Hafiz al-Assad

Hafiz al-Assad 1970

Hafiz al-Assad , also Hafis el Assad ( Arabic حافظ الأسد, DMG Ḥāfiẓ al-Asad ; * October 6, 1930 in Kardaha ; † June 10, 2000 in Damascus ), was a Syrian politician who ruled the country dictatorially from 1970 to 2000 as General Secretary of the Baath Party , Prime Minister (1970–1971) and President (1971–2000) . His left nationalism was mostly based on the Soviet Union . After his death in 2000, his son Bashar al-Assad became the new president in Syria.

Education and family

Assad belonged to the religious community of the Alawites . As the first member of his family , he received a higher education. Since the family could not raise enough money for the university, he attended the military academy in 1951 . There he was trained as a pilot - partly in the Soviet Union .

Assad came from a respected landowner family from the village of Qardaha in the Alawi core settlement area around the Jebel Ansariye . His father Ali Sulaiman al-Assad (1875-1963) was one of six notables who in 1933 during the French mandate in a statement to the French Prime Minister Léon Blum demanded that the autonomous Alawite state be retained alongside a later independent Syria.

Hafiz al-Assad with family in the early 1970s; from left: Baschar, Mahir, Anisa Machluf, Majed, Buschra, Basil

Assad was married to Anisa Machluf (1930–2016) and had six children with her, of which the first daughter (Buschra, born before 1960) died in infancy. The second daughter was also called Bushra , and she later married Asif Schaukat , the former head of the Syrian military intelligence service . Basil al-Assad (* 1962), the first son, died in a traffic accident in 1994. He was followed by the current incumbent President of Syria, Bashar al-Assad (* 1965). Majed al-Assad (* probably 1966), the third son, died in 2009 after a long illness. The youngest son Mahir al-Assad (* 1967) is now the commander of the Republican Guard in Damascus .

politics

Hafiz al-Assad (right) with soldiers on the Golan Front in October 1973

Party career

Assad joined in 1947 as a teenager of panarabistisch - Socialist Baath Party in. Assad was transferred to Egypt during the United Arab Republic . Together with four other Baathist officers ( Salah Jadid , Ahmed al-Meer , Mohammed Umran , Abelkarim al-Jundi ) he founded the Ba'ath Party's military committee in Cairo . This secret junta within the party had the goal of keeping Syria on a pan-Arab socialist course. In 1961, after the successful coup in Syria against the Egyptian-Syrian Union , Assad was first imprisoned by the Egyptian authorities. Since the suspicion of involvement in the coup was not confirmed, he was released after forty-four days and allowed to return to Syria. The new Syrian President Nazim al-Qudsi tried to remove the pro-unionist officers, including Assad, from the military because he feared a violent overthrow. Assad played a leading role in the Baath Party's takeover in 1963. As an air force officer , he brought the Dumayr air base near Damascus under control for the party on which the entire air force of the country was stationed. Assad was after the seizure of power by the captain to lieutenant general appointed elevated to the Revolutionary Command of the Baathist state and de facto air force commander.

Promotion to President

Within the Ba'ath Party, after the seizure of power, an antagonism developed between the political and military wings of the party. The party founders and civilians Michel Aflaq and Salah ad-Din al-Bitar wanted to enforce the primacy of civilian politicians over officers and demilitarize the state. The military wing was formed around Salah Jadid and Assad and called for socialism enforced by the military and a strictly pan-Arab foreign policy. The military wing staged a coup in 1966, and under Assad and Jadid's leadership, President Amin al-Hafiz was ousted. The two party founders were expelled from the country. Assad became Minister of Defense after the coup. As general secretary, Jadid took over the central post within the Syrian Ba'ath Party. The Baathist Nureddin al-Atassi became president . However, real power continued to be concentrated in the hands of the military.

Within the party, however, there was now competition between Assad and Jadid. This was intensified by mutual accusations after the lost Six Day War in 1967. As he remained in the military, Assad was able to fill numerous officer positions with people loyal to him and oust the supporters of his competitor from the apparatus. Among other things, his companion Mustafa Tlas became Chief of Staff. Assad was also able to replace the editors-in-chief of the two state press organs Al Thawra ( "The Revolution" ) and Al-Baath with his people. In view of the confrontation between Jordan and the PLO , Jadid invaded Jordan around 16,000 Syrian soldiers. Assad vetoed further military intervention and refused to use the Syrian air force. The Syrian troops suffered heavy losses due to the air superiority of the Jordanians and Syria withdrew these after Israel had deployed troops on the borders with both countries and threatened to intervene. On November 16, 1970, Assad launched a coup. As part of this overthrow, officially called the corrective movement , Assad had his rivals Jadid and Atassi imprisoned and named Ahmed al-Khatib as the ceremonial head of state. On March 12, 1971, Assad was elected president by plebiscite.

Dictator of Syria

Assad based his power on the military and air force intelligence . He tried to reform the country and strengthened its military power. As a result, however, Syria came into opposition to most of the countries in the region and was isolated internationally. However, for the first time since independence, Assad's policies brought considerable political stability to Syria. Under Assad's government, Lebanon came under Syrian rule in 1976. The Islamism and the Muslim Brotherhood were suppressed in 1982 was their uprising in Hama massacre bloodily suppressed. Assad's brother, Rifaat al-Assad (* 1937), who for a long time was Syria's “No. 2 ”was. In 1983 the Rifaat's militia (the defense brigades ) and parts of the army staged a coup . The "Lion of Damascus", who had suffered from heart disease, won the civil war that followed; his brother had to go into exile.

At the beginning of his rule, Assad saw a military revenge against Israel as the main goal of his policy. During the 1973 Yom Kippur War , Syria was unable to achieve any of its military objectives and was betrayed by its Egyptian ally. However, the conflict led to a revaluation of Assad both outside and inside the country. As a front-line state against Israel, which, unlike Egypt, was not ready for rapprochement, Syria received aid from the oil-rich states on the Persian Gulf . In some years these comprised more than half of the state budget. Assad's Baathist regime used the financial transfers not only to militarize society, but also to expand health and education systems and diversify the economy . Assad granted the private sector more leeway than his predecessors and valued their role overall compared to the state economy . In some cases, he reversed previous land reforms , which strengthened the traditional large landowners . As a result of economic liberalization, an urban bourgeoisie emerged that was closely interwoven with the state organs and often benefited economically from privileges through relations with the state party.

Bronze-colored bust in front of the office of a bus company in Raqqa . The drawing on the wall also shows Assad.

As a result of a pronounced personality cult, bronze statues of the president were erected in central public squares in the larger cities; Posters with his portrait on the house facade and in every public and private environment were ubiquitous. The posters have meanwhile been replaced by those showing pictures of his son.

This personality cult glorified Assad as the champion of the ideologies of socialism and nationalism that he defined as goals of the Arab peoples . The Middle East conflict with Israel served as a justification for the dictatorial rule of the president. During his lifetime, the propaganda in the mass media and in state historiography tried to stylize Assad as a mythical historical figure analogous to Saladin .

The union representations and professional associations were massively expanded and served the one-party state as a means of monitoring the population. Likewise, under Assad, the regime's secret services expanded in terms of personnel, organization and institutions. As a result of the expansion of the security apparatus, there were more than twenty different intelligence organizations, which often also controlled each other. In addition to the regular Syrian armed forces, Assad built a parallel security architecture with elite troops that were not controlled by state institutions, but led by political loyalists and members of the Alawites with family connections to the Assad clan.

In the First Gulf War between Iraq and Iran from 1980 to 1988 he supported Iran, in the Second Gulf War from 1990 to 1991 he participated in the anti-Iraqi coalition. In the 1990s, Assad moved closer to the West and the conservative regimes of Arabia . Peace talks with Israel failed, however.

The human rights organization Human Rights Watch accused Assad of killing thousands of Syrians under his rule.

Succession

A few months after Assad's death in 2000, his second son, Bashar al-Assad , who he proposed as his successor, became his successor at the age of 34. The constitution was changed on June 10, 2000, and the minimum age for the president was reduced from 40 to 34 years. Assad's eldest son and actual successor, Basil al-Assad , died in a car accident in 1994.

literature

• Moshe Ma'oz, Avner Yaniv (ed.): Syria under Assad. Croom Helm, London 1986, ISBN 0-7099-2910-2 .
• Patrick Seale: Asad of Syria. The Struggle for the Middle East. IB Tauris, London 1988, ISBN 1-85043-061-6 .
• Martin Stäheli: Syrian foreign policy under President Hafez Assad. Balancing act in global upheaval. Steiner, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-515-07867-3 .

Web links

Commons : Hafiz al-Assad  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Hafez al-Assad biography at Who's Who.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Fouad Ajami: The Syrian Rebellion . Stanford, 2012, pp. 19f.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Mohamad Daoud: Dossier: Bushra Assad. In: Mideast Monitor. October 2006, archived from the original on March 22, 2012 ; Retrieved April 2, 2011 . 
3. ^ William E. Schmidt: Assad's son killed in an auto crash. In: The New York Times . January 22, 1994, accessed March 31, 2011 . 
4. ↑ ^{a b} Sami Moubayed: Steel an Silk - Men an Women who shaped Syria 1900-2000 , Seattle, 2006, pp. 148-149.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Sami Moubayed: Steel and Silk - Men an Women who shaped Syria 1900-2000 , Seattle, 2006, p. 150.
6. ↑ Kenneth M. Pollack: Arabs at War , Lincoln, 2002, pp. 473-478.
7. ↑ Martin Stäheli: The Syrian foreign policy under President Hafez Assad. Balancing act in global upheaval. Steiner , Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-515-07867-3 . Page 77.
8. ↑ Usahma Felix Darrah: History of Syria in the 20th Century and under Bashar Al-Asad , Marburg, 2014, pp. 100-107.
9. ^ Mordechai Kedar: Asad in Search of Legitimacy - Message and Rhetoric in the Syrian Press under Hafiz and Bashar. Portland, 2005, pp. 136-141.
10. ↑ Usahma Felix Darrah: History of Syria in the 20th Century and under Bashar Al-Asad , Marburg, 2014, p. 105, p. 107-109.
11. ↑ Executive Summary. In: Human Rights Watch . July 16, 2010, accessed July 13, 2012 .