Assad, Hafez al-

Assad, Hafez al- (1930-2000), President of Syria (1971-2000), born in Qardahah. He was educated in Syrian military colleges and received additional military training in the Soviet Union. He joined Syria’s Baath Party in 1946 and was made general of the air force in 1964 after the party’s rise to power. He served as Minister of Defence from 1966 until 1970, when he seized control of the government, assuming the prime ministership until he was elected President in 1971. Assad cooperated with Egypt in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, but he rejected Egypt’s accommodation with Israel in the late 1970s. He intervened in the civil war in Lebanon (in 1976; 1987; 1990), and he supported Iran against Iraq during the war of 1980-1988. The target of several coup attempts in the early 1980s, Assad dealt brutally with his political opponents; in 1982 he sent thousands of troops to Hamāh to crush an uprising led by the Muslim Brotherhood. Syria had long been the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ closest ally in the Middle East, but when Soviet power weakened at the end of the 1980s, Assad moved to improve ties with the West. Assad sent troops to Saudi Arabia to fight against Iraq in the Gulf War, but he proved less willing to become involved in the 1993 peace accord between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Peace talks between Syria and Israel were renewed and broken off several times subsequently. Assad supported the Palestinian National Authority following the breakdown of the peace process with Israel in the spring of 1997. He was endorsed as president for a fifth seven-year term in February 1999, but died of a heart attack on June 10, 2000. He was taken to his birthplace, Qardahah, to be buried. His son, Bashar, succeeded him as president in July 2000.