[1] Duba was born to a small landowning family from the Alawite tribe of Matawira, in the village of Qurfays in the Jableh District south of Latakia.

[2] Duba joined the Syrian Army in 1955 and became the deputy head of internal security at the Damascus branch of the General Intelligence Directorate five years later.

In November 1970, he was appointed the head of military intelligence for the city of Damascus, where he supported Hafez al-Assad's coup d'état.

He was elected to the Central Committee of the Syrian Regional Branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party in 1978, and promoted to general in 1981.

[1] In December 1983, when President Hafez al-Assad was ill, Duba was a member of the committee responsible for governing the state in the interim.