway. Consequently, as a clamp-down strategy, the Syrian forces controlled the major roads leading in and out of the