It was founded in 1937 as the "Fighter's organization" (Arabic: تنظيم المقاتلين| Tanẓīm al-muqātilīn) by the President of the Party, the za'im (political boss) Pierre Gemayel and William Hawi, a Lebanese-American glass industrialist, who led them during the 1958 civil war.

In order to coordinate the activities of all Phalange paramilitary forces, the Political Bureau set up the Kataeb War Council (Arabic: Majliss al-Harbi) in 1970, with William Hawi being appointed as head.

[3] The seat of the council was allocated at the Kataeb Party's Headquarters at the heart of Achrafieh quarter in East Beirut and a quiet expansion of KRF units followed suit, complemented by the development of a training infrastructure.

Each section was responsible for handling all defensive or offensive military operations on their home districts, except for the regular units (the "Commando", Maghaweer and PG companies), which were often deployed as mobile quick reaction forces.

[14] Prior to the war, the Kataeb militia initially received covert support from the Lebanese Army, Egypt and Jordan, and from well-connected right-wing sympathisers in Spain, France, Belgium, Britain, and West Germany.

Weapons were procured in the international black market or directly from eastern bloc countries, namely Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania; from January 1976 onwards they were secretly financed and armed by Israel, though they also received some aid from Syria.

[17] Phalangist militiamen were provided with a variety of small arms, comprising Lee–Enfield SMLE Mk III,[18] Pattern 1914 Enfield, MAS-36[18] and Karabiner 98k[18] bolt-action rifles, M1 Garand (or its Italian-produced copy, the Beretta Model 1952), Vz.

[59] Considered by many analysts as the best organized of all militia "fiefs" in the whole of Lebanon, it was administrated by a network of Phalangist-controlled business corporations headed by "Chef" Boutros Khawand, which included the GAMMA Group brain-trust, the DELTA computer company, and the SONAPORT holding.

The latter run since 1975 the legal commercial ports of Jounieh and Beirut, including the infamous clandestine "Dock Five" (French: Cinquième basin), near the Karantina KRF's HQ, from which the Phalange extracted additional revenues by levying illegal taxes and carried out drug-trafficking and arms-smuggling operations.

[60][61][62] The Canton was also served by a clandestine-built airstrip, the Pierre Gemayel International Airport, opened in 1976 at Hamat, north of Batroun,[63] and had its own radio station, "The Voice of Lebanon" (Arabic: Iza'at Sawt Loubnan) or "La Voix du Liban" (VDL) in French, set up in that same year.

On 24 March 1970 a squad of Phalange militiamen led by Bashir Gemayel ambushed a PLO funeral cortege heading for Damascus when it passed through the Christian village of Kahale in the Aley District, killing ten people and wounding an even greater number, mostly Palestinians.

[82] On 1 November 1978, at the Saint Nicholas Church crossing in Achrafieh, KRF militiamen ambushed the motorcade of the then Lebanese Defense and Foreign Affairs Minister Fouad Boutros, escorted by a commando detachment from the Counter-sabotage regiment (Arabic: Moukafaha).

The ambush was carried out in retaliation for the death of the pro-Phalangist Captain Samir el-Achkar, leader of the dissident Lebanese Army Revolutionary Command (LARC) and a close friend of Bashir Gemayel, during a raid by the Moukafaha commandos on his headquarters at Mtaileb in the Matn District earlier that same day.

[94] The Phalangists' failure to absorb or destroy the rival Marada Brigade of the Frangieh Clan in the months immediately after the Ehden killings of June 1978 resulted in a severe blow to Bashir's plans.

In July 1980 Bashir Gemayel proceeded to dismantle the military infrastructure of the NLP Tigers led by his rival Dany Chamoun, with the KRF destroying the backbone of the National Liberals' militia and incorporating the rest after fierce fighting in the East Beirut area that lasted until November that year.

[13] Raised in 1975–76 with material help from the Lebanese Army and trained by the then Colonel Ibrahim Tannous,[104] the Force 75 was financed by a small network of private business companies that included the ASU, colloquially known as the "Amin Special Unit" (Arabic: وحدة أمين الخاصة | Wahdat 'Amin al-Khasa), which excelled in extracting revenues from local traders in the form of paid services and protection rackets.

[103] By December 1980, the Force 75 aligned 3,000 uniformed fighters[105] organized into several light infantry companies backed by technicals equipped with Heavy machine-guns, recoilless rifles and AA autocannons.