Upon its creation in January 1976, the LAA adopted as emblem a badge featuring an eagle with folded wings and a Lebanese Cedar tree at the centre, holding a scroll on its claws below, which portrayed the Militant group's ideology.

[2][3][4][5][6] On 21 January 1976 at the Elias Abou Sleiman Barracks in Ablah, Zahlé District, in the Beqaa Valley, 900 Lebanese Muslim soldiers serving with the 1st Armoured Brigade (a.k.a.

the 'First Brigade') refused to fight against their coreligionists of the Lebanese National Movement (LNM) and mutinied under the leadership of Lieutenant Ahmed Al-Khatib, a Tank officer who originally commanded a 40 men-strong armored company in Rashaya, and urged his fellow Muslims to desert.

[34] Outside the Lebanese Capital, they also controlled the Kleyate Air Base in the northern Akkar District and the strategic Masnaa Border Crossing, situated on the Beirut-Aley-Damascus highway.

[36] With the active support of their LAA allies,[37] local Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) commanders took over the municipal government of the city, proclaimed the "People's Republic of Tyre", occupied the Lebanese Army's Adloun and Benoit Barakat Barracks, set up roadblocks and started collecting customs at the port.

[38] However, the joint PLO-LAA "People's Republic of Tyre" government quickly lost the political support of the local population,[39][better source needed] mostly due to their "arbitrary and often brutal behavior".

[68][69] Infantry units were provided with tracked M113,[70][71] sixteen M59 amphibious and wheeled Panhard M3 VTT[72] armoured personnel carriers; a few BMP-1 APCs were later captured from the Syrian Army in 1976.

[91][92][93][94] Between January–March 1976, during the episode known as the 'War of the Barracks', Lt. Khatib and his rebellious soldiers managed to seize parts of the Beqaa and south Lebanon regions, and the northern port city of Tripoli, all areas with a clear Muslim majority.

Lt. Khatib later claimed that his LAA faction controlled over 80 percent of Lebanon's territory and was just 10 km away from Jounieh, the unofficial 'Capital' of the Marounistan, an enclave created by the predominately Maronite Christian Lebanese Front militias in late 1976.

[96][97][98][99] On 15 March, the LAA units stationed in Beirut, the Beqaa, and northern Lebanon announced their support to Brigadier general Aziz El-Ahdab's failed coup attempt against President Suleiman Frangieh,[100][101][102] and in the course of the Battle of the Hotels later that month, the LAA provided armored and artillery support to the LNM-PLO joint forces and the Shi'ite Amal Movement militia during their all-out offensive against rightist Lebanese Front militias' positions in central Beirut.

On 21 March, a major assault by special Palestinian PLO 'Commando' units using armored vehicles lent by the LAA and supported by the leftist-Muslim militias finally managed to dislodge the Christian-rightist Kataeb Regulatory Forces (KRF) from the Holiday Inn, in the Hotels district.

[citation needed] Amid intense shelling, the LAA under Maj. Ahmed Boutari launched on 25 March a two-pronged combined ground assault with the LNM militias on the Presidential Palace at Baabda, where they fought the hard-pressed Republican Guard battalion and Marada Brigade militiamen loyal to President Frangieh, although he decamped to the safety of Zouk Mikael, near Jounieh, and later to Kfour in the Keserwan District.