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Al-Ahram Weekly 15 - 21 June 2000 Issue No. 486 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 15 - 21 June 2000 Issue No. 486
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters A lion to the last
By Nabil Zaki*
Hafez Al-Assad, one of the region's longest serving leaders, dreamed early of Arab unity only to watch as his neighbours signed peace deals with Israel. The dead president, whose surname means "lion" in Arabic, never realised his dream of a united Arab front against Israel.
"The Lion of Damascus" came from Syria's Alawite minority. He was born in Kurdaha, an Alawite village near Lattakia on the west coast of Syria, on 6 October 1930.
Assad grew up as the oldest son of a farming family with modest land holdings. He obtained his high school degree in Lattakia in the early forties.
As a student he became an activist against the French and participated in demonstrations against the French occupation. Elected to the students committee in Lattakia he chaired the first students conference in Syria. At that time, as chairman of the committee, he led the student movement under the leadership of the Baath Party.
Liberation from colonialism and the Palestinian cause were among his major concerns in the late forties and early fifties. He enrolled in the Baath Party in 1946, and joined the Military Academy in 1952, graduating as an Airforce Lieutenant pilot in early 1956. At his graduation he had already won an aerobatics competition. He attended many pilot training courses, the most important being in the former Soviet Union, and in 1958 served in Cairo.
He was excluded from the armed forces on the 2 December 1961 and transferred to a civil job following the dissolution of the United Arab Republic on 28 September, 1961, due to his opposition to Syria's cessation.
He was the leader of the five-member military committee that spearheaded the March 1963 coup, and occupied leading posts in both the regional and national command of the Baath Arab Socialist Party, culminating in his becoming secretary-general of the party. He played a central role in the 23 February Movement, which put an end to internecine party conflicts in 1966. He became prime minister and minister of defence on 21 November 1970 and, following his "Corrective Movement" in 1971, he was elected president of the republic in a referendum held on 12 March of that year.
On 14 May 1971 the new regional command of the Baath party held a meeting and elected Al-Assad as regional secretary of the party. In the second half of August 1971 he was elected secretary- general of the party during its eleventh National Conference.
After the success of the Correctionist Movement he invited the Arab Socialist Union, Socialist Unionists, Arab Socialists and the Communist Party to form the Progressive National Front under the leadership of the Baath. The front later expanded to include the United Syrian Communist Party and the Unionist Democratic Socialist Party.
Assad was Egypt's key ally during the October War, which destroyed the myth of Israeli military superiority.
Patrick Seale, in his biography of the Syrian president, Assad: the struggle for the Middle East, wrote: "Although he refuses to be pushed around, he is nevertheless careful not to break irrevocably with an opponent, always leaving open the possibility of an eventual reconciliation."
Assad transformed Syria into a major regional power. He tried to move closer to the west after the collapse of the Soviet Union and supported the allied coalition against Iraq. Earlier the Soviet Union had supported and re-armed him at crucial moments during the first Gulf War.
Assad became the focal point of Arab hard-line opposition to Israel, presenting himself as the only true unifying force in Arab nationalism.
Central to Assad's foreign policy was his determination to win back the strategically vital Golan Heights, lost in 1967. But the Syrian track of the peace talks has always been the slowest moving, largely because of Assad's cautious approach and principled stand.
Several months before talks with Israel started in 1991, Assad said that "if the Arabs agreed to relinquish territory, it would not mean peace but capitulation. We have not capitulated at any time in history. We were beaten, but we never capitulated."
Assad showed the ruthlessness of his leadership in the town of Hama, a former stronghold of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood which, in 1982, was inciting mass uprisings against him. In response, Assad sent his army and at least 10,000 people were killed.
Yet it is generally agreed that Assad brought stability to his country. Feared and respected, he foisted his personality on his people.
Assad had dreaded the wrath of the West who accused him of being behind the 1983 bomb attack on the American base in Beirut which killed 258 marines. During the same year, he was able to destroy an American-brokered accord between Israel and Lebanon which would, in effect, have brought Lebanon into Israel's orbit. But his finest hour was the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon.
Though not an oil producing state, Syria witnessed rapid modernisation of its infrastructure under Assad. Electricity and better roads brought prosperity to a new middle class.
Assad struggled for more than half a century for the sake of his convictions. He believed in Arab pride, unity and restoration of Arab rights.
His courage was unquestioned, and his vision remained as consistent as his convictions. His death comes as a tremendous shock and is likely to compound the uncertainties that already dominate the Middle East.
* The writer is an Arab affairs expert and editor-in-chief of Al-Ahali.
