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Syria The Baath Redirections of 1966 and 1970
By the summer of 1965, Hafiz began seeking to limit the
influence of the Alawis and Druzes. His own political orientation
had begun to shift toward compromise, moderation, union, and the
slowing down of socialism. In September 1965, he removed Jadid
from the post of army chief of staff, but the latter entrenched
himself in his party position as secretary general of the
Regional Command. On December 21, 1965, the National Command
dissolved the Regional Command and removed Jadid's three
supporters from the five-man presidency council.
At the same time, Hafiz dismissed the cabinet of Prime
Minister Zuayyin, who had become a regionalist. He then called on
the perennial Bitar to form a new cabinet (his fifth) and
recalled General Umran as minister of defense. On Hafiz's
authority, extensive transfers of Jadid's supporters in the army
were planned. On February 18, 1966, Aflaq condemned the Jadid
faction for "degenerating into regional separatism" and (although
he himself had assisted the process) for the military usurpation
of party and government power from the civilian leadership. Thus,
the stage was set for a confrontation between the two parts of
the Baath Party.
On February 23, 1966, Jadid, the Regional Command, and their
army units seized the government in the bloodiest of the many
coups d'etat since 1949. The general public, however, displayed
no inclination to fight for one Baathist military faction against
the other.
Hafiz, wounded in the fighting, was arrested and imprisoned;
the old National Command was denounced and expelled; and Aflaq
and Bitar were read out of the party. Later released, both took
refuge in Lebanon. One of the first acts of the Regional Command
after seizing the radio station was the announcement of the
appointment of Major General Hafiz al Assad as minister of
defense.
On March 1, 1966, a new government was formed. Jadid remained
outside the formal structure of government, directing affairs
through his position as party leader. So as not to appear as an
outright military dictatorship, the regime designated prominent
regionalist Baath civilians to office: Nureddin Atassi as
president of the republic; Yusuf Zuayyin, again as prime
minister; and Ibrahim Makhus as foreign minister. All were
physicians and representatives of the urban intellectuals. The
first two were Sunnis; Makhus, an Alawi. In the Regional Command,
the top five positions were held by Jadid, Atassi, Zuayyin,
Makhus, and Assad, in that order.
On September 8, 1966, a military countercoup attempt was led
by a Druze, Salim Hatum, a leading partner of Jadid in the
February 23 coup. Although Hatum's men actually arrested
President Atassi, the army chief of staff Major General Ahmad
Suwaydani, and Jadid himself, the attempt failed when Assad
threatened to send the air force against Hatum's forces. The
Workers' Battalions, a proletarian national guard organized by
Khalid al Jundi and influenced by the Chinese Red Guard concept,
also declared for Jadid. Agreement was reached between the
factions for an exchange of prisoners, and on the following
morning Hatum and his associates fled to Jordan. He returned to
Syria in early June 1967 to fight, he said, against Israel; he
was arrested and shot.
The traumatic defeat of the Syrians and Egyptians in the June
1967 War with Israel discredited the radical socialist regimes of
Nasser's Egypt and Baathist Syria. The Jadid faction, which
included Atassi, Zuayyin, and Makhus, was particularly hurt. The
defeat strengthened the hands of the moderates and the rightists
and was the catalyst for Assad's ascent in Syria.
In the fall of 1968, open controversy developed between
Assad, reportedly representing a moderate faction centered in the
military, and extremists of Jadid's civilian regime. Although
Jadid's power in the party remained strong, in March 1969 an
ostensible compromise was reached between Assad and Jadid. The
new government formed in May made minor concessions to broadening
the political base but represented no real change in domestic or
foreign policy. The rank order in the party's hierarchy remained
unchanged. Assad continued as minister of defense. A number of
Syrian Communists were arrested, and their leader Bakdash again
left the country.
The conflict between the Jadid civilian wing and the Assad
military wing of the party continued through 1970, and the
government, although reported to be widely unpopular, remained in
firm control of the country. From time to time different measures
bore the influence of the two factions. Party purges had
decimated the air force, which suffered from a critical pilot
shortage, and Assad succeeded in restoring to duty a number of
air force pilots who had been retired for political reasons. The
Regional Command headed by Jadid, rather than the Ministry of
Defense, retained complete control of its institutionalized
Palestine guerrilla force, As Saiqa (Thunderbolt)
(see Special and Irregular Armed Forces
, ch. 5).
In its radical revolutionary role, the regime proclaimed
support for the guerrilla movements but, while polemically
assailing Jordan and Lebanon for their efforts to control
Palestinian guerrillas in their territories, did not hesitate to
control the guerrillas in Syria. As Saiqa was not allowed to
launch operations from Syrian soil against Israel because of the
danger of reprisal, but was frequently used within Syria for
party security purposes.
In inter-Arab affairs, the Jadid and Assad factions largely
negated one another. Syria remained at odds with most Arab
states, especially Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq.
In September 1970, the Jordanian army launched attacks on PLO
camps and on Palestinian refugee camps that were under the
control of PLO units; most were in the vicinity of Amman.
Jordan's King Hussein ordered the assaults in response to efforts
by the PLO to implement its avowed policy of deposing Hussein and
other Arab monarchs. The hostilities in Jordan--which became
known by the PLO and its supporters as Black September--had a
profound impact on the Arab world and particularly on the
government in Syria.
During the civil war that lasted 10 days, Syria sent some 200
tanks (nominally of the Palestine Liberation Army--PLA) to aid
the PLO forces. Iraq, Syria's Baathist rival, had a force of
about 12,000 men stationed near Az Zarqa northeast of Amman;
these troops did not participate in the fighting and withdrew to
Iraq a few days later. The United States dispatched the Sixth
Fleet to the eastern Mediterranean, and the Israeli air force
openly assumed a posture of military preparedness. Most
important, the Syrian air force refused to provide air cover to
the Syrian tank brigade, which came under severe attacks first by
the Jordanian air force and then by the Jordanian army. On
September 23 and 24, the Syrian expeditionary force withdrew from
the battle zone and returned to Syria.
Syria's military fiasco in Jordan reflected political
disagreement within the ruling Baath leadership. The Jadid
faction argued for full support of and participation with the PLO
in Jordan; Assad and his associates opposed such action. For a
variety of reasons, not the least of which was fear of a
devastating Israeli reprisal, Assad refused to commit his air
force to support the tank units. Jadid and his supporters were
militarily and politically humiliated.
The Baath Party's tenth congress, held in Damascus, lasted
two weeks and ended November 12, 1970. This conference, labeled
an extraordinary session of the National Command, underscored
Jadid's continuing control of the party apparatus. It adopted
resolutions reaffirming the government's position in internal and
foreign affairs and censuring Assad and his chief of staff Major
General Mustafa Tlas on the grounds of improper military
influence in the government.
On November 13, 1970, army units arrested Jadid, Atassi, and
Zuayyin along with several others and seized the centers of
communication without effective opposition. Although a few minor
demonstrations occurred, the overthrow was virtually bloodless.
Jadid was detained under guard; Atassi, in house arrest. The
others were soon released.
On November 16, the Regional Command of the Baath Party
issued a statement saying that the change that had occurred was a
transfer of power within the party showing that the party's
progressive rank and file were stronger than the misdirected
forces of dictators. A new party congress was to be convened to
reorganize the party; a national front government was to be
organized under revised Baathist leadership; and a people's
council, or legislature, was to be formed within three months.
Continued support for the Palestinian cause was affirmed.
On November 19, 1970, the Regional Command announced the
designation of Ahmad al Khatib, a respected but hitherto little-
known politician, as acting chief of state and of Lieutenant
General Assad as prime minister and minister of defense. Assad
then formed a 26-man cabinet, consisting of about one-half Assad
Baathists and the balance scattered among Socialists, Nasserists,
Independents, and Communists. This cabinet met for the first time
on November 23, 1970. In a press interview Assad claimed that the
change in government had been neither a coup nor the result of
political conflict along lines of military-civilian division, but
a natural development in the party's revolutionary movement,
often referred to as the "Correction Movement."
Data as of April 1987
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