Hafez al-Assad

Hafez al-Assad ', , (, 6 October 1930 – 10 June 2000) was a Syrian statesman and military officer who served as President of Syria from taking power in 1971 until his death in 2000. He was also Prime Minister of Syria from 1970 to 1971, as well as regional secretary of the regional command of the Syrian regional branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party and secretary general of the National Command of the Ba'ath Party from 1970 to 2000. Assad participated in the 1963 Syrian coup d'état which brought the Syrian regional branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party to power, and the new leadership appointed him commander of the Syrian Air Force. In February 1966, Assad participated in a second coup, which toppled the traditional leaders of the Ba'ath Party. Assad was appointed defence minister by the new government. Four years later, Assad initiated a third coup which ousted the ''de facto'' leader Salah Jadid and appointed himself as leader of Syria.

Assad imposed change on the Ba'ath government when he took power, by imposing capitalism and further pushing the agenda of private property and by strengthening the country's foreign relations with countries which his predecessor had deemed reactionary. He sided with communism and the Soviet Union during the Cold War in return for support against Israel, and, while he had forsaken the pan-Arab concept of unifying the Arab world into one Arab nation, he sought to make Syria the defender of Palestine and Arab interests against Israel. When he came to power, Assad organised state services along sectarian lines (the Sunnis became the heads of political institutions, while the Alawites took control of the military, intelligence, and security apparatuses). The formerly collegial powers of Ba'athist decision-making were curtailed, and were transferred to the Syrian presidency. The Syrian government ceased to be a one-party system in the normal sense of the word, and was turned into a one-party dictatorship with a strong presidency. To maintain this system, a cult of personality centred on Assad and his family was created by the president and the Ba'ath party. During his rule, Assad faced an Islamist uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood that was ultimately put down with the Hama massacre in February 1982.

Having become the main source of initiative inside the Syrian government, Assad began looking for a successor. His first choice was his brother Rifaat, but Rifaat attempted to seize power in 1983–84 when Hafez's health was in doubt. Rifaat was subsequently exiled when Hafez's health recovered. Hafez's next choice of successor was his eldest son, Bassel. However, Bassel died in a car accident in 1994, and Hafez turned to his third choice—his younger son Bashar, who at that time had no political experience. The move to appoint a member of his own family as his successor was met with criticism within some quarters of the Syrian ruling class, but Assad persisted with his plan and demoted officials who opposed this succession. Hafez died in 2000 and Bashar succeeded him as president.

Early life and education: 1930–1950

Family

Hafez was born on 6 October 1930 in Qardaha to an Alawite family of the Kalbiyya tribe. His paternal grandfather, Sulayman Al-Wahhish, gained the nickname ''Wahhish'' (wild beast) for his strength. Hafez al-Assad's parents were Na'asa Shalish and Ali Sulayman al-Assad. His father Ali married twice and had eleven children. Hafez was his ninth son, and the fourth from his second marriage. By the 1920s, Ali was respected locally and initially opposed to the French Mandate for Syria established in 1923. Nevertheless, Ali Sulayman later cooperated with the French administration and was appointed to an official post. Local residents called him "al-Assad" (the lion) for his accomplishments and, in 1927, he made the nickname his surname. In 1936, he was one of 80 Alawite notables who signed a letter addressed to the French Prime Minister and stating that " heAlawi people rejected attachment to Syria and wished to stay under French protection".

Education and early political career

Alawites initially opposed a united Syrian state (since they thought their status as a religious minority would endanger them), and Hafez's father shared this belief. After the French left Syria in 1946, many Syrians mistrusted the Alawites because of their alignment with France. Hafez left his Alawite village, beginning his education at age nine in Sunni-dominated Latakia. He became the first in his family to attend high school, but in Latakia, Assad faced anti-Alawite bias from Sunnis. He was an excellent student, winning several prizes at about age 14. Assad lived in a poor, predominantly Alawite part of Latakia; to fit in, he approached political parties that welcomed Alawites. These parties (which also espoused secularism) were the Syrian Communist Party, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) and the Arab Ba'ath Party; Assad joined the Ba'ath in 1946; some of his friends belonged to the SSNP. The Ba'ath (Renaissance) Party espoused a pan-Arabist, socialist ideology.

Assad proved an asset to the party, organizing Ba'ath student cells and carrying the party's message to the poor sections of Latakia and to Alawite villages. He was opposed by the Muslim Brotherhood, which allied itself with wealthy and conservative Muslim families. Assad's high school accommodated students from rich and poor families, and Assad was joined by poor, anti-establishment Sunni Muslim youth from the Ba'ath Party in confrontations with students from wealthy Brotherhood families. He made many Sunni friends, some of whom later became his political allies. While still a teenager, Assad became increasingly prominent in the party as an organizer and recruiter, head of his school's student-affairs committee from 1949 to 1951 and president of the Union of Syrian Students. During his political activism in school, he met many men who would later serve him when he became president.

Air Force career: 1950–1958

After graduating from high school, Assad aspired to be a medical doctor, but his father could not pay for his study at the Jesuit University of St. Joseph in Beirut. Instead, in 1950, he decided to join the Syrian Armed Forces. Assad entered the military academy in Homs, which offered free food, lodging and a stipend. He wanted to fly, and entered the flying school in Aleppo in 1950. Assad graduated in 1955, after which he was commissioned a lieutenant in the Syrian Air Force. Upon graduation from flying school, he won a best-aviator trophy, and shortly afterwards was assigned to the Mezze air base near Damascus. He married Anisa Makhlouf