Hafez el-Assad

Hafez el-Assad (or Hafiz Al-Asad ) (October 6th 1930 - June 10th 2000) (in Arabic: rear RTL حافظالأسد) is a Politician Syria N. After its accession with the capacity following a Coup d'etat in 1970, he will be president of the Syria until its death in 2000. His/her son, Bachar, succeeded to him.

Its strongly authoritative mode, structured around the sole party of the Ba' ace, set up a control of the whole of the Syrian political life. It conferred a stability on a Syrian political power marked until there by the coups d'etat and made of Syria an inevitable actor of the Middle-East.

Youth

Hafez el-Assad was born with Qardaha in the west from the Syria within a family belonging to the minority religious community from the Alaouites, near to the Chiisme. He was the first member of his family to going to the college. He militates within the party Ba' ace as of the 16 years age, in 1946. Its family not being able to offer a university education to him, Assad was registered with the Syrian Military academy, where one profited from a free schooling. He appeared high shining and was sent there in additional training in Soviet Union within the Red Army . In addition, Assad met, with the Academy, Mustapha Tlass, which was, thereafter, his/her companion of political struggle. Its rise within the military hierarchy was fast, making of him an important figure of this one. Assad was opposed in 1958 to the union between the Egypt and Syria which was to create the United Arab Republic. Stationed with the Cairo, he worked, in company of other officers, to put a term at this union. Though, baassist and favorable to the ideal of a union panarabe, it opposed the domination of the mode of Nasser within United Arab Republic. Consequently, Hafez el-Assad was briefly imprisoned by the Egyptian authorities during the dissolution of the unit republic in 1961.

In the chaos which followed the dissolution of the union égypto-Syrian woman, a coalition of groupings left-wing policy followed by Ba' ace seized the power. Assad was named chief of Staff of the air force in 1964. The State was then officially directed by Amin Al-Hafez, of obedience sunnite. In fact, through the party Ba' ace which they controlled, it was dominated by a group of young people alaouites, of which Assad formed part.

The accession with the capacity

In 1966, the wing pro-Soviet of the Ba' ace, carried out by Salah Jedid, undertook a coup d'etat within the mode and drew aside the other parties of the government. Assad became Minister for Defense, and consequently exerted a considerable power on the government policy. The capacity however was crossed by important tensions between a radical wing of Ba' ace, favorable to an aggressive foreign politics and fast social reforms, and a military wing, directed by Assad, more pragmatic. After the discredit of the military defeat of the War the six day old, and the fallen through intervention of Syria in the jordano-Palestinian conflict of black September, these tensions were transformed into an open conflict. When the president Noureddine Al-Atassi and the general secretary of the party Ba' ace, Salah Jedid, became aware of the danger and ordered that Assad and Tlass were isolated of any position of being able in the party and the government, it was too late. Hafez el-Assad quickly launched a takeover by force inside the party. This last “was purged”, Atassi and Jadid sent in prison, and the partisans of Assad seized all the stations - keys of the apparatus of State.

A strongly authoritative mode

Hafez el-Assad inherited a dictatorial mode, established during long years of an unstable military capacity, then reorganized according to the policy of the sole party of Ba' ace. Not only, it did not break with this mode, but it increased repressive dimension by it, and endeavoured to control each sector of the company through a vast police machinery and of information.

The mode also set up a worship of its personality, describing it like a leader right, wise and powerful of Syria and Arab world in general. With the Soviet manner, this worship resulted in a vast system of propaganda made of postings of its effigy, erections of its statue, speeches public glorificateurs, etc His son Bassel called to succeed to him, made, later, the object of a similar worship.

The mode found a support essential in the minority alaouite, whose Hafez el-Assad placed members at many stations - keys of the apparatus of State. Certain sources mention el-Assad as being member of Freemasonry.

The mode was characterized thus by the influence which he exerted on the social life and policy, prohibiting any opposition and repressing with violence any dispute. The military crushing of the rising of fundamentalist the sunnites, the Muslim brothers (qualified at the time by Ronald Reagan “combatants of freedom”), in the town of Hama in 1982 is the most outstanding episode of this repression.

Today still, heritage of this period and in spite of the death of Hafez el-Assad, the fear of speaking publicly or of being listened is constant among the Syrians.

Foreign politics

Israel

The foreign politics of Hafez el-Assad was structured by the conflict between Syria and Israel - conflict former to the takeover of Assad, and which continued after its death.

At beginning of its presidency, Syria played an important role in the Guerre of Kippour in 1973. The war was presented by the mode like an important patriotic victory, though its assessment is extremely moderate. After a weak projection on the Plate of Golan (Syrian territory occupied by Israel since the War the six day old in 1967), the Syrian army knew important losses and had to move back in front of an Israeli counter-attack. However, Syria regained, in fine , of the territories on the layout of 1967, thanks to the peace negotiations, directed by Henry Kissinger.

The will of reconquest of the entirety of the plate of the Golan did not cease, thereafter, being one of the central axes of the policy of Hafez el-Assad. It respected, however, the line of cease-fire placed under the control of the the United Nations. Assad chooses, indeed, an indirect policy of pressure on Israel, through the support for various Arab, hostile movements at the Jewish State, which it clientélisés. Thus, it will support the Hezbollah in Lebanon, as of its creation during the invasion of this country by Israel. It will bring, in the same way, its support for many Palestinian activists groups, like the Hamas. Assad refused to recognize the existence of Israel, officially qualified “entity Zionist”. However, with the fall of the USSR, it understood that the balance of the forces had been transformed in favor of the United States, and its main ally in the area, Israel. It accepted then, in a hurry by the United States, to engage in negotiations with Israel, which finally will fail.

The Lebanon

Assad played a key function in the history of contemporary Lebanon. The Lebanese civil war, which burst in 1975 and opposed on Israeli-Arab bottom of conflict the religious communities of the country (Christian and Lebanese right-wingers on the one hand, Moslems, “progressists of left” and Palestinians of the other) ends up turning to the discredit of the Christians. Fearing to lose the presidential capacity, which were reserved to the Christians of rite Maronite since the Pact of 1943, the leaders of the Christian militia Camille Chamoun and Pierre Gémayel launched a call to the Syrian army, to put a term at this fratricidal war. The Syrian president, who blew on embers of the war of the Lebanon, by supporting in turn the various belligerents, saw the occasion there to install his troops with the Country of the Cedar, outpost of his fight against Israel. It will be the beginning of the Syrian seizure on Lebanon, which will last until the Révolution of the cedar in 2005.

It in addition obtained Jacques Chirac into 1996 that the files of the Israeli occupation in Lebanon and Golan are bound, and qu France makes pressure in this direction on the Hebrew State.

Assessment

The assessment of its 30 years of reign remains discussed: with the critics against his repressive policy internal (crushing in the blood of the islamist insurrection whose stronghold was based with Hama) and of its support for the groups armed Palestinian (Hamas and Islamic Djihad) and Lebanese (Hezbollah), are opposed analyzes who see in him a “frightening diplomat” (Henry Kissinger), as well as the man who made of Syria an interlocutor impossible to circumvent in the payment of the conflicts of the Middle East.

His/her oldest son Bassel el-Assad was to succeed to him the presidency but the death of this last in an car accident in 1994 constrained Assad to change his plans. These is the different sons Bachar el-Assad which succeeds to him just the Syrian presidency after its in June 2000 death.

See too

External bond

References

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