Hafez al-Assad
|
|
Hafez al-Assad (October 6, 1930 - June 10, 2000) was the President of Syria from 1971 to 2000.
al-Assad was born in rural Syria as part of the minority Alawite community. He was the first member of his family to attend High School and finished top of his class. Because his family had no money to send him to university al-Assad went to the Syrian Military Academy and received a free higher education. He showed real talent, so the military sent him to be trained in the Soviet military. He joined the Ba'ath party in 1946 at the age of 16. He rose through the ranks of the military and became an important figure. Al-Assad opposed the creation of the United Arab Republic and despite being stationed in Cairo worked with other officers to end the union between Syria and Egypt.
The union collapsed in 1961. In the chaos that followed the dissolution the Ba'athists seized power and al-Assad was appointed head of the airforce in 1964. The state was officially ruled by Amin al-Hafiz, a Sunni Muslim, but it was run by a coterie of young Alawites, a religious minority in Syria to which Assad belonged.
In 1966 these Alawites lanched a coup d'etat. al-Assad became Minister of Defence, and the true ruler of the country. After being discredited by the failure of the Syrian military in the Six Days War in 1967 al-Assad overthrew the civilian government and became ruler of Syria in 1970.
al-Assad ruled Syria through the power of the army. He did achieve some popularity because of his moderate reforms and the vast increase in Syria's military power, but was always mistrusted by the population for his secularism and his Alawite roots.
During al-Assad's presidency, Syria played a major role in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and deployed troops as a peacekeeping force to Lebanon in 1976. During this period, the country had been put on political freeze due to the brutality he showed in his ruling, most notably, the 1982 Hamah massacre in which Syrian security forces responded to riots by the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood in the City of Hamah by killing an estimated 10,000 to 35,000 citizens with poison gas, followed by razing most of the city to the ground, and the infamous Tadmor prison shooting where several thousand extremists prisoners were group-eliminated without trials.
al-Assad ruled the country until his death in 2000 due to a heart attack while speaking on the telephone with Lebanese President Emile Lahoud. He was succeeded by his son Bashar al-Assad.
External links
- Syrian Massacare at Hama (http://www.2la.org/lebanon/ee/terrorsy.htm)
- Syria - Cuba of the Middle east? (http://www.danielpipes.org/article/170)
| Preceded by: Nureddin al-Atassi | Prime Minister of Syria 1970–1971 | Succeeded by: Abdul Rahman Khleifawi |
| Preceded by: Ahmed Khatib (Head of State) | President of Syria 1971–2000 | Succeeded by: Abdul-Halim Khaddam (Acting) Template:End boxar:حافظ الاسد de:Hafiz al-Assad fr:Hafez-el-Assad he:חאפז אל אסד id:Hafez al-Assad ja:ハーフェズ・アル＝アサド nl:Hafiz al-Assad pl:Hafiz al-Assad sl:Hafez al Asad sv:Hafez al-Assad |