1.
Ba'ath Party (Syrian-dominated faction)
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The Arab Socialist Baath Party, also referred to as the pro-Syrian Baath movement, is a neo-Baathist political party, with branches across the Arab world. The party emerged from a split in the Baath Party in February 1966, the party leads the government in Syria. From 1970 until 2000, the party was led by the Syrian president Hafez al-Assad, as of 2000, leadership has been shared between his son Bashar al-Assad and Abdullah al-Ahmar. The Syrian branch of the party is the largest organisation within the Syrian-led Baath Party, Hafez al-Assad became the secretary of the Syrian Regional Command of the party in 1970, and Secretary General of the National Command in late 1970. Despite being deceased, Hafez al-Assad is still the official Secretary General of the National Command, Bashar al-Assad became the Regional Secretary of the party in Syria after his fathers death in 2000. Abdullah al-Ahmar serves as the Assistant Secretary General of the National Command, the highest organ of the party is the Party Congress. The Congress elects a General Secretary and a National Command, under the National Command there is a Regional Command for each state in which the party operates. The regions are divided into branches, which are divided into companies, a branch consists of two or more companies. A company comprises three to seven cells, each cell has between three and seven members. In theory, the National Command of the party is the government for the entire Arab nation. The body comprises 21 members, half of whom are Syrian, in practice, the Syrian Regional Command is the more powerful institution inside the party. The Syrian Regional Command is the political leadership in Syria. A seat in National Command has become a sinecure, an honorary post given to Syrian politicians as they retire from political life. Hafez al-Assad rarely had time to attend National Command meetings, instead, he appointed Vice President for Party Affairs Zuhayr Mashariqa or Abd al-Halim Khaddam to represent him at National Command meetings. There is a branch in Algeria. There is a branch in Bahrain. There is a branch in Egypt. The party was known in Iraq as Left-wing Baath or Qutr Al-Iraq
2.
Ba'ath Party
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Zakī al-Arsūzī was a Syrian philosopher, philologist, sociologist, historian, and Arab nationalist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of Baathism and he published several books during his lifetime, most notably The Genius of Arabic in its Tongue. Born into a family in Latakia, Syria, al-Arsuzi studied at the Sorbonne. In 1930, he returned to Syria, where he became a member of the League of National Action in 1933, in 1938, he moved to Damascus because of his disillusionment with party work, and in 1939, he left the LNA. In Damascus al-Arsuzi established and headed a group consisting of mostly secondary school pupils who would often discuss European history, nationalism, shortly after leaving the LNA, al-Arsuzi established the Arab National Party, an Arab nationalist party with a defined creed. In 1947, the two merged, forming a single Arab Baath Party. Despite the merger, Al-Arsuzi neither attended its founding conference nor was given membership, during the rest of the 1940s and 1950s, al-Arsuzi stayed out of politics and worked as a teacher. He made a comeback during the 1960s power struggle in the Baath Party between Aflaq and al-Bitar on one hand and Salah Jadid and Hafiz al-Assad on the other. When Aflaq and al-Bitar lost the struggle and were forced to escape from Syria in 1966. The key to Arab unification, according to al-Arsuzi, is through language, in contrast to the Latin language, al-Arsuzi argued, Arabic was far less arbitrary and far more intuitive. Despite his contributions to Baathist thought, al-Arsuzi is barely mentioned in Western or Arab scholarship and this omission may be linked to the fact that Sati al-Husri, a contemporary Arab nationalist, had many of the same ideas as al-Arsuzi but was better able to articulate them. Zaki al-Arsuzi was born in 1900 or 1901 to a family of Alawi origins in Latakia on the Syrian coast of the Ottoman Empire. His mother, Maryam came from a prominent religious family, while his father, with his two brothers, one sister and his parents moved to Antioch in 1904. Arsuzi began his studies at a kuttab where he memorised the Quran, four years later, his parents enrolled him into a rüşdiye to give him a proper Ottoman education. His father was arrested by Ottoman authorities in 1915 for nationalist activities and his father was imprisoned for a short period before he and his family were sent to internal exile in the Anatolian city of Konya. After a year in exile, Najib and his family were allowed to back to Antioch. According to Arsuzi, his father replaced the Ottoman flag with the Hashemite flag on the Antioch government house upon hearing the news that Faisal I of Iraq had entered Damascus and this however, was never independently verified. In the aftermath of World War I, Arsuzi began studying at Institut Laïc in Lebanon and it was here that Arsuzi was introduced to philosophy
3.
Hafez al-Assad
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In 1966, Assad participated in a second coup, which toppled the traditional leaders of the Baath Party, and brought a radical military faction headed by Salah Jadid to power. Assad was appointed minister by the new government. In 1970 Assad seized power by toppling Jadid, and appointed himself the leader of Syria in the period 1970–71. He sided with the Soviet Union during the Cold War in turn for support against Israel, while he had forsaken pan-Arabism—or at least the pan-Arab concept of unifying the Arab world into one Arab nation—he did seek to make Syria the defender of Arab interest against Israel. When he took power, Assad instituted one-man rule and organized state services into sectarian lines, the formerly collegial powers of Baathist decision-making were curtailed, and were transferred to the Syrian presidency. The Syrian government ceased to be a one-party system in the sense of the word. To maintain this system, a cult of personality centered on Assad. Having become the source of initiative inside the Syrian government. His first choice as successor was his brother Rifaat, who was seen as corrupt. In 1983–84, when Hafezs health was in doubt, Rifaat attempted to seize power, when Hafezs health did improve, Rifaat was exiled from Syria. His next choice of successor was his eldest son, Bassel, however Bassels 1994 death in a car accident forced Assad to turn to his third choice—his younger son Bashar al-Assad, who at that time had no practical political experience. This move was met with criticism within some quarters of the Syrian ruling class. Assad died in 2000 and was succeeded by Bashar al-Assad as President, Hafez was born on 6 October 1930 in Qardaha to an Alawite family of the Kalbiyya tribe. His parents were Nasa and Ali Sulayman al-Assad, Hafez was Alis ninth son, and the fourth from his second marriage. Sulayman married twice, had children and was known for his strength and shooting abilities. By the 1920s he was respected locally, and like others he initially opposed the French Mandate for Syria. Nevertheless, Ali Sulayman later cooperated with the French administration and was appointed to an official post. In 1936, he was one of 80 Alawite notables who signed a letter addressed to the French Prime Minister saying that Alawi people rejected attachment to Syria, for his accomplishments, he was called al-Assad by local residents and made the nickname his surname in 1927
4.
Salah Jadid
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Salah Jadid was a Syrian general and political figure in the Arab Socialist Baath Party in Syria, and the countrys de facto leader from 1966 until 1970. Jadid was born in 1926 in the village of Dweir Baabda, near the city of Jableh. However, there is another report stating his birth year as 1924 and he studied at the Homs Military Academy, and entered the Syrian Army in 1946. Even so, Jadid remained close to the SSNP, his brother and he changed allegiance again in the 1950s, when he became a member of the Arab Nationalist Movement, a party supporting Gamal Abdel Nassers ideological beliefs. Jadid supported Syrias ascension into the United Arab Republic, a republic consisting of Egypt. During the UAR-era, Jadid was stationed in Cairo, Egypt, Jadid established the Military Committee alongside other Baathists in 1959. The chief aim of the Military Committee was to protect the UARs existence, in the beginning there was only four members of the Military Committee, the others were Hafez al-Assad, Abd al-Karim al-Jundi and Muhammad Umran. The Military Committee also tried to save the Syrian Baath movement from annihilation, Committee members were among those who blamed Aflaq for the Baath Partys failing during the UAR years. The Congress also decided to improve relations with Nasser by democratising the UAR from within, a faction within the party, led by al-Hawrani, called for Syrias secession. The Military Committee did not succeed in its aims, and in September 1961 the UAR was dissolved, nazim al-Qudsi, who led the first post-UAR government, persecuted Jadid and the others for their Nasserite loyalties, and all of them were forced to retire from the Syrian Army. Many of these men were Alawis, giving the government a sectarian character, several were military men, and all belonged on the Baath Partys left wing. Domestically, Jadid attempted a socialist transformation of Syrian society at forced pace, creating unrest, opponents of the government were harshly suppressed, while the Baath Party replaced parliament as law-making body and other parties were banned. After the war, in particular, tensions began to increase between Jadids followers and those who argued that the called for a more moderate stance on socialism. While Jadid retained the allegiance of most of the civilian Baath apparatus, in 1969, Assad purged several Jadid loyalists, and from that point on Jadid had lost his preeminence in the state. This action was not supported by Assads more pragmatic Baath faction, the action helped trigger the simmering conflict between Jadids and Assads wings of the Baath Party and army. The Syrian communist party aligned itself with Salah Jadid, the Soviet ambassador, Nuritdin Mukhitdinov was drawn in the power struggle. In November 1970, Jadid attempted to fire Assad and his supporter Mustafa Tlass, Jadid was arrested on 13 November 1970, and remained in the Mezzeh prison in Damascus until his death, while al-Assad would remain in power until his death in 2000. Jadid died of an attack in a hospital on 19 August 1993
5.
Amin al-Hafiz
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Amin al-Hafiz was a Syrian politician, General and member of the Baath Party. Al-Hafiz was born in the city of Aleppo and his first main political role was in 1958, as a Brigadier and leader of a Syrian Army delegation that visited Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian president. The two states merged into one United Arab Republic in February that year, and al-Hafiz was posted to Cairo. The union crumbled after a Syrian uprising in September 1961, the 1963 Syrian coup détat led by the Military Committee introduced Hafiz to public life. In the aftermath of the coup the National Council of the Revolutionary Command became the supreme organ. The NCRC was dominated by the Syrian branch of the radical, Hafiz became President, instituted socialist reforms and oriented his country towards the Eastern Bloc. The details of Eli Cohen and his operations are impossible to verify. In any case Al-Hafiz himself rebutted and denied the allegations of his stature within the Syrian military or political sphere, allegedly, during his exile in Buenos Aires, Hafez befriended a supposed Lebanese trader named Kamal Amin Thaabet, an allegation which he flatly denied. According to Hafez, he never met Cohen in Argentina and his account was that Cohen was a socialite who befriended officers in the Syrian Army but was never a part of the military in any official capacity. Generally, the importance of the intelligence provided to the Israelis was greatly exaggerated, Thaabet was actually an Egyptian-born Israeli Mossad agent, Eli Cohen. Thaabet/Cohen arrived in Syria in early 1962, a year before Hafez’s return, as president, Hafez groomed Thaabet/Cohen to be a future defence minister and possibly even his successor, an allegation which he also flatly denied and challenged. Hafez invited Thaabet/Cohen to functions and gave him tours of secret fortifications in the Golan Heights, when Cohen was revealed as a spy in January 1965, Hafez personally interrogated him and ordered the arrest of 500 of his highly placed friends. Despite international pleas for clemency, Hafez had Cohen publicly hanged in Damascus, on 23 February 1966, he was overthrown by a radical Baathist faction headed by Chief of Staff Salah Jadid. A late warning telegram of the coup détat was sent from President Nasser to Nasim al-Safarjalani, jadids supporters were also seen as more radically left-wing. But the coup was supported and led by officers from Syrias religious minorities, especially the Alawite Muslims. Alawis have ruled Syria ever since, a year later he was relocated to Baghdad. After the fall of Saddam in the Iraq War of 2003 and he died in Aleppo on December 17,2009, reports of his age differ, but he was believed to be in his late 80s. He received a state sponsored funeral
6.
President of Syria
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The President of Syria is the head of state of the Syrian Arab Republic. He is vested with sweeping powers that may be delegated, at his sole discretion and he appoints and dismisses the Prime Minister and other members of the Council of Ministers and military officers. The Constitution of Syria allows the President to run for a 7-year term, on 31 January 1973, Assad implemented the new Constitution, which led to a national crisis. They labeled Assad as the enemy of Allah and called for a jihad against his rule, President of Syria on Facebook President of Syria on Twitter President of Syria on Instagram Official YouTube channel
7.
Ahmad al-Khatib
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Ahmad Hasan al-Khatib was a Syrian politician. He was a head of state of Syria, appointed by Hafez al-Assad to replace the ousted president Nureddin al-Atassi. Ahmad al-Khatib was a member of the ruling Baath party. His position was filled by Assad. He then became the speaker of the Syrian parliament and he died in Damascus, Syria in 1982
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