Salah Jadid (; 1926 – 19 August 1993) was a Syrian military officer and politician who was the leader of the far-left bloc of the Syrian Regional Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, "head of state" and the de facto leader of Ba'athist Syria from 1966 until 1970, when he was ousted by Hafez al-Assad's Corrective Revolution.
Jadid came to power after a coup in 1966. Although he did not rule directly, preferring to remain in the shadows, he wielded all real power in Syria through his allies in key positions of power. Salah Jadid had an open passion for Qutriyun (Regionalist Ba'athism), communism and the Soviet model of government: In just four years in power, he built a totalitarian neo-Ba’athist regime, sometimes called "neo-Marxist". His imposition of radical socialist ideology, brutal repression, and anti-religious policies alienated almost all sectors of Syrian society. His foreign policy alienated most of Syria's potential allies in the Arab world and contributed to the start of the Six-Day War. Salah Jadid was overthrown by his former colleague Hafez al-Assad in 1970 in the so-called "Corrective Revolution".
Early life
Jadid was born in 1926 in the village of Dweir Baabda, near the coastal city of Jableh, to an Alawite family of the Haddadin tribe. Another report states his birth year as 1924. He studied at the Homs Military Academy, and entered the Syrian Army in 1946. Jadid was originally a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), but later became a member of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, led by Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar, in the 1950s through an associate of Akram al-Hawrani. Even so, Jadid remained close to the SSNP; his brother, Ghassan, was one of its most prominent members in Syria. He changed allegiance again in the 1950s, when he became a member of the Arab Nationalist Movement, a party supporting Gamal Abdel Nasser's ideological beliefs. Jadid supported Syria's ascension into the United Arab Republic (UAR), a union republic consisting of Egypt and Syria.
Pre-Ba'athist career
UAR period
During the UAR-era, Jadid was stationed in Cairo, Egypt. Jadid established the Military Committee alongside other Ba'athists in 1959. The chief aim of the Military Committee was to protect the UAR's existence. In the beginning there were 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 Ba'ath movement from annihilation. Committee members were among those who blamed Aflaq for the Ba'ath Party's failing during the UAR years. The party's Third National Congress in 1959 supported Aflaq's decision to dissolve the party, but a 1960 National Congress, in which Jadid was a delegate representing the then-unknown Military Committee, reversed the decision and called for the Ba'ath Party's reestablishment. The Congress also decided to improve relations with Nasser by democratising the UAR from within. There was also a faction within the Ba’ath party (led by Akram al-Hawrani) that called for the separation of Syria from Egypt.
Post-UAR period
The Military Committee did not succeed in its aims, and in September 1961 the UAR was dissolved after the coup d'etat. President 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. Following the 1961 coup that ended the UAR, the Committee started planning its own coup against the secessionist government of al-Qudsi.
Ba'athist coup d'etat
In March 1963, Ba'athist Military Committee staged a coup against the democratically elected president Nazim al-Qudsi, beginning 62 years of uninterrupted totalitarian Ba'athist rule in Syria. In that coup, Jadid bicycled into the city that morning, and captured the Bureau of Officers' Affairs, which later became his personal fiefdom. The Ba'athist Military Committee (which had seized power) declared martial law and formed the National Council for the Revolutionary Command (NCRC) to rule the Syria, which included Jadid as well as non-Ba'athists (such as the Nasserists). However, within the NCRC, the Military Committee, which consisted only of Ba'athists, still remained and held all the real power in the country (which included Jadid, along with Hafez al-Assad, Abdul-Karim Jundi and Ahmad Miration), which became known as the "junta within the junta". Soon, in the same 1963, Jadid was promoted from Lieutenant colonel to Major general and named Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of Syria.
Ba'athist consolidation of power
thumb|272x272px|[[Michel Aflaq (left) and Jadid.]]Ba'athists took control over all aspects country's of citizen's life: politics, education, culture, religion and surveilled all aspects of civil society through its powerful Mukhabarat (secret police). Ba'athist military officers began initiating purges across Syria as part of the imposition of their ideological programme. Politicians of the Second Syrian Republic who had supported the separation from United Arab Republic (UAR) were purged and liquidated by the Ba'athists: this was in addition to purging of the Syrian military and its subordination to the Ba'ath party. Politicians, military officers and civilians who supported Syria's secession from UAR were also stripped of their social and legal rights, thereby enabling the Ba'athist regime to dismantle the entire political class of the Second Syrian Republic and eliminate its institutions. The Syrian Arab Armed forces and secret police were integrated with the Ba'ath party apparatus; after the purging of traditional civilian and military elites by the new regime. Following the seizure of power in 1963 by the Ba'athist military committee, the Syrian regional branch of the Ba'ath party experienced severe factionalism and splintering, leading to a succession of governments and new constitutions. The influence and power of neo-Ba'athists grew: Neo-Ba'athism was a more radical version of Ba'athism, and Salah Jadid was one of the main Neo-Ba'athists in Syria. Accordint to the Ben-Tzur's “The Neo-Ba’th Party in Syria” journal, The neo-Ba'athist military officers, through their increased political and military influence, began initiating purges across Syrian state political structures and rapidly consolidated control over various organs of the Syrian Ba'ath party. All decisions about the relations between the military and civilian sectors (as well as the fact that a new set of rules had been established for the party organization in the armed forces), were classified as top secret.
Jadid's rising influence
thumb|Members of the Syrian government in 1965. From left to the right: [[Vice President of Syria|Vice president Nureddin al-Atassi, leader of National Command Michel Aflaq, president Amin al-Hafiz and Army's Chief of Staff, Salah Jadid.]]
In the first two years each member of the Military Committee gathered around him a group of supporters from among the officers, using personal ties and military authority. General Salah Jadid, the Chief of Staff, had the biggest opportunities, and later came to represent the most radical army group. By September 1965, 40 percent of the delegates were military officers, and the full control over the civilian organization passed into the hands of the strongman from the Military Committee, Jadid, who proceeded to increase its efficiency by military methods. The army's connection with the Ba'ath Party increased greatly, where ideas of military discipline and other aspects of the military were introduced. The uprising was eventually suppressed by military force, and the following month the NCRC implemented a provisional constitution providing for a National Council of the Revolution (NCR), a cabinet, a presidential council, and an appointed legislature composed of "people's organizations."
Seizure of power
1966 Coup
thumb|257x257px|Reports of the military coup in the Al-Ahram an Egyptian newspaper. The article contains a photograph of Jadid.
Salah Jadid came to power after a military coup in 1966, in which he was a leading figure. The coup was due to strong ideological differences between the Military Committee and the National Command of the Ba'ath Party, whose unity had almost collapsed shortly after the seizure of power in 1963. A new coup overthrew the National Command and ousted the Aflaqites from power (and sent Michel Aflaq into exile). The new regime entrenched itself with the help of massive military, economic, and political aid from the Soviet Union, while exploiting differences within the communist camp and in the Soviet leadership itself.
Rift of the Ba'athism
thumb|241x241px|Syrian army tank on the streets during the 1966 military coupJadid's coup also caused the deepest rift in the history of the Ba'ath movement: when the National Command was toppled, the Iraqi Regional Branch of the Ba'ath party remained supportive of what it viewed as the "legitimate leadership" of Michel Aflaq. When the Iraqi Ba'ath party gained power in 1968 in the 17 July Revolution no attempts were made at a merger, to achieve their supposed goal of Arab unity, or reconciliation with the Syrian Ba'ath. After the establishment of Ba'ath rule in Iraq, many members of the Syrian-dominated Ba'ath movement defected to its Iraqi-counterpart, few if any Iraqi-loyal Ba'athists attempted to change its allegiance to Damascus. From the beginning, the neo-Ba'athist regime in Damascus launched an overwhelmingly anti-Iraqi Ba'athist propaganda campaign, to which their counterparts in Baghdad responded. The Syrian Ba'ath party denounced Aflaq as a "thief" and claimed that he had stolen the Ba'athist ideology from Zaki al-Arsuzi and proclaimed it as his own. The Iraqi Regional Branch, however, still proclaimed Aflaq as the founder of Ba'athism. Bitar was sentenced to death "in absentia" in 1969, and Aflaq was condemned to death in absentia in 1971. The Syrian Regional Branch also erected a statue of Arsuzi soon after the 1966 coup. Nevertheless, the majority of Ba'athists outside Syria continued to view Aflaq, not Arsuzi, as the principal founder of Ba'athism.
Leadership of Syria
Jadid's regime was the most radical in Syrian history. Whilst Jadid remained away from public view, as the second secretary of the Ba'ath 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; Yusuf Zuayyin, as prime minister; Ibrahim Makhous as foreign minister, Hafez al-Assad as defense minister; Abd al-Karim al-Jundi, as security chief. A number of ex-army officers now also held key positions; most of them belonged to a clandestine group called "Military Convention" which undermined the position of civil authority within the Ba'ath party. Among those officers were Hafez al-Assad, Ahmad al-Suwaydani, Mustafa Tlass and Salah Jadid himself. and Jadid established close and strong ties with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
April 1st announcement
On April 1, 1966, the new regime issued a 24-page statement outlining its ideology and policies in future. Jadid appointed his ally, al-Jundi, to head the National Security Bureau, which became known as the most intimidating apparatus in the country. The Bureau, under al-Jundi, acquired a notorious reputation in the country for its brutal methods of rooting out opponents, including arbitrary arrests, torture and infiltrating civil society with state informers. Opponents of the government were harshly suppressed by Jadid's special services and Mukhabarat, while the Ba'ath Party replaced parliament as law-making body and other parties were banned. The Jadid regime attempted to carry out Arabization campaigns in the predominantly Kurdish northeastern regions.
Khaled Hakim, an anti-military leftist and prominent Ba'ath trade unionist, described how at regime marches, workers with guns were in fact army soldiers dressed in workers' overalls to show public support for Jadid. He was jailed the same year Jadid staged his coup, 1966, however, he managed to escape to Jordan. Jadid and his supporters prioritised socialism and the "internal revolution", promoted the idea of class struggle and attempted a socialist transformation of Syrian society at a forced pace, creating unrest and economic difficulties. By the 1966, government-sponsored land reform and nationalization of major industries and foreign investments had confirmed the new socialist direction of Syria's economic policy. As the state assumed greater control over economic decision-making by adopting centralized planning and strictly regulating commercial transactions, Syria experienced a substantial loss of skilled workers, administrators, and their capital. However, Jadid's swift and harsh imposition of such radical measures was extremely unpopular inside the country.
The Ba'ath Party was divided over several issues, such as how the government could best use Syria's limited resources, the ideal relationship between the party and the people, the organization of the party and whether the class struggle should end. These subjects were discussed heatedly in Ba'ath Party conclaves, and when they reached the Fourth Regional Congress the two sides were irreconcilable. To generalize, Salah Jadid's reign was characterized by extremely brutal repressions, state terror, intensification of totalitarian measures, and imposition of hardline policies of War Leninism.
The Syrian public, organized into social organizations, associations and movements, were supposed to help the regime implement its policies. The original Ba'athist leaders believed that multiple parties were not necessary for democracy and that there was a better way to do it, and the neo-Ba'athists even more so. The new regime decreed that religious schools were to be closed, religious institutions nationalized, the powers of religious leaders curtailed, and religious provisions removed from the constitution, among other anti-religious measures. Neo-Ba'athists viewed the religious clerics as class enemies to be liquidated by the Ba'athist state. The party disseminated the doctrine of the "Arab Socialist New Man", which conceptualised the "new Arab man" as an atheist who campaigned for socialist revolution and rejected religion, feudalism, imperialism, capitalism, and every value of the old social order. Anti-religiosity even extended to the regime's main social support base, the Alawites: Jadid was extremely afraid that religious sheikhs would "crush them", if any religion will spread. Jadid's regime nationalized private schools of Muslim, Armenian and other communities in Syria.
Foreign policy
Six-Day War
Background
From the very first moment of coming to power, Jadid pursued a very aggressive and provocative policy towards Israel, from public militant statements to supporting the military actions of the Palestinian fedayeen and the shelling of Israeli border points. According to Israeli sources, the regime in Syria initiated 177 border incidents and aided 75 Palestinian resistance incidents between 23 February 1966 and 15 May 1967. It was Syria's hardline policy towards Israel that became one of the main reasons for the war in 1967. launched a mass attack against Egypt's airfields. The Egyptian defensive infrastructure was extremely poor, and no airfields were yet equipped with hardened aircraft shelters capable of protecting Egypt's warplanes. Most of the Israeli warplanes headed out over the Mediterranean Sea, flying low to avoid radar detection, before turning toward Egypt. Others flew over the Red Sea. Syrian artillery began shelling northern Israel, and twelve Syrian jets attacked Israeli settlements in the Galilee. Israel eventually turned its attention to Syria and captured two-thirds of the Golan Heights in just 48 hours. The war, which could have been avoided, has become a disaster for Syria with very long-term consequences.
Relations with other states
Soviet Union
thumb|297x297px|Jadid with members of the Regional Command, 1966
In the sphere of foreign policy, the neo-Ba'athist regime established close ties with the Soviet Union and its allies. Jadid's ideological orientation was toward socialist states and under Soviet protection. At first, the Soviet Union was in no hurry to accept Syria as its new ally, cautiously eyeing the new regime, But Jadid, fearing to be left without any allies at all and generally sympathizing with the USSR, decided to achieve Soviet friendship through pro-Soviet statements and policies extremely close to communism, and actively hoped for the protection of Syria by the Soviets in future. As a result, he achieved his goals: the USSR agreed to accept Syria as its new ally. However, the USSR repeatedly tried to dissuade Syria from going to war with Israel, which Jadid did not like very much.
Eastern bloc and others
The new regime was extreme left in many respects, including international relations. Since Syria under Jadid had established strong ties with the USSR, it was quickly able to establish similar ties with its allies and other socialist states. Jadid's regime became very close to the Eastern bloc and other countries, such as Cuba, Yugoslavia, Sudan, Libya, East Germany, Bulgaria, etc., which were against the Western world.
Western bloc and others
Since the regime was close to the Eastern Bloc, its relations with the Western Bloc were automatically poor. Jadid cooled Syria's relations to the point of breaking diplomatic ties with various influential Western countries such as the Britain or West Germany. Al-Sa'iqa became a very important guerrilla group for the Jadid regime: it was present in neighboring Arab countries and also diminished the role of other fedayeen groups in Syria that were not created by him. For example, after the creation of al-Sa'iqa, Fatah (another fedayeen group), under Syrian pressure, was forced to move its bases and training camps from Syria to Jordan.
Relations with Jordan were particularly bad, with the countries coming close to war several times. They planned to send Palestinian fedayeen to attack Israel, including through Jordan, which would force them into the war, making them an ally and at the same time vulnerable to a Syrian attack. Ultimately, Jordanian attempts to prevent fedayeen operations from its territory have completely failed: Israel has always responded with military force, weakening the Jordanian monarchy. Jadid pursued an isolationist policy until 1969, which also led to very tense relations with a number of countries in the region. Strategically, Syria was less important than, for example, Egypt, but during Jadid's time it compensated for this with a very aggressive foreign policy that had no equal in the Arab world.
1969 incident
From 25 to 28 February 1969, general Assad initiated "something just short of a coup". Under Assad's authority, tanks were moved into Damascus and the staffs of al-Ba'ath and al-Thawra (two-party newspapers) and radio stations in Damascus and Aleppo were replaced with Assad loyalists. Latakia and Tartus, two Alawite-dominated cities, saw "fierce scuffles" ending with the overthrow of Jadid's supporters from local posts. Shortly afterwards, a wave of arrests of Jundi loyalists began. On 2 March, after a telephone argument with head of military intelligence Ali Duba, Abd al-Karim al-Jundi, head the National Security Bureau and important ally of Jadid, committed suicide. When Zu'ayyin heard the news he wept, saying "we are all orphaned now" (referring to his and Jadid's loss of their protector). Despite his rivalry with Jundi, Assad is said to have also wept when he heard the news.
Invasion of Jordan
thumb|262x262px|Syrian tank in the [[Syrian invasion of Jordan|invasion of Jordan]]
In 1970, when conflict erupted between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Jordanian army, Jadid sent troops - ostensibly of the Palestine Liberation Army but actually regular Syrian army troops - into Jordan to aid the PLO. After the initial military successes of the invasion, King Hussein asked Israel to carry out airstrikes against Syrian troops together with the Jordanian Air Force. The airstrikes caused heavy losses for the Syrian troops, due to a lack of air defense systems and the fact that the commander of the Syrian Air Force, Assad, did not agree to send squadrons to Jordan to support the invading army. The decision to invade Jordan was not generally welcomed by Assad's more moderate Ba'ath faction, and the troops withdrew.
Internal conflict
The action helped trigger a simmering conflict between the Jadid and Assad factions within the Ba'ath Party and army. The Syrian Communist Party aligned itself with Jadid, drawing him the support of Soviet ambassador, Nuritdin Mukhitdinov. Angered by this, Assad decided to scare the Soviets by sending Mustafa Tlass to Beijing to procure arms and wave Chairman Mao's Little Red Book. Assadists began dismantling Jadid's support network, facing ineffectual resistance from the civilian branch of the party that remained under Jadid's control.
1970 Coup d'etat
In November 1970, Jadid tried to fire Assad and his supporter Mustafa Tlass. Assad responded by launching an intra-party coup dubbed the Corrective Revolution. Although many mid-level officials were offered posts in Syrian embassies abroad, Jadid refused: "If I ever take power, you will be dragged through the streets until you die." Jadid was arrested on 13 November 1970, and remained in the Mezzeh prison. The coup was calm and bloodless; the only evidence of change to the outside world was the disappearance of newspapers, radio and television stations. A Temporary Regional Command was soon established, and on 16 November the new government published its first decree.
Death
Jadid was arrested and remained in the Mezzeh prison in Damascus. He was released from prison only shortly before his death of a heart attack on 19 August 1993.
References
Bibliography
- Bernhard Valentinitsch: Historisch-Politische Hintergründe in Eric Amblers Polit-Thriller ‚The Levanter‘. In: Journal for Intelligence, Propaganda and Security Studies (JIPSS). Band 7, Nr. 1/2013, Graz 2013, S. 7–23 (about Jadid and PLO)