Fall of the Assad Regime in Syria, Part 3

— Jason

Listen here: https://www.spreaker.com/episode/hwts-267-fall-of-the-assad-regime-part-3--63434342

The Syrian Arab Republic struggled to gain legitimacy, both at home and aboard, during and after the 1963 Syrian Revolution. Ostensibly, the government was now controlled by President Amin al-Hafiz, who had conspired with Ba’athist military officers to come to power. Al-Hafiz made the “mistake” of not giving his co-conspirators the political power they desired: this led to his overthrow by Salah Jadid, Chief of Staff of the Syrian Arab Army between 21 and 23 February 1966.

International relations between Syria and its neighbors deteriorated further during this period. Soviet military aid flooded both Egypt and Syria as a counterpoint to American weapons being sold to Israel. The Syrian military had been pushing for an alliance with Egypt. If both Arab nations could coordinate their military actions, they could potentially overwhelm Israel. These actions led to the 1967 Six-Day War which reshaped the Middle East.

Following intelligence reports regarding Egyptian and Syrian negotiations, Israel’s government and military believed that an attack was imminent. Massive Israeli pre-emptive strikes were launched on the morning of 5 June 1967 against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan (which up to this point had tried to maintain neutrality). Within hours, the Arab air forces were destroyed which allowed Israeli military forces tactical and strategic superiority. 

By the end of the Six-Day War, Israel had crushed the Arab militaries and occupied the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and Golan Heights. These regions were where most Palestinians who had been expelled in 1947-1948 had been settled by Arab states: these regions are colloquially known as the Occupied Territories. The areas that ostensibly were to be the core of a future Palestinian state were gone. In theory these regions were occupied by the surrounding Arab states to ensure a “Palestine” still existed even though they never pushed for the development of this entity.

The Jadid government struggled with the humiliating 1967 defeat and was losing its hold onto power. At the same time, General Hafez al-Assad, commander of the Syrian Air Force, had been building a following of discontented officers and was biding his time. The event that ultimately led to Jadid’s fall was the failed Syrian intervention in the Jordanian Civil War in September 1970.

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (immediately to the south of Syria) was fighting for its political life: a Palestinian insurrection, supplied by Syria, and the potential threat of a civilian uprising in support of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) threatened to overthrow King Hussein. After the Six-Day War, Palestinian fedayeen guerrillas relocated to Jordan and stepped up their attacks against Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. These attacks built in violence and intensity as they gained more Arab support. During the summer of 1970, PLO chairman Yasser Arafat called for the overthrow of King Hussein. 

This was the final straw and finally in September 1970, King Hussein ordered the Jordanian military to oust the PLO from its strongholds in his country. On 17 September, the Jordanian Army surrounded cities with a significant PLO presence and began targeting fedayeen posts that were operating from Palestinian refugee camps: Black September (also known as the Jordanian Civil War) had erupted into full scale combat. This was viewed by Jadid as a perfect opportunity to knock the Hashemites out of power.

On 18 September, Jadid ordered a force of 10,000 Syrian soldiers posing as members of the Palestinian Liberation Army to cross the Syrian-Jordanian border. Their target was the Irbid, the second largest city in Jordan, which the fedayeen had occupied and declared to be a "liberated" city. Jadid’s plan was for the Syrians and PLO fedayeen fighters to link up and push towards the Jordanian capital of Amman.

On 22 September, the Syrians withdrew from Irbid after suffering heavy losses to a coordinated aerial–ground offensive by the Jordanians. Mounting pressure from other Arab countries led the Jordanians to halt their offensive. On 13 October, King Hussein signed an agreement with Arafat to regulate the fedayeen's presence in Jordan: no more attempts to overthrow the royal family and a decrease in attacks against Israel. Despite the external pressure, King Hussein was able to defeat the Syrian invasion and briefly curb the PLO. This culminated in the Jordanian military expelling the PLO from the kingdom (although the PLO reestablished itself in Lebanon).

Jadid was further humiliated and politically isolated by the failure of Syrian forces in Black September. The Corrective Revolution, or the 1970 Coup, was a bloodless military coup d'état led by Prime Minister General Hafez al-Assad on 13 November 1970. He promised to correct the errors of his predecessor. 

Assad was a member of a splinter group of Shi’ite Muslims known as the Alawites. This group follows what is known as Twelver Shi’ism: they venerate Ali ibn Abi Talib, the "First Imam" in the Twelver school, as the physical manifestation of God. According to Shi’ite tradition, the Imams are twelve divinely ordained legitimate leaders of the Muslim community: this line of Imams are direct blood relatives of Muhammad via Fatima, his daughter, and her husband, Ali.  Muhammad Hujjat Allah ibn al-Hasan is believed to be the Twelfth and Final Imam, who went into Occultation (in hiding until he will reveal himself). According to Twelver Shia doctrine, he is the current Imam and the promised Mahdi, a messianic figure who will return with the prophet Isa (Jesus). He will reestablish the rightful governance of Islam and establish justice and peace in the whole earth. 

After reorganizing the Syrian legislative assembly with fellow Alawites and Ba’athists in 1971, Hafez al-Assad held a referendum in which he was given a seven-year term as the president. Further referendums saw him renewed in this until his death in 2000. In March 1972, to broaden the base of his government, Assad formed the National Progressive Front, a coalition of parties led by the Ba'ath Party who soon became the only political organization that could run for election.

Within three years of his power grab, Hafez found himself yet again embroiled in international conflict. Egypt and Syria had gained massive amounts of Soviet economic and military aid following the end of the 1967 Six-Day War. The loss of the Golan Heights was still a stinging humiliation for the Syrians and offered a potential direct route for Israeli forces to attack Damascus. 

The liberation of the lost Arab territory was seen as a lure to attract the Egyptians into another confrontation with Israel. Assad reached out to Anwar Sadat, Egypt’s president, to test the concept of yet another alliance between their nations. Sadat was wary of confronting Israel; while he gave indications of interest, he hoped that war could be avoided until Egypt had completely rebuilt their military forces.

The Yom Kippur War (6 to 23 October 1973) was a surprise attack by both the Syrians and the reluctant Egyptians. Increasing tensions, and subsequent de-escalations, between the combatants throughout that summer had built sense of false security for the Israelis. When the Syrian and Egyptian forces attacked through the Golan Heights and Suez Canal, the Israeli defenders found themselves in dire situations. Although the Egyptians briefly recaptured the eastern bank of the Suez Canal and Syrian armored and airborne assaults pushed heavily against the Golan Heights, subsequent Israeli counterattacks crushed both Arab militaries.

Despite not recapturing the Golan Heights and having the Syrian military mauled again, Hafez Assad held onto power following the Yom Kippur War. However, that did not mean his rule was without critics: the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood was very vocal. At the end of January 1973, Assad had put together yet another new constitution to stabilize his hold on power, which caused an internal crisis because it did not require that the president of Syria to be a Muslim. The Muslim Brotherhood declared Assad to be an “enemy of Allah” and called for his overthrow. Beginning in 1976, the arch-conservative Muslim Brotherhood led an armed insurgency against the government. This continued for six years, until its central stronghold in Hama was shelled killing thousands of people. This armed opposition, as well as the suppression of peaceful demonstrations, was a grim foreshadow of future civil war.

During the Lebanese Civil War (13 April 1975 – 13 October 1990), the various ethnic and religious groups within the country descended into a brutal contest for power. The Lebanese Christians, specifically the Maronite Christian community who held power at the time, and Lebanese Sunni Muslims comprised the majority in the coastal cities; Lebanese Shia Muslims were primarily based throughout southern Lebanon and in the Beqaa Valley in the east (where members of the Palestinian Liberation Organization had been exiled from Jordan); and the country's mountainous areas were populated by other Christians and Druze peoples. The Cold War also exerted a disintegrative effect on Lebanon, Christians mostly sided with the Western world while Muslims, pan-Arabists, and leftists mostly sided with Soviet-aligned Arab countries.

Fighting between Lebanese Christian militias and Palestinian insurgents, mainly from the PLO, began in April 1975 and generated an alliance between the Palestinians and Lebanese Muslims (eventually being a key contributing factor in the foundation of the terrorist organization of Hezbollah in the 1990s). The cities of Lebanon became battlefields as opposing militias engaged in bitter street-by-street fighting and indiscriminate artillery exchanges.

The conflict deepened as Syria, Israel, and Iran became involved and supported, or fought alongside, different factions. In early 1976, the Lebanese Civil War was going poorly for the Maronite Christians, so the Lebanese President Elias Sarkis officially requested Syria intervene militarily. Syria sent 40,000 troops into the country to prevent the Christians from being overrun, but soon became embroiled in this war, beginning the 30-year Syrian presence in Lebanon. Over the following 15 years of civil war, Syria fought both for control over Lebanon, and as an attempt to undermine Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon (beginning with invasions in 1978 and then again in 1982 until eventual withdrawal in 2000), through extensive use of Lebanese allies as proxy fighters.

The 1980s and 1990s also proved to be just as interesting for Assad and Syria: the question of who would was to be the successor for Hafez? Initially, he favored his brother Rifaat, however, he attempted to seize power in 1983–1984 when Hafez's health was in doubt. Subsequently he spent the next 36 years as an exile in France (from where he fled yet again in October 2021 after being found guilty in France of acquiring millions of euros diverted from the Syrian state). Oops.

That left Hafez to choose his successor from his sons: Bassel, Bashar, Majid, and Maher. Bassel, as the eldest, was the son chosen initially chosen by his father to be the future President of Syria. Bashar was quiet, reserved and lacked interest in politics or the military and wanted to become a doctor. Majid was emotionally or mentally challenged and so was disqualified from the power structure (he died in 2009 following a long illness). Maher Hafez al-Assad would become a Syrian military officer, as well as hold command of the core of the country's security force.

Everything seemed to have been decided following Rifaat’s failed coup and escape to France. Bassel was to succeed his father until his death by high-speed car crash on 21 January 1994. Hafez was forced to recall Bashar from his medical studies in London, England to take his place as the new heir apparent of Syria.