SUMMARY

The Fatah Revolutionary Council, more often referred to as ANO (Abu Nidal Organisation), broke away from Fatah in the 1970s. The organization grew and “was once one of the most feared transnational terrorist organizations in the world”. By 1990 the group had made enemies with many countries around the world, but also with Fatah. There had been a campaign from Fatah Revolutionary Council’s enemies to play on the leader’s paranoia, something that may have encouraged his assassination of some of his close associates in the 1980s. When, in 1989, Abu Bakr, a leading figure of the ANO left for PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) and when, in 1990, the US government struck down on some of the major financers of ANO, who were living in the US, a conflict started to grow closer.

In the summer of 1990 Fatah troops struck a camp of ANO in south Lebanon and in the clashes that took place in the following months, much of ANO’s members in Lebanon were either killed or captured. By mid-September 1990 PLO chairman Yasser Arafat had taken control of the Palestinian refugee camps in south Lebanon that were previously in ANO’s control. The remaining members of the Fatah Revolutionary Council escaped Lebanon and the direct conflict between the two groups was ended.

The non-state conflict between Fatah andFatah Revolutionary Council is first included in UCDP data in 1990. In September of that year violent clashes between the two groups had resulted in more than 25 battle-related deaths.