Asian & Middle Eastern Monarchs & Strongmen Codexery

Hafez al-Assad

Syrian president who consolidated absolute power over three decades.

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Hafez al-Assad

Unknown author · Public domain

Hafez al-Assad was born on 6 October 1930 in Qardaha, a town in northwest Syria, into a poor Alawite peasant family of the Kalbiyya tribe.[1] He became president of Syria after consolidating power through a 1970 coup, eliminating collegial Ba'athist decision-making in favor of absolute presidential control.[2][3]

Al Assad family
Al Assad family. Image: Unknown author · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Life and work

After his father could not pay for medical study, he joined the Syrian Armed Forces in 1950 and graduated from flying school in 1955 as a commissioned lieutenant.[4][5] He called his domestic reforms a Corrective Movement, completing the Tabqa Dam on the Euphrates River in 1974.[6] Assad's marriage to Anisa Makhlouf occurred in 1957, and he underwent MiG-17 training in the Soviet Union for a period of ten months.[5][7] His government suppressed an Islamist revolt that ended with the destruction of two-thirds of Hama, where 30,000 individuals were killed.[2][8]

General of the Syrian army, Hafez al-Assad, 1969
General of the Syrian army, Hafez al-Assad, 1969. Image: Unknown author · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

In 1976, Syria deployed 30,000 soldiers into Lebanon, leading to a Syrian military presence there.[2]

What the cited sources add

The Batatu book "Syria's Peasantry, the Descendants of Its Lesser Rural Notables, and Their Politics" records Assad's own words about his childhood: "I had a passion for threshing the harvest... but I took part in all the phases of farming" and "I still have mental pictures of the injustices of the time."[9][10] According to that same source, when facing criticism from adversaries, Assad frequently pointed to his peasant background as proof of his connection with ordinary people.[9][10]

Hafez Assad during Yom Kippur War aganist Israel
Hafez Assad during Yom Kippur War aganist Israel. Image: Unknown author · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

References

  1. Wikipedia, "Hafez al-Assad" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Bengio 1998, p. 135; Jessup 1998, p. 41; Reich 1990, p. 52 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  2. Wikipedia, "Hafez al-Assad" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Timeline of the Lebanese Civil War from 1975 to 1990" (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  3. Wikipedia, "Hafez al-Assad" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Seale 1990, p. 3; Seale 1990, p. 3; Seale 1990, p. 3; Seale 1990, p. 3; Seale 1990, p. 3 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  4. Wikipedia, "Hafez al-Assad" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Alianak 2007, p. 127–128; Zahler 2009, p. 25; Alianak 2007, p. 127–128; Reich 1990, p. 52; Alianak 2007, p. 127–128 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  5. Wikipedia, "Hafez al-Assad" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Tucker Roberts 2008, p. 168; Reich 1990, p. 52; Alianak 2007, p. 127–128; Seale 1990, p. 3; Zahler 2009, p. 25 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  6. Wikipedia, "Hafez al-Assad" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Reich 1990, p. 52 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  7. Wikipedia, "Hafez al-Assad" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Seale 1990, p. 3; Zahler 2009, p. 25; Seale 1990, p. 3; Seale 1990, p. 3; Seale 1990, p. 3; Reich 1990, p. 52; Zahler 2009, p. 25 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  8. Wikipedia, "Hafez al-Assad" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "The Massacres of Hama: Law Enforcement Requires Accountability", www.shrc.org (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  9. Wikipedia, "Hafez al-Assad" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Batatu, "Syria's Peasantry, the Descendants of Its Lesser Rural Notables, and Their Politics", Princeton University Press, 2012-09-17 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  10. Open Library record, ISBN 9781400845842 ("Syria's Peasantry, the Descendants of Its Lesser Rural Notables, and Their Politics"). CC0 (metadata); book content not read. openlibrary.org

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Hafez al-Assad (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.

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Sources

Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.

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