Hafez al-Assad
| Hafez al-Assad حافظ الأسد |
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President of Syria
Military rule |
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| In office 22 February 1971 – 10 June 2000 |
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| President | Ahmad al-Khatib |
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| Preceded by | Ahmad al-Khatib |
| Succeeded by | Abdul Halim Khaddam (Interim) |
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Prime Minister of Syria
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| In office 21 November 1970 – 3 April 1971 |
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| Preceded by | Nureddin al-Atassi |
| Succeeded by | Abdul Rahman Kleifawi |
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| Born | 6 October 1930 Qardaha, French Mandate of Syria |
| Died | 10 June 2000 (aged 69) Damascus, Syria |
| Political party | Baath Party |
| Spouse(s) | Aniseh (née Makhluf) |
| Religion | Alawite |
| Nickname(s) | "Butcher of Hama", "Lion of Damascus"[1] |
Hafez al-Assad (Arabic: حافظ الأسد Ḥāfiẓ al-Asad) (October 6, 1930 – June 10, 2000) was the president of Syria for three decades. Assad's rule stabilized and consolidated the power of the country's central government after decades of coups and counter-coups. He was succeeded by his son and current president Bashar al-Assad in 2000.
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Early life
Hafez al-Assad was born in the town of Qardaha in the Latakia province of western Syria (then a French Mandate) into a minority Alawite family. He was the first member of the Assad family to attend high school. He attended Jules Jammal High School in Lattakia from which he graduated. He joined the Baath Party in 1946 at the age of 16.
Air Force career
Because his family had no money to send him to university, Assad commenced military study at the Homs Military Academy in 1952. While at the Academy he met Mustafa Tlass. In 1955 Assad graduated and was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Syrian Air Force, making him one of the first Alawis to join the air force. Continuing with his Baathist activities, Assad also showed considerable talent, becoming a skilled combat and acrobatics display pilot, flying the Gloster Meteor jet fighter as well as other types. In 1957 Assad's abilities led to him being sent for additional training in the Soviet Union where he studied military science.
He opposed the 1958 union between Syria and Egypt which created the United Arab Republic (UAR). Stationed in Cairo, he worked with other officers to end the union, sticking to his pan-Arab ideals while arguing that the UAR concentrated too much power in the hands of Gamal Abdel Nasser's regime. Assad was then assigned to a posts in rural Egypt away from political activity. At the breakup of the union in 1961, Assad was briefly imprisoned by the Egyptian authorities. Tlass escorted his family to Syria, where he later rejoined them.
As part of a political purge, Assad was required to leave the air force. From 1961 to 1963 he worked at the Ministry of Sea Transportation and simultaneously focussed on Baath Party political activities. Assad and others planned the 1963 revolution which took the Baath Party to power. Following the revolution Assad returned to the Air Force in the rank of major. Syria was officially ruled by Amin Hafiz, a Sunni Muslim, but was in practice dominated by a coterie of young Alawite Baathists.
The following year (1964) Assad jumped several ranks to become a general and was appointed to the Baath Party's regional command. The following year he became Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force. This military power allowed Assad, operating in conjunction with Salah Jadid, to overthrow the government of Amin Hafiz in 1966.
In government
In 1966, the Baath launched a coup d'etat within the government and cleared out the other parties from the government. Assad became Minister of Defence and wielded considerable influence over government policy. However, there was much tension between the dominant radical wing of the Baath Party, which promoted an aggressive foreign policy and rapid social reform, and Assad's more pragmatic, military-based faction. After being discredited by the failure of the Syrian military in the Six-Day War in 1967, and enraged by the aborted Syrian intervention in the Jordanian-Palestinian Black September war, the government faced conflict within its ranks. By the time President Nureddin al-Atassi and the de facto leader, deputy secretary general of the Baath Party Salah Jadid, realized the threat and ordered Assad and Tlass be stripped of all party and government power, it was too late. Assad swiftly launched a bloodless intra-party coup, The Corrective Revolution of 1970. The party was purged, Atassi and Jadid jailed, and Assad loyalists installed in key posts throughout the government.
Presidency
Police state
Al-Assad inherited a dictatorial government shaped by years of unstable military rule, and lately organized along one-party lines after the Baathist coup. He increased repression and attempted to secure his domination of every sector of society through a vast web of police informers and agents. Under his rule, Syria turned genuinely authoritarian. He was made the object of a state-sponsored cult of personality, which depicted as a wise, just, and strong leader of Syria and of the Arab world in general.
Syria under Assad never quite reached the levels of repression practiced in neighboring Iraq, ruled by a rivaling Baathist faction. Where Saddam Hussein's policies of perpetual state terrorism aimed to secure his rule through fear, Hafez al-Assad took a more sophisticated approach: rather than immediately brutalizing restive communities, his government often bribed or threatened dissidents. Only after milder forms of persuasion had failed would swords come out. Then, the government could be counted on to act with unflinching cruelty in order to intimidate all would-be dissidents.
Stability and reforms
Whilst dictatorial, the government of al-Assad initially achieved some popularity for bringing stability to the country, which had experienced dozens of attempted coups since 1948. He also implemented many social reforms and infrastructure projects, notably the Thawra (Revolution) dam on the Euphrates River. It was built with Soviet assistance, and still supplies much of Syria's electricity. Public schooling and other reforms were extended to larger segments of the population, and a notable rise in living standards occurred. The government's secularism meant that many members of religious minorities, such as the Alawites, Druze, and Christians, naturally supported Assad, fearing a return to historic persecution under a Sunni Islamist successor government to Assad.
Assad also continued previous Baath policies by overseeing massive increases in Syria's military strength (again with Soviet support) and by maintaining a strong Arab nationalist position. School curricula and the state-controlled media gave much attention to the glorious past of Syria and the Arabs, and portrayed al-Assad's government as the lone uncorrupted champion of the Arab nation against Western imperialism and aggression. This propaganda aimed to legitimize the government, but also to unify the diverse and fractured Syrian society, and instill a sense of national pride among the populace.
Currency crisis
During 1985-2000, Assad's administration failed to arrest the 90 per cent fall in the worth of the Syrian Pound from 3 to 47 to the US Dollar.
Muslim Brotherhood Uprising
In 1979, the Syrian public was shocked by a chain of assassinations which took place starting in the artillery school in Aleppo. No one could identify who was responsible for these assassinations. After almost a year, a member from the group believed to be behind the assassinations was injured and taken into custody by the Syrian intelligence system. He was identified as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood party. The party's goals were to eliminate all persons who had strong ties with the government or Baath party, focusing on Baathists who were educated and had a good reputation within the government, or army high ranking members who were members of Assad's family or Alawites. It took Syrian intelligence a long time to penetrate the Muslim Brotherhood and diminish its power. Syrian security forces were, in some incidents, brutal. Many innocent civilians died in the battles between the army and the party members. Some sources estimate that the number of civilians killed was between 150,000 and 200,000. The violence damaged the national growth of the Syrian economy. The Muslim Brotherhood organization aimed to weaken the government's authority, hoping to take over the government.
Challenge from Rifaat
In 1983, Assad suffered a heart attack and was confined to hospital. He named a six-man governing council to run the country in his absence, among them long-time Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass, Hafez-al Assad believed that they were less likely to try to seize power. Despite this, rumors spread that Assad was dead or nearly so, and indeed his condition was serious. In 1984, his brother Rifaat al-Assad attempted to use the security forces under his control to seize power. His Defence Company troops of some 50,000 men, complete with tanks and helicopters, began putting up roadblocks throughout Damascus, and tensions between Hafez loyalists and Rifaat supporters came close to all-out war. The stand-off was not ended until Hafez, still ill, rose from his bed to reassume power and speak to the nation. He transferred command of the Defence Company and, without formal accusations, shortly after Rifaat were exiled to France until this day.[2]
Foreign policy
Israel
Al-Assad's foreign policy was shaped by the relation of Syria to Israel, although this conflict both preceded him and persists after his death. During his presidency, Syria played a major role in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. The war is presented by the Syrian government as a victory, as Syria regained some territory that had been occupied in 1967 through peace negotiations headed by Henry Kissinger. Since then Assad-led Syria has carefully respected the UN-monitored ceasefire line in the occupied Golan Heights. The Syrian government has denied the state of Israel any recognition, and long preferred to refer to it as a "Zionist Entity". Only in the mid-1990s did Hafez moderate his country's policy towards Israel, as he realized the loss of Soviet support meant a different balance of power in the Middle East. Pressed by the United States, he engaged in negotiations on the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, but these talks ultimately failed. Al-Assad believed that what constituted Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, were an integral part of "Southern Syria."[3][4]
Lebanon
Syria deployed troops to Lebanon in 1976, officially in response to a request from the Lebanese government for Syrian military intervention during the Lebanese Civil War. It is alleged that the Syrian presence in Lebanon began earlier with its involvement in as-Saiqa, a Palestinian militia composed primarily of Syrians. The Arab League agreed to send a peacekeeping force mostly formed by Syrian troops. The initial goals were to save the Lebanese government from being overun by the Left and the Palestinian militancy. Critics allege that this eventually turned into an occupation by 1982, which is more or less not disputed within the Lebanese community. The Syrian presence ended in 2005, due to the UN resolution 1559 after the Rafiq Hariri assassination and the March 14 protests.
Palestinians
The hostile attitude to Israel meant vocal support for the Palestinians, but that did not translate into friendly relations with their organizations. Hafez al-Assad was always wary of independent Palestinian organizations, as he aimed to bring the Palestinian issue under Syrian control in order to use it as a political tool. He soon developed an implacable animosity towards Yassir Arafat's PLO, against which Syria fought bloody battles in Lebanon.
As Arafat allegedly moved the PLO in a more moderate direction, supposedly seeking compromise with Israel, al-Assad also feared regional isolation, and he resented the PLO underground's operations in Palestinian refugee camps in Syria. Arafat was depicted by Syria as a rogue madman and an American marionette, and after accusing him of supporting the Hama revolt, al-Assad backed the 1983 Abu Musa rebellion inside Arafat's Fatah-movement. A number of unsuccessful Syrian attempts to kill Arafat were also made.
Iraq
Even though Iraq was ruled by another branch of the Baath Party, Assad's relations with Saddam Hussein were extremely strained. Hostile rhetoric was intense, and until Saddam's fall in 2003, Iraq was listed in Syrian passports as one of the two countries no Syrian citizen could visit (the other being Israel). But with the exception of a few border guard skirmishes and mutual support for cross-border raids by opposition groups, no heavy fighting broke out until 1991, when Syria joined the US-led UN coalition to expel Iraq from Kuwait.
Death and succession
Assad had originally groomed his son, Basil al-Assad as his successor, but he died in a car accident in 1994. Assad then called back a second son, Bashar, and put him in intensive military and political training, with Bashar becoming a staff colonel in the military of Syria.[5] Despite some concerns of unrest within the government, the succession ultimately went smoothly, and Bashar holds office today. Hafez al-Assad is buried together with Basil in a mausoleum in his hometown of Qardaha.
See also
References
Further reading
- Fisk, Robert (2001, 3rd edition). Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-280130-9 (pp. 181–187)
- Hitti Philip K. (2002). History of Syria Including Lebanon and Palestine, Vol. 2 (ISBN 1-931956-61-8)
- Firzli, Nicola Y. (1973). Al-Baath wa-Lubnân [Arabic only] ("The Baath and Lebanon"), Beirut: Dar-al-Tali'a Books.
- Firzli, Nicola Y. (1981). The Iraq-Iran Conflict. Paris: EMA. ISBN 2-86584-002-6
- Friedman, Thomas (1990, British edition). From Beirut to Jerusalem. HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 0-00-653070-2 (pp. 76–105)
- Sallam, Qasim (1980). Al-Baath wal Watan Al-Arabi [Arabic, with French translation] ("The Baath and the Arab Homeland"). Paris: EMA. ISBN 2-86584-003-4
- Seale, Patrick (1988). Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-06976-5
External links
- President Hafez Al-Assad CV
- President Hafez Al-Assad Speeches & Interviews
- President Hafez Al-Assad Pictures
| Preceded by Nureddin al-Atassi |
Prime Minister of Syria 1970–1971 |
Succeeded by Abdul Rahman Khleifawi |
| Preceded by Ahmad al-Khatib (Head of State) |
President of Syria 1971–2000 |
Succeeded by Abdul Halim Khaddam (acting) |
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