Member State of the Arab League Lebanon portal The Popular Nasserist Organization – PNO (Arabic: التنظيم الشعبي الناصري, romanized: Al-Tanzim al-Sha'aby al-Nassery) is a Sidon-based Nasserist party originally formed in 1973 by Maarouf Saad, a Sunni Muslim pan-Arab politician and member of Parliament (MP) later killed by the Lebanese Army during a February 1975 dock strike held in that port city.

Secretly trained and armed by Fatah, the NLA was initially financed by Yasser Arafat's organization and Libya, later replaced in the mid-1980s by the Sidon-born Saudi-Lebanese millionaire Rafic Hariri, in order to protect his business interests in the Sidon area.

It fielded a 'mechanized' corps provided with a single UR-416 armoured car seized from the Lebanese Forces in 1985,[5][6][7] plus 40 all-terrain vehicles converted into technicals.

[16] Closely allied with the Al-Mourabitoun, the PNO/NLA joined the Lebanese National Movement (LNM) in April 1975,[17] playing a somewhat significant role in the controversial siege of the Christian coastal town of Damour alongside the Al-Mourabitoun, the PLO and Palestine Liberation Army units on 20–22 January 1976,[18][19] and later took part in the 'Spring offensive' held in March that year on the Mount Lebanon region.

Simultaneously, during the Coastal War they joined in a Syrian-backed coalition with the Druze Progressive Socialist Party (PSP), the Sunni Al-Mourabitoun and the Shi'ite Amal Movement, which defeated the Christian Lebanese Forces (LF) attempts to establish bridgeheads at Damour and Sidon.