Hafez al-Assad

Hafez ibn 'Ali ibn Sulayman al-Assad or more commonly Hafez al-Assad (Arabic: حافظ الأسد‎ Ḥāfiẓ al-Asad, 6 October 1930 – 10 June 2000) was the President of Syria for three decades. Assad's rule consolidated the power of the central government after decades of coups and counter-coups,^[1] and continued foreign influence related to the cold war.^[2] His rule brought changes, including the 1973 constitution which stated that it guaranteed women's "equal status in society".^[3] Assad attempted to industrialize the country, and it was opened up to foreign markets. He invested in infrastructure, education, medicine, literacy and urban construction. As a result of the discovery of oil, the economy expanded.^[4]

He also drew criticism for repression of his own people, in particular for ordering the Hama massacre of 1982, which has been described as "the single deadliest act by any Arab government against its own people in the modern Middle East"; as well as others such as the Tadmor Prison massacre, the Siege of Aleppo, Tel al-Zaatar massacre and the October 13 massacre.^[5][6] Additionally, Human Rights groups have detailed thousands of extrajudicial executions he committed against opponents of his regime.^[7]

He was succeeded by his son, current president, in 2000.

Early life

Hafez ibn 'Ali ibn Sulayman al-Assad was born into a poor family, 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, Jules Jammal High School in Lattakia. He joined the Ba'ath Party in 1946 at the age of 16.^[8]

Air Force career

Assad attended Homs Military Academy in 1952. 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. He became a combat and aerobatics display pilot, flying the Gloster Meteor jet fighter as well as other types. He shot down a British plane during the Suez Operation.^[9] While at the Academy, he met Mustafa Tlass. In 1957, he was sent for additional training in the Soviet Union. While stationed in Cairo, he developed a pan-Arab ideology and came to believe that the U.A.R. concentrated too much power in the hands of Gamal Abdel Nasser. Assad was then assigned to a post in rural Egypt away from political activity. At the breakup of the union in 1961, Assad was briefly imprisoned by the Egyptian authorities.

Political career

From 1961 to 1963 he worked at the Ministry of Sea Transportation while focusing on Ba'ath Party political activities. Assad and others planned the 1963 coup d'état, which took the Ba'ath Party to power. Following the coup, 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 young Alawite Ba'athists.

The following year, 1964, Assad jumped several ranks to become a general and was appointed to the Ba'ath 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 1966, the neo-Ba'ath led by Jadid launched a coup d'état within the government and against the Ba'ath Party's national leadership led by Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar. One of the key decisions of al-Assad and Jadid was to replace Aflaq with Zaki al-Arsuzi as the party's key ideologue. Assad became Minister of Defense and wielded considerable influence over government policy. However, there was tension between the dominant radical wing of the Ba'ath 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 Ba'ath Party 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

Al-Assad inherited a dictatorial government shaped by years of unstable military rule that was organized along one-party lines after the Ba'athist coup. He increased repression, operating a vast web of police informers and agents. He became the object of a state-sponsored cult of personality, which depicted him as a wise, just, and strong leader of Syria and of the Arab world in general.

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, such as 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 rise in living standards occurred. The government's secularism meant that many members of religious minorities, such as the Alawites, Druze, and Christians, supported Assad, fearing a return to historic persecution under a Sunni Islamist successor government to Assad.

Assad continued previous Ba'ath 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. In 1979, a chain of assassinations took place in the artillery school in Aleppo. 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 Ba'ath party, focusing on Ba'athists 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. In February 1982, Assad ordered the Syrian army to bombard the town of Hama in order to quell a revolt by the Muslim Brotherhood. In what became known as the Hama massacre, an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 people were killed, including about 1,000 soldiers an thousands of Islamist militants, members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

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 Defense 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 Defense Company and, without formal accusations, shortly after Rifaat were exiled to France.^[10]

Foreign policy

Iraq

Even though Iraq was ruled by another branch of the Ba'ath 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's military forces from Kuwait during the Persian Gulf War. In that war, Assad contributed Syrian ground troops to the battlefront.

Israel

To a large extent, Al-Assad's foreign policy was shaped by Syria's attitude toward Israel. 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, although by the end of the war the Israeli army had invaded large areas of Syria, and taken up positions 40km from Damascus. However, through later negotiations Syria regained some territory that had been occupied in 1967 in the peace negotiations headed by Henry Kissinger. The Syrian government refused to recognize the State of Israel and referred to it as the "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 failed. Al-Assad believed that what constituted Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, were an integral part of "Southern Syria."^[11][12] Syria also took part in the 1982 Lebanon War.

Lebanon

Syria deployed troops to Lebanon in 1976, officially in response to a request from the Lebanese government(by conspiracy) 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 overrun by the Left and the Palestinian militancy. Critics allege that this turned into an occupation by 1982, which is not disputed within the Lebanese community. The Syrian presence ended in 2005, due to 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. In the 1970s, Al-Assad conducted millitary operations against Palestinian camps in Lebanon, including involvement in the Tel al-Zaatar massacre, which drew strong criticism for his regime in the Arab world. 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 moved the PLO in a more moderate direction, seeking compromise with Israel, al-Assad 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.

Turkey

The attitude of Hafez al-Assad towards Turkey was quite hostile while he was in power. During his rule, Syria–Turkey relations underwent some serious political crisis. He did not recognize the annexation of Hatay by Turkey, and all official maps continued to show the territory as part of Syria. Furthermore, Syria has supported the Kurdish separatist organization PKK, which aimed an armed struggle against Turkey for the creation of an independent Kurdistan, and allowed the PKK to recruit Syrian Kurds to fight against Turkey. He was blamed by Turkey for sheltering the PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan. However, this changed after Syria decided to force him out of the country in 1998 when Turkey threatened to invade Syria. After 1998, Syria started to crack down on remaining PKK networks and forged better ties with Turkey.^[13]

Death and succession

Assad had originally groomed his oldest son, Bassel al-Assad, as his successor, but Basil (i.e., Bassel) died in a car accident in 1994. Assad then put his second son, Bashar, in intensive military and political training, with Bashar becoming a staff colonel in the military of Syria.^[14] Despite some concerns of unrest within the government, the succession ultimately went smoothly, and Bashar holds office today.

On 10 June 2000, at the age of 69, Hafez al-Assad died of pulmonary fibrosis, although some suggest that he died of blood cancer. Hafez al-Assad is buried together with Basil in a mausoleum in his hometown of Qardaha.

See also

• Assad family

References

Further reading

External links

• President Hafez Al-Assad CV
• President Hafez Al-Assad Speeches & Interviews
• President Hafez Al-Assad Pictures