Background
Hafez was born on 6 October 1930 in Qardaha to an Alawite family of the Kalbiyya tribe. His parents were Na'sa and Ali Sulayman al-Assad. Hafez was Ali's ninth son, and the fourth from his second marriage.
military politician president statesman
Hafez was born on 6 October 1930 in Qardaha to an Alawite family of the Kalbiyya tribe. His parents were Na'sa and Ali Sulayman al-Assad. Hafez was Ali's ninth son, and the fourth from his second marriage.
He attended a French-run school in his home village.
As a secondary school student in Latakia, he joined the Ba'th Party, attracted by its pan-Arab, secularist, and socialist doctrines.
The following year he entered the military academy at Homs; chosen for air force training at Aleppo, he graduated as a combat pilot in 1955.
Assad participated in the 1963 Syrian coup d'état which brought the Syrian Regional Branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party to power, and the new leadership appointed him Commander of the Syrian Air Force. In 1966, Assad participated in a second coup, which toppled the traditional leaders of the Ba'ath Party and brought a radical military faction headed by Salah Jadid to power. Assad was appointed defense minister by the new government. Four years later, Assad initiated the Corrective Revolution which ousted Jadid, and appointed himself as the undisputed leader of Syria.
Assad de-radicalised the Ba'ath government when he took power by giving more space to private property and by strengthening the country's foreign relations with countries which his predecessor had deemed reactionary. He sided with the Soviet Union during the Cold War in turn for support against Israel, and, while he had forsaken the pan-Arab concept of unifying the Arab world into one Arab nation, he sought to make Syria the defender of Arab interests against Israel.
When he came to power, Assad organised state services along sectarian lines (the Sunnis became the heads of political institutions, while the Alawites took control of the military, intelligence, and security apparatuses). The formerly collegial powers of Ba'athist decision-making were curtailed, and were transferred to the Syrian presidency. The Syrian government ceased to be a one-party system in the normal sense of the word, and was turned into a one-party state with a strong presidency. To maintain this system, a cult of personality centered on Assad and his family was created by the president and Ba'ath party.
Having become the main source of initiative inside the Syrian government, Assad began looking for a successor. His first choice was his brother Rifaat, but Rifaat attempted to seize power in 1983–84 when Hafez's health was in doubt. Rifaat was subsequently exiled when Hafez's health recovered. Hafez's next choice of successor was his eldest son, Bassel. However Bassel died in a car accident in 1994, and Hafez turned to his third choice—his younger son Bashar, who at that time had no political experience. This move was met with criticism within some quarters of the Syrian ruling class, but Assad persisted with his plan and demoted several officials who opposed this succession. Hafez died in 2000 and Bashar succeeded him as President.
(Describes the childhood, rise to power, and political inf...)
(A biography of the military leader who became president o...)
He was raised as an Alawi Muslim, a member of a minority sect in a predominantly Sunni Muslim country.