Salah Jadid - Strongman of Baathist Syria

Strongman of Baathist Syria

While Jadid remained away from public view, as second secretary of the Baath Party, men allied to him filled the top posts in state and army: Nureddin al-Atassi, as party chairman, state president and later prime minister; Yousuf Zouayyen, as prime minister; Ibrahim Makhous as foreign minister, Hafez al-Assad as defense minister; Abd al-Karim al-Jundi, as security chief. Many of these men were Alawis (e.g. all of the above except Atassi, Jundi, and Zouayyen, who were Sunni), giving the regime a sectarian character. Several were military men, and all belonged on the Baath Party's left wing.

Under Jadid's rule, Syria aligned itself with the Soviet bloc and pursued hardline policies towards Israel and "reactionary" Arab states especially Saudi Arabia, calling for the mobilization of a "people's war" against Zionism rather than inter-Arab military alliances. Domestically, Jadid attempted a socialist transformation of Syrian society at forced pace, creating unrest and economical difficulties. Opponents of the regime were harshly suppressed, while the Baath Party replaced parliament as law-making body and other parties were banned. Public support for his regime, such as it was, declined sharply following Syria's defeat in the 1967 Six Day War, when Israel captured the Golan Heights, and as a result of the troubled internal conditions of the country.

After the war, in particular, tensions began to increase between Jadid's followers and those who argued that the situation called for a more moderate stance on socialism and international relations. This group coalesced around Defense Minister Hafez al-Assad, who protested the "adventurism" of Jadid, and demanded a normalization of the internal situation by adopting a permanent constitution, liberalizing the economy, and mending ties with non-Baathist groups, as well as the external situation, by seeking an alliance with conservative Arab states such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia. While Jadid retained the allegiance of most of the civilian Baath apparatus, Assad as defense minister gradually asserted control over the military wing of the party. In 1969, Assad purged several Jadid loyalists, and from that point on Jadid had lost his preeminence in the state.