Sons of the South
Lebanese Nationalist Militant Group
The Sons of the South – SotS (Arabic: أبناء العرقوب transliterated Abna'a Al-Orkoub) were a small mixed religion militant faction based in southern Lebanon, active during the Lebanese Civil War.
Activities 1983-1995
Allegedly funded and trained by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) intelligence service (Hebrew: Aman), and believed to be a mere cover for the Guardians of the Cedars (GoC) or the South Lebanon Army (SLA), the Sons of the South were formed in 1983 and usually operated in the Jabal Amil region close to the Israeli-controlled 'Security Zone'. The group emerged in July 1984, when they kidnapped Sheikh Mohammed Hassan Amin, a prominent Shi'ite cleric of Southern Lebanon whom the IDF accused of inciting guerrilla attacks on Israeli and SLA soldiers. Since this incident, the Sons of the South have not been held responsible for further terrorist attacks or kidnappings and it is believed that this group was disbanded around the mid-1990s, possibly by order of the Israeli authorities. They are no longer active.
“Sons of the South” enters the record as lebanese Nationalist Militant Group. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Sons, South and Lebanese can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7562382. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1983, 1995 and 1984.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sons of the South” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.