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 joined in 1951 and was assigned to the Air Force division. Showing real aptitude Assad was sent to the Soviet Union to receive advanced training.
Like many of Syria's young officers al-Assad was politically active. At age 16 he had joined the Ba'ath Party and as he rose through the ranks of the military 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. The state was officially ruled by Amin al-Hafiz , a Sunni Muslim, but it was run by a coterie of young Alawites.
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, 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. Syria remains a brutal police state, where individual rights are limited. Its economy is depressed and overly centralized, also suffering from international isolation.
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.
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Last updated: 05-21-2005 04:48:56
