The General in His Labyrinth (original Spanish title: El general en su laberinto) is a novel by the Colombian writer and Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It is a fictionalized account of the last days of Simon Bolivar , liberator and leader of Gran Colombia. Our actual story, has a different trail than Columbia’s and leads to present day Lebanon, where the country has a former General taking it, once more, into a narrow, dangerous path.

This story started with the obsessive ambition of a young Lebanese army officer whose longing for power at any cost (literally) tells a tale of expediency, moral turpitude and opportunistic moves that often (if not always), end up in disasters. After scaling up the national army’s middle ranks, he was spotted by the leader of the Christian militias during the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990), the late Bashir Gemayel. The Christian militias fought the PLO and later Syrian troops, with the help of some regular army officers including, Aoun. After the election of Bashir Gemayel as Lebanon’s president, and his assassination in 1982 by Syrian agents, Aoun moved closer to Bashir’s brother, Amine, who was elected as his successor. Towards the end of Amine’s mandate, which ended in a cul-de-sac when Syria tightened the screws on his presidency, the outgoing president nominated Michel Aoun, as interim Prime Minister, for lack of a better choice. He was by then the commander of the national army. From that moment onward, it has been one Quixotic quest after another, with several descents into the abyss.

Once interim Prime Minister, the General waged war on the Syrian regime, purporting to expel its troops from all of Lebanon’s territory, whilst Aoun himself exerted authority on only 25% of the national soil. In such rightful but asymmetrical war, he forged a brief alliance with Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, who vowed mortal enmity to Assad’s Syria. When such war proved unwinnable, he turned against the Christian militias, at that time led by Samir Geagea. Aoun’s goal, as usual, was to remain the sole leader of the territorial redux under his dominion. That war also proved to be bloody, costly and futile pitting brother against brother and destroying the last enclave the Christians had under their control. The Christian areas were literally devastated, their infrastructure in ruins and a population in despair. In the meantime, the world was tired of Lebanon’s internecine wars and of Aoun’s follies. In 1989, under the auspices of the U.S. and Saudi, Lebanon’s parliamentarians met at the resort town of Taef to amend the national constitution. The postwar power-sharing arrangement allocated power more evenly among Christians and Muslims and saw the office of the presidency clipped of most of its executive powers. The General took issue with such compromise and viewed it as an affront to Lebanon’s sovereignty; he argued that the proposed agreement lacked a timetable for the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. In doing so, he sided against the Maronite Church, the Christian militia, Lebanon’s majority Muslims, and the Arab world, but especially Saudi Arabia.

What ensued was a swift military intervention by Syria, with tacit U.S. consent, that physically ousted the General from his dark labyrinth at the presidential palace and sent him into exile in France for more than a decade. During his years in exile the General honed his diatribe against Syria’s regime and its dictator (Assad père), as well as, against Hezbollah, Iran’s army in Lebanon. He even testified before the U.S. Congress riling against Syria’s excesses and the armed militia of Hezbollah.

Fast forward to 2005, Syrian troops were ousted from Lebanon after the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Syria’s hasty and unglorified exit from Lebanon came under the pressure of popular riots and threats from President G. W. Bush, emboldened by Iraq’s invasion only few months before....