Shabiha

Shabiha (North Levantine Arabic: شبيحة šabbīḥa , pronounced [ʃabˈbiːħa]; also romanized Shabeeha or Shabbiha ; loosely translated "spirits", "ghosts", "shadows", or "apparitions") are mostly Alawite groups of armed militia in support of the Ba'ath Party government of Syria, led by the Al-Assad family.

The Syrian opposition stated that the shabiha are a tool of the government for cracking down on dissent.Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has stated that some of the shabiha are mercenaries.

Before the Syrian civil war

According to Shabiha privately interviewed by The Star in 2012, the Shabiha were established in the 1980s by Namir al-Assad, President Hafez al-Assad's cousin, and Rifaat al-Assad, the former president's brother. They were originally concentrated in the Mediterranean region of Syria around Latakia, Banias and Tartous, where they allegedly benefited from smuggling through the ports in the area. The shabiha, who were named for the Arabic word for ghost or for the Mercedes S600 that was popular for its smuggling sized trunk and was called the Shabah, were known by the Alawites in Syria as Alawi ganglords. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, they smuggled food, cigarettes and commodities, subsidized by the government, from Syria into Lebanon and sold them for a massive profit, while luxury cars, guns and drugs were smuggled in reverse from Lebanon up the Bekaa Valley and into Syria's state controlled economy.