A Shadow War with Damascus: The Untold Story of Hezbollah's Mustafa Shehadeh

In late October 2014, Hezbollah’s official media arm, Al-Manar TV, announced the death of a foundational yet elusive figure: the “great jihadi leader Mustafa Shehadeh” after a long illness. The broadcast noted that “the late leader Hajj Mustafa Shehadeh spent a long jihad in the ranks of the Islamic Resistance before he passed away after a struggle with a terminal illness.” The eulogy from Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah bestowed upon him a title of high honor: “Knight of the First Shot.” This epithet suggests a pioneer, one of the first to take up arms, yet his name remains far less recognized than those of his peers.

A Founding Shadow

Indeed, Shehadeh’s historical significance is profound. He is identified as a founding member, alongside the more infamous Imad Mughniyeh, Mustafa Badreddine, Fuad Shukr, and Ibrahim Aqil, of the Islamic Jihad Organization in Lebanon in 1982. This shadowy entity was the direct precursor to Hezbollah's formal military wing, the Islamic Resistance. Shehadeh’s personal journey mirrors that of many early Hezbollah cadres. Hailing from the village of Kounin in the Bint Jbeil District of southern Lebanon, he was a participant in the seminal 1983 Ashura peaceful march in Nabatieh. The Israeli military’s shooting into the crowd was a catalytic event that convinced many Southern Lebanese Shias of the necessity of armed resistance. This political awakening led him into the ranks of the Islamic Jihad Organization, which, in a key consolidation of power, merged with Sayyid Abbas Musawi's militants in 1985 to form the unified military wing of Hezbollah.

The Damascus Feud

The narrative of Shehadeh’s career, however, is not one of seamless alliances. It is punctuated by a significant and bloody episode of intra-resistance friction. As detailed by veteran journalist Elijah J. Magnier, the relationship between Syria and Hezbollah in the 1980s was fraught, primarily because “Hezbollah was under Iran’s not Syria’s orbit.” This tension crystallized in 1986 when Mustafa Shehadeh, then responsible for Hezbollah's Beirut sector, personally arrested twelve Syrian soldiers and their officer in West Beirut.

According to Magnier, who met Shehadeh in his Nuweiry office, the Hezbollah commander did not merely detain the Syrians; he deliberately humiliated them by “beating them up, shaving their heads and one side of the officer’s moustache before releasing them.” Shehadeh compounded this provocation by burning the Syrian Army vehicles and warning them never to return. This was a stark declaration of autonomy from a non-state actor towards a dominant regional power.

The Syrian response was swift and brutal. Two months later, on February 26, 1987, Syrian forces under General Ghazi Kanaan entered West Beirut and positioned themselves in the Basta area—the very locale of Shehadeh’s defiance. There, they surrounded a building where two dozen Hezbollah members were gathered for the weekly Shia prayer of Dua’ Kumayl. The Syrians opened fire, killing 24 men. Only one, Mohammad al-Shami, survived his wounds to inform the party of the massacre.

The crisis escalated to the brink of all-out war. Magnier testifies that Imad Mughniyeh himself gathered 400 fighters with the explicit aim of annihilating the 120 Syrian soldiers in the area to avenge their fallen comrades. This retaliatory strike was only halted, Magnier reports, because “Iran used all of its influence to force Hezbollah to lift the siege,” presenting Tehran as a “cooler headed” mediator compared to the “enthusiastic and young inexperienced Hezbollah” of the time.

An Unhealed Wound

This history was not forgotten. In 2009, Shehadeh’s name resurfaced in a context that demonstrated the longevity of political memory. A report from Lebreports blog indicated that Hezbollah’s appointment of Mustafa Shehadeh as head of its military wing in Beirut had “angered Syrian authorities.” The report explicitly linked the appointment to the 1987 clash, noting that “Shehadeh was responsible for opening fire at Syrian soldiers when they tried to storm a Hezbollah barracks in Beirut.” The source further speculated that this promotion was part of a broader realignment within Hezbollah’s military leadership, driven by a loss of confidence in Damascus following the 2008 assassination of Imad Mughniyeh in Syria. Alleged measures included restricting Hezbollah security officials from traveling to Syria and drastically reducing the party’s permanent representation in Damascus.

The Adversary's View

Following Shehadeh’s death, his profile was also noted by adversarial sources. The Israeli outlet Israel National News published a report framing him as a significant international terrorist commander. Their account confirmed his status as a founding member and noted he had been considered a potential successor to the assassinated Mughniyeh, selected precisely because his low media profile kept him “behind the scenes.”

The report attributed to Shehadeh a portfolio of global operations, a role it termed “commander of International Operations.” According to this narrative, he was “apparently responsible” for several major attacks, including the 2012 suicide bombing in Burgas, Bulgaria, which killed five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver; the operations of a cell in Thailand; and the 1994 suicide attack near the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires. Intriguingly, the Israeli report also reiterated his infamous role in “opening fire at Syrian soldiers” in 1987, an event significant enough to be memorialized by both allies and adversaries.

The Final Vanish

The final mystery surrounding Mustafa Shehadeh “Abu Ahmad” concerns his notable absence from the front lines of the Syrian Civil War after 2011. For a senior military commander of his stature to be absent from Hezbollah’s most significant extraterritorial campaign is analytically conspicuous. Two plausible explanations can be presented. First, his long-term illness, which ultimately claimed his life, may have simply incapacitated him. Second, and more strategically, his presence may have been politically untenable for the necessary military coordination with the Syrian Arab Army. The humiliation he inflicted upon Syrian troops in 1986 and the subsequent massacre he provoked were not forgotten slights. For senior Syrian officers, many of whom would have been contemporaries of the late General Ghazi Kanaan, having the “Knight of the First Shot” against their forces operating in their country could have been a bridge too far.

It is a historical irony that Abu Ahmad outlived his Syrian nemesis, General Ghazi Kanaan—who was found dead in 2005 in an incident officially ruled a suicide but widely suspected to be an assassination. If, as some Israeli sources allege, Hezbollah was behind it, then Shehadeh witnessed the fall of his old adversary. Mustafa Shehadeh’s career, therefore, serves as a critical lens through which to view Hezbollah’s complex evolution: from a fractious resistance movement navigating the pressures of regional patrons to a disciplined state-within-a-state, yet one still grappling with the enduring legacies of its founding knights and their early, contentious shots.

• This article is written by Abu Dhar al-Bosni (lokiloptr154668 on X) and does not necessarily reflect the views of A.E.P. (the owner of the website), nor does it necessarily represent an agreement with these perspectives.