Fuad Chehab

General Fuad Chehab was born into the aristocratic Maronite Chehab dynasty in Ghazir and graduated from the École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr in France. In 1945, he became the first Commander of the newly created Lebanese Armed Forces, establishing a strictly non-sectarian, professional military institution.

Elected president following the 1958 crisis, Chehab instituted transformative socio-economic modernization known as 'Chehabism'. Commissioning the IRFED mission to reduce regional inequality, he established the Central Bank of Lebanon, the Civil Service Council, the National Social Security Fund (CNSS), and modern infrastructure, universally remembered as Lebanon's most upright and visionary statesman.