The Secret War Inside Syrian Intelligence: Pro-Gulf vs. Pro-Iranian Factions and the Forgotten Story of Fatah al-Islam, 2005-2011

Introduction: A Pawn in a Larger Game

The rise and actions of Fatah al-Islam, a Lebanese-Palestinian takfiri militant group, are often treated as a discrete episode within Lebanon's turbulent history. However, a closer examination reveals that the group was a significant pawn in a broader, clandestine conflict waged between pro-Gulf and pro-Iranian factions within the Syrian intelligence apparatus in the years leading up to the 2011 civil war. This shadow war, which exploited regional rivalries, set the stage for the catastrophic conflict to come.

The Architect: Shaker al-Abssi's Militant Journey

The group was led by Shaker al-Abssi, a Palestinian refugee born in Jericho in 1955 and a former pilot who held the rank of colonel. Al-Abssi's militant trajectory is illustrative of the complex alliances that define the region. His initial involvement was with Fatah al-Intifada, a secular Palestinian group that had defected from the mainstream Fatah movement in 1983. From his base in Libya, al-Abssi moved to Damascus, where he cultivated a close relationship with Abu Khaled al-Omla, Fatah al-Intifada's second-in-command. This connection would prove foundational.

Despite these ties, Syrian authorities arrested al-Abssi in 2000 on weapons smuggling charges, sentencing him to three years in prison. His subsequent release exemplifies the ambiguous and often contradictory nature of state sponsorship. Following his release, he traveled to Iraq after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, where he fought alongside Al-Qaeda affiliates and built relationships with its leadership. Upon his brief return to Syria, his patron, al-Omla, facilitated his relocation to Lebanon in 2005.

Birth of a Militant Group: From Fatah al-Intifada to Fatah al-Islam

Al-Abssi and a cadre of fighters he had met in Iraq established themselves in a Fatah al-Intifada headquarters in the village of Helwa in Lebanon's Western Beqaa District. The situation escalated in May 2006 when this small group clashed with Lebanese soldiers, resulting in the death of a young Syrian who was wanted by Damascus for his activities in Iraq. This incident triggered a response from Syrian intelligence, which summoned al-Omla for questioning. The investigation uncovered a critical fact: the coordination between al-Omla and al-Abssi had been deliberately concealed from both Fatah al-Intifada's pro-Damascus leader, Abu Musa, and from the Syrian authorities themselves. In response, al-Omla ordered al-Abssi to move his operations away from the Syrian border to the Palestinian refugee camps in northern Lebanon.

The group's final formation was catalyzed in November 2006, when Palestinian security in the Beddawi camp handed two of al-Abssi’s men over to Lebanese military intelligence. Enraged, al-Abssi formally broke with Fatah al-Intifada and established his own entity, Fatah al-Islam, seizing three of his former patron's compounds in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp. In his founding declaration, he explicitly framed his mission as a project to "return religion to the Palestinian cause," marking an ideological shift from the secularism of his former allies.

The Geopolitical Patronage: A Covert Sunni Counterweight

The group's allegiances and sources of support quickly became a subject of intense international speculation. In March 2007, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a report in The New Yorker suggesting that the U.S.-backed Lebanese government of Fouad Siniora was channeling support to Fatah al-Islam as a Sunni counterweight to the Shia Hezbollah. Hersh reported that U.S. Assistant Secretary of State David Welch had negotiated with Saudi Arabia and Lebanese politician Saad Hariri to funnel aid to the group for this express purpose. While Fatah al-Islam's organizational links to Al-Qaeda were debated—al-Abssi himself denied formal ties while espousing a shared ideology—Hersh later elaborated on CNN, stating that an agreement between U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and Elliott Abrams had established a covert Saudi funding pipeline for the Sunni militants. Hersh quoted Lebanese officials who admitted they "were tolerating the radical jihadist groups... as a protection against Hezbollah."

Hezbollah itself was acutely aware of this dynamic. The group released a statement arguing that unnamed forces were deliberately dragging the Lebanese army into a confrontation to "serve well-known projects and aims," and called for a political solution.

The Parallel War: Assassinations and Internal Betrayal

Concurrently, a parallel shadow war was being waged against key figures in the Syrian-Iranian alliance. In 2008, both Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbollah's military mastermind, and General Mohammad Sulaiman, a senior Alawi official known as the "father of Syria's chemical weapons program," were assassinated. The precision of these operations, particularly the killing of Mughniyeh in the tightly controlled Damascus neighborhood of Kafr Sousa, suggests a high level of intelligence penetration.

It is highly probable that pro-Gulf elements within the Syrian Mukhabarat, hostile to Damascus's strategic alliance with Iran, facilitated these assassinations by betraying the locations of these two men, who were central pillars of Syrian-Iranian military cooperation.

Conclusion: The "Proto-FSA" Within and the Prelude to 2011

These events were not isolated incidents but part of a gradual process of regime destabilization. The process leading to the 2011 war began years earlier, with Sunni elites like Vice President Abdul Halim Khaddam and the Tlass family growing disillusioned with Bashar al-Assad following the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. The Gulf monarchies, recognizing this rift, began financing defections and building opposition networks. This "slow regime change" orchestrated by pro-Gulf Sunni urban elites was already underway in the second half of the 2000s, a process exacerbated by a severe financial crisis in 2007.

Therefore, the fact that Fatah al-Islam was a splinter not from the mainstream PLO but from Fatah al-Intifada—a group that was a Syrian proxy through and through—is critically significant. It provides compelling evidence for the existence of a "pro-Gulf vs. pro-Iran" secret war within the Syrian Arab Army and Mukhabarat between 2005 and 2011, a conflict that only culminated in open warfare years later. This context is vital for understanding the period.

It is thus inaccurate to freely use the term "Assadists" to describe Syrian anti-Hezbollah elements in 2007-08. In reality, these were often "proto-FSA" elements operating from within the regime's own security apparatus, actively working to undermine the Syria-Hezbollah-Iran axis. Their methods included both the tacit permission and covert support for the Fatah al-Islam episode and the likely betrayal of key figures like Mughniyeh and Suleiman. This internal fracture, more than any external pressure, was the true harbinger of Syria's collapse.

• 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.