Salah Jadid

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General Salah Jadid

Salah Jadid ( Arabic صلاح جديد, DMG Ṣalāḥ Ǧadīd ; * 1926 ?; † August 19, 1993) was a Syrian general and politician. As Chief of Staff of the Army and Deputy Secretary General of the ruling Ba'ath Party , he was de facto Syria's military ruler from 1966 until his dismissal in 1970 .

politics

Jadid came from an Alawite family near the coastal city of Jabla . He trained as an officer at the Military Academy in Homs and joined the Syrian Army in 1946. During the 1940s he was briefly a member of the SSNP , in which his brother Ghassan Jadid played a leading role. Salah Jadid finally turned to the Ba'ath party around Michel Aflaq and Salah ad-Din al-Bitar . During the 1950s, Jadid supported the movement to unite Egypt and Syria in the United Arab Republic . During the existence of the union state he was stationed in Cairo from 1958 to 1961 . After the end of the VAR, he held a leadership role during the March 8th Revolution . After the Baathists came to power, he was appointed Chief of Staff of the Syrian Armed Forces and thus assumed a central position of power in the state. Jadid pursued a policy of socialist restructuring of Syrian society and rapprochement with the Eastern bloc states. Jadid called for a policy of non-cooperation with non-socialist Arab states. Jadid was in competition with Hafiz al-Assad, who pursued a pan-Arab policy as chief of the air force and defense minister. Jadid's prestige declined after losing in the Six Day War in 1967 when Israel conquered the Golan Heights .

Jadid, then Defense Minister Hafiz al-Assad and President al-Atassi later blamed each other for the defeat . Jadid complained that Assad, despite his urging and pleading at the front, had withheld urgently needed elite troops in Damascus. Assad said he received this order directly from Atassi, who feared an internal Baath coup with the help of Iraqi allies in Syria. Atassi, however, complained that both generals did not obey the civilian head of state.

In 1970, Jadid was behind the deployment of an armored task force on the side of the PLO in the Jordanian civil war . After initial successes, the intervention units that fought under the Palestinian standards suffered heavy losses from the Jordanian Air Force and were then withdrawn. Jadid's rival Assad held back the Syrian air force he controlled and was able to inflict political defeat on his rival.

This action was not supported by the more pragmatic group under Defense Minister Assad within the Ba'ath party. This led al-Assad to lead an intra-party coup against Jadid and Atassi, the so-called " corrective movement ". Jadid was deposed and arrested. His supporters split under Makhous' leadership as the "Arab Socialist Democratic Baath Party" and joined the opposition democracy movement of 1980.

Jadid was imprisoned in a Damascus prison until his death on August 19, 1993.

Web links

Commons : Salah Jadid  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sami Moubayed: Steel an Silk Men and Women Who Shaped Syria 1900-2000. Seattle, 2006, pp. 259-262
  2. ↑ Nikolaos van Dam: The Struggle for Power in Syria , 4th edition, 2011, pp. 62f
  3. ↑ Der Spiegel 44/1967 of October 23, 1967: Elite spared
  4. ↑ Der Spiegel 12/1969 of March 17, 1969: Death by shot in the head
  5. ↑ Kenneth Pollack: Arabs at War - Military Effectiveness 1948-1991 , Lincoln, 2002, pp. 475-478.
  6. ↑ Nikolaos van Dam: The Struggle for Power in Syria , 4th edition, New York, 2011, p. 68
personal data
SURNAME Jadid, Salah
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Syrian politician
DATE OF BIRTH around 1926
DATE OF DEATH 19th August 1993