Hafez Al-Assad - Rise To Power

Rise To Power

Assad was not content with a professional military career and regarded it as an avenue into politics. After the UAR was created, Michel Aflaq, leader of the Ba'ath Party, was forced by Nasser to dissolved the Ba'ath Party, which he did. During the existence of the UAR the Ba'ath Party suffered a serious crisis, for which several of its members—mostly young—blamed Aflaq. In order to resurrect the Syrian Regional Branch of the Ba'ath Party, Muhammad Umran, Salah Jadid and Assad, among others, established the Military Committee. In the period 1957–58 Assad acquired a dominant position in the party and did not despair because of his transfer to Egypt. He was hard-working, skillful and highly ambitious, and became one of the leaders of the Military Committee, which was established in Egypt with aim of rescuing the UAR from dissolution. However, after Syria left the UAR in September 1961, Assad and other Ba'athist officers were removed from the military by the new regime in Damascus, and Assad given a minor clerical position in the Ministry of Transport.

Assad played a minor role in the failed 1962 military coup, for which he was jailed in Lebanon and was later repatriated. In the same year, Aflaq convened the Fifth Congress of the Ba'ath Party, where he was reelected as the National Command's Secretary General and ordered the re-establishment of the party's Syrian Regional Branch. At the Congress, the Military Committee through Umran established contacts with Aflaq and the Ba'athist leadership. The Military Committee asked for permission to seize power through forceful means; Aflaq consented to the conspiracy. After the success of the Iraqi coup d'état, led by the Ba'ath Party's Iraqi Regional Branch, the Military Committee hastily convened to launch a Ba'athist military coup in March 1963 against President Nazim al-Kudsi, which Assad helped to plan and played a major role. The coup was planned for the 7 March, but was postponed until the next day, which Assad had announced to the other units. During the coup Assad led a small group to capture the Dumayr air base, 40 kilometres (25 mi) northeast of Damascus. His group was the only one to see resistance. Some of the airplanes at the base were ordered to bomb the conspirators, and because of this, Assad hastened to reach the base before dawn. It took longer than planned to get the 70th Armored Brigade to surrender, because of which Assad arrived in broad daylight. He threatened the base commander that he would shell them if they did not surrender; the base commander initiated negotiations with Assad and eventually surrendered. Assad claimed that the base was able to defend itsself from his forces. After the coup was over, Assad was promoted to major and subsequently to lieutenant-colonel, and by the end of 1963 he was put in charge of the Syrian Air Force. By the end of 1964 he was named commander of the Syrian Air Force with a rank of major general. Even though still a leader of the Ba'ath Party, the Military Committee was seizing power from the civilian wing of the party under Aflaq.

As head of the Air Force, Assad gave special privileges to its officers, appointed his confidants to senior and sensitive positions, and established an efficient intelligence network. Thus the Air Force Intelligence, under command of Muhammad al-Khuli, became independent of Syria's other intelligence organizations and was given assignments beyond the Air Force. Assad prepared himself to take an active role in the power struggles that lay ahead. Between 1963 and 1970, he demonstrated ambition, single-mindedness, patience, caution, coolness and manipulativeness. In the first stage of the power struggle, Assad remained the junior partner in the leading Alawite Triumvirate of the Military Committee, along with generals Umran and Jadid. However, when Umran, the senior member of the Military Committee, changed his allegiance to Aflaq, Salah al-Din al-Bitar, Munif al-Razzaz and the civilian leadership in 1965, the power struggle which had lasted since taking power, the remaining members of the Military Committee launched the 1966 Syrian coup d'état and overthrew the civilian Ba'athist leadership. This coup led to a permanent schism within the Ba'ath movement, the advent of neo-Ba'athism and the establishment of two centers for the international Ba'athist movement—one Iraqi dominated, another Syrian dominated.

After the coup, Assad was appointed Minister of Defense, and became the second most influential person in the neo-Ba'athist regime. While holding this ministry, Assad prepared for ousting Salah Jadid, the country's de facto leader. Assad turned the military into his power base and employed brutal force, political manipulation, and ideological and strategic arguments to undermine Jadid's position and gain supremacy. In 1970, Syria supported Palestinian guerrillas in their war against Jordan, known as the Black September, and Jadid sent an armored force to aid the Palestinians. Assad opposed Syria's intervention and refused to send the Air Force in support, which allowed the Royal Jordanian Air Force to rout the Syrian forces unopposed and turned the invasion into a disaster. Assad used Syria's defeat in the War of Attrition against Israel between 1967 and 1970 and the Black September affair to discredit Jadid and extend his own control over the Armed Forces and the Ba'ath Party. In two military coups in February 1969 and November 1970, Assad evicted and arrested Jadid and his senior followers in the government, and assumed unchallenged control over Syria. Assad expanded his control over the military and expanded the network of the security organizations in order to gain support from both Sunni and non-Sunni Syrians. Assad successfully became a popular leader deriving his authority from the people. His wish for power was also motivated by his nationalist views; Assad believed in the creation of Greater Syria by creating a political and military alliance with Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinians.