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Syrian Dictator Assad Dead After 30 Years in Power June 12, 2000 Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad died under suspicious circumstances on June 10. Assad's death elevated his son Bashar to the dictatorship of this impoverished Moslem country, which has regularly been named by the State Department as a leading sponsor of terrorism. Bashar Assad became the heir apparent to the dictatorship when his older brother Basil died in a suspicious car accident in 1994. The younger Assad moved quickly to consolidate his hold on power. Abdel-Halim Khaddam, one of Syria's two assistant dictators who are nominally running the country now, named him the commander of Syria's armed forces, at the same time promoting him from the rank of colonel to lieutenant general. In addition, the governing body of the ruling Ba'ath Party unanimously nominated him for the dictatorship. The Syrian "parliament" must also endorse the nomination, and set a date for a referendum to confirm the choice. The parliament, which has functioned as a rubber stamp to the dictator, has already amended the country's Constitution to reduce the minimum age for dictator from 40 to 34, swiftly eliminating a legal obstacle to the younger Assad's ascension. Bashar Assad is 34. According to the Syrian state-controlled press, thousands of Arabs took to the streets of Damascus, shouting their "grief" over the death of Assad and their devotion to his son, who inherits an insular nation still at war with Israel and struggling to find its place in a region that has passed it by economically. The bestowal of new titles and positions gave the younger Assad a strong measure of public legitimacy by propelling him to the top of Syria's tight and secretive military and political hierarchy. Over the past six years, since the suspicious death of his older brother Basil, Bashar Assad had been assiduously but quietly groomed for succession. He has steadily advanced in military rank and acted as his father's liaison to Lebanon, the puppet state that Syria runs politically and militarily. In recent months, the creation of a clean and forceful image for Mr. Assad took on a new urgency. He has been credited in the state-controlled press with helping choose a younger and supposedly more progressive set of ministers and with managing a major anti-corruption drive. The purge has been aimed at some of the old guard in the government and in the security services who might have been expected to resist automatically transferring their loyalty from the father to the son. The most recent victim was Hikmat Shehabi, the former chief of the Syrian Army and one-time member of Syria's negotiating team with Israel. Shehabi was reported to have fled Syria last week. Although his position would have to be confirmed by a public vote, "elections" for dictator in Syria for the past three decades have been pro-forma affairs limited to one candidate -- the elder Assad -- who generally won nearly 100 percent of the votes cast. Syrian authorities, meanwhile, were completing plans for a massive funeral on June 13 for the dead dictator, who brutally ruled Syria through two major Arab-Israeli wars. He died of an apparent "heart attack" at the age of 69 on Saturday after ruling Syria for 30 years. The latest attempt at forging a peace between Syria and Israel -- and by extension, between Lebanon and Israel -- broke down in mid-January. A meeting between President Clinton and the dead Syrian dictator in Geneva in March failed to break the logjam. Tributes to the dead Syrian dictator continued to pour in from other Arab dictators, who described him as a tenacious ruler who clung to the ideals of Arab nationalism long after they were set aside as out-dated or impractical by other dictators. The accolades were especially effusive in Lebanon, where puppet officials credited the Syrian dictator with helping to end their civil war. Syria still treats the much smaller neighbor as a satellite state and keeps some 30,000 soldiers and an unknown number of secret police agents based here. In Cairo, the Egyptian cabinet met to discuss the ramifications of the Syrian leader's death. It was the only subject on the agenda. "We were shocked by the death of a colleague and a brother," Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak said after the meeting, clearly reflecting on the possibility of his own assassination. If he does consolidate his hold on Syria, the younger Assad would join a new generation of Arab dictators who were bequeathed power by their fathers despite their lack of military or political credentials. Over the past two years, power has passed peacefully to the sons of long-ruling dictators in Jordan, Morocco, and Qatar, who, like Assad, came of age after the major dislocations and loss of territory that followed the Arab-Israeli wars. Assad began his political career protesting against French rule in the 1940s. Syria declared independence from France in 1946, and after independence, Assad quickly rose to head the student movement of the Al-Ba'ath Arab Socialist Party. In 1952 he enrolled in the military academy, and after graduating as an air force lieutenant in 1955 he went to the Soviet Union for fighter pilot training. The appeal of Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser's leadership in the wake of the 1956 Suez crisis created support in Syria for union with Egypt. On February 1, 1958, the two countries merged to create the United Arab Republic, and all Syrian political parties ceased overt activities. During the years of the United Arab Republic, Assad was posted to Egypt as a night fighter pilot. The UAR was not a success, however. Following a military coup on September 28, 1961, Syria seceded, reestablishing itself as the Syrian Arab Republic. Assad was expelled from the army due to his opposition to the breakup of the UAR and was transferred to a civil job. Instability characterized the next 18 months, with various coups culminating on March 8, 1963, in the installation by leftist Syrian Army officers, including Assad, of the Arab Socialist Resurrection Party (Ba'ath Party). The new Syrian government explored the possibility of a federation with Egypt and Ba'ath-controlled Iraq. An agreement was concluded in Cairo on April 17, 1963, but serious disagreements among the parties soon developed, and the tripartite federation failed to materialize. In 1966, a group of army officers carried out a successful, intra-party coup, imprisoned dictator Amin Hafiz, and created a civilian Ba'ath government. The defeat of the Syrians and Egyptians in the June 1967 war with Israel weakened the radical socialist regime established by the 1966 coup. Conflict developed between a moderate military wing and a more extremist civilian wing of the Ba'ath party. The 1970 retreat of Syrian forces sent to aid the PLO during the "Black September" hostilities with Jordan reflected this political disagreement within the ruling Ba'ath leadership. On November 13, 1970, then defense minister Assad ousted the civilian party leadership in a coup and assumed the role of prime minister, later naming himself president. Assad maintained his rule through brutal terror tactics against the Syrian people. In 1982, he put down a Muslim rebellion in the city of Hama by killing 20,000 people in the space of a week and then paving the city over. In a failed attempt to capture the Golan Heights and drive Israel into the sea, Assad led Syria to defeat in the Yom Kippur War with Israel in 1973. Assad invaded Lebanon 1976 under the pretext of ending a civil war, which began in 1975. He ordered the 1982 bombing that destroyed the headquarters of President-elect Bashir Gemayel, killing him and much of his government. Assad continued sponsoring the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) terrorism against Israel that caused the civil war, and in 1982, Israel launched a full-scale invasion that resulted in an expulsion of the PLO forces operating in Lebanon. The U.S., Italy, and France sent peacekeeping forces in the following year, but these were pulled out in 1984 following Syrian-sponsored terrorist attacks that killed over 300 of the peacekeepers, 241 of whom were U.S. marines. With most of the PLO terrorists gone from Lebanon, Syria began establishing and sponsoring other terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad. In 1988, Assad ordered the kidnapping and murder of U.S. marine Lt. Col. William Higgins, who served with the UN observer group in Lebanon. With the Soviet Union as his primary sponsor, Assad maintained Syria's presence in Lebanon throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In a departure following the decline of Soviet power, Syria sent 20,000 troops to participate in the Persian Gulf War against its neighbor Iraq as part of a U.S.-led coalition. However, Assad refused to allow his troops to be used in combat and also refused overflight of Syria by U.S. rescue forces, resulting in the capture and torture of two American airmen during the war. Following this brief period of "cooperation" with the U.S., Assad returned to sponsoring terrorism against western interests. Although Syria is on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism, the State Department claims that there is no evidence that Syrian officials have engaged directly in planning or executing international terrorist attacks since 1986. However, Syria continues to provide safehaven and support to several terrorist groups, allowing some to maintain training camps or other facilities on Syrian territory. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Islamic Jihad, for example, have their headquarters in Damascus. In addition, Syria grants a wide variety of terrorist groups--including Hamas, the PFLP, and Islamic Jihad--basing privileges or refuge in areas of Lebanon's Bekaa Valley under Syrian control. Although Assad claimed to be committed to the Middle East "peace" process, he encouraged attacks against Israel by Hezbollah and Palestinian groups in southern Lebanon. Syria also assists the resupply of terrorist groups operating in Lebanon via Damascus. U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright, who has named Assad's Syria repeatedly as a state sponsor of terrorism, plans to attend the dead Syrian dictator's funeral on June 13th. Syrian state-controlled press claimed that Assad's death was the result of a heart attack, but the suspicious timing and lack of warning of the dictator's demise have some wondering if there is a more sinister cause behind his death. The obvious suspect in an assassination would, of course, be the dictator's son Bashar Assad, who became heir apparent following another suspicious death, that of his brother in 1994. However, the elder Assad's intransigence in the Middle East "peace" process give rise to suspicions that others could be behind the death of the Syrian dictator.
© 2000 TruthNews. All Rights Reserved. And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
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