On January 22, 1981, a presidential decree was promulgated to settle a long-standing dispute over the Deuxième Bureau, which had been under the exclusive control of the commander in chief and which Muslim politicians had sought to place under the authority of the Military Council. The law stipulated that the Deuxième Bureau was answerable directly to the commander in chief but would provide the chief of staff with all information available to it. Because the chief of staff is traditionally a Druze, this compromise allowed other communities to share in some prerogatives formerly reserved for the Christian community alone.
Data as of December 1987