Downfall
In 1970, when conflict erupted between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Jordanian army, Jadid sent Syrian-controlled Palestinian troops of the nominally PLO-run Palestinian Liberation Army, based in Syria, into Jordan in order to help the PLO. This action was not supported by Assad's more pragmatic Baath faction, and the troops withdrew. The action helped trigger the simmering conflict between Jadid's and Assad's wings of the Baath Party and army. The Syrian communist party aligned itself with Salah Jadid. The Soviet ambassador, Nuradin Mukdinov was drawn in the power struggle. Hafez al Assad was angered by the meddling in Syrian politics by the Soviet Union, so he decided to scare the Soviets by sending Mustafa Tlass to Beijing to procure arms and wave Chairman Mao's little Red Book. In November 1970, Jadid attempted to fire Assad and his supporter Mustafa Tlass, which in turn caused Assad to launch an intra-party coup against Jadid, dubbed the Corrective Movement. Jadid was arrested, and remained in prison until his death in 1993, while al-Assad would remain in power until his death in 2000, and his son since then.
Read more about this topic: Salah Jadid
Famous quotes containing the word downfall:
“Children demand that their heroes should be fleckless, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is less revolutionary shock to a passionate child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Show me one thing here on earth which has begun well and not ended badly. The proudest palpitations are engulfed in a sewer, where they cease throbbing, as though having reached their natural term: this downfall constitutes the heart’s drama and the negative meaning of history.”
—E.M. Cioran (b. 1911)