Hafez al-Assad (6 October 1930 – 10 June 2000) was a Syrian politician, dictator and military officer who served as the 18th president of Syria from 1971 until his death in 2000. He had previously served as 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. Hafez al-Assad was a key participant in the 1963 Syrian coup d'état, which brought the Syrian regional branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party to power in the country, a power that lasted until the fall of the regime in 2024, then led by his son Bashar.
The new leadership appointed Assad as the 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 various changes to the Ba'athist government when he took power. He subordinated state socialism for a mixed economic model and defended private property. Assad also abandoned the rhetoric of exporting "socialist revolution" by strengthening Syria's foreign relations with countries that his predecessor had deemed reactionary. Assad sided with the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War in return for support against Israel and, whilst he had forsaken the pan-Arab concept of unifying the Arab world into one Arab nation, he sought to paint Syria as the defender of the Palestinians against Israel.
When he came to power, he organised the state along sectarian lines (Sunnis and non-Alawites became figureheads of political institutions whilst the Alawites took control of the military, intelligence, bureaucracy and security apparatuses). Ba'athist decision-making authority that had previously been collegial was reduced and given to the president. 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. The Assad family’s personality cult was integrated with the Ba’athist doctrine to shape the state's official ideology. Assad ordered an intervention in Lebanon in 1976, which resulted in the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. During his rule, his regime crushed an Islamist uprising led by the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood rebels through a series of crackdowns culminating in the Hama massacre, which led to two thirds of the city of Hama being destroyed.
After consolidating his personal authority over the Syrian government Assad began looking for a successor. His first choice was his brother Rifaat, but Rifaat attempted to seize power in 1983–1984 when Hafez's health was in doubt. Rifaat was subsequently exiled when Hafez's health recovered. Assad's next choice of successor was his eldest son, Bassel. However, Bassel died in a high-speed car crash in 1994, and Assad turned to his third choice—his younger son Bashar, who at that time was a medical student in the UK, with no political experience. The move to appoint a member of his own family as his successor was met with criticism in some quarters of the Syrian ruling class, but Assad persisted with his plan and demoted officials who opposed this succession. Assad died in 2000 and Bashar succeeded him as president, serving until he was deposed in 2024.
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