Amin al-Hafiz
| Amin al-Hafez أمين الحافظ |
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| President of Syria | |
| In office 27 July 1963 – 23 February 1966 |
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| Preceded by | Luai al-Atassi |
| Succeeded by | Nureddin al-Atassi |
| Prime Minister of Syria | |
| In office 12 November 1963 – 13 May 1964 |
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| Preceded by | Salah al-Din Bitar |
| Succeeded by | Salah al-Din Bitar |
| In office 4 October 1964 – 23 September 1965 |
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| Preceded by | Salah al-Din Bitar |
| Succeeded by | Yusuf Zuaiyin |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1921 Aleppo, Syria |
| Died | December 17, 2009 (aged 88) Aleppo, Syria |
| Political party | Baath Party |
| Spouse(s) | Zeinab al-Hafiz |
| Religion | Sunni Islam |
Amin al-Hafiz (or Hafez; 1921 – 17 December 2009)[1] (Arabic: أمين الحافظ) was a Syrian politician, general and member of the Ba'th Party.
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[edit] Career
[edit] Early life
Al-Hafiz was born in the city of Aleppo.
His first main political role was in 1958, as part of a Syrian army delegation that visited Gamal Abdul Nasser, the Egyptian president. The two states duly merged into one United Arab Republic in February that year, and Hafez was posted to Cairo. The union crumbled after a Syrian uprising in September 1961, and the resultant secessionist regime banished Hafez to Argentina as Syria's military attaché.[2]
[edit] Rise to power
Hafiz led a coup d'etat against the government of Syria in 1963, in the turbulent years after the break-up of the United Arab Republic (UAR), installing the National Council of the Revolutionary Command (NCRC) at the head of government. The NCRC was dominated by the Syrian branch of the radical, pan-Arab Ba'ath Party, and Hafiz became its President. As President, he instituted socialist reforms and oriented his country towards the Eastern Bloc.
[edit] Eli Cohen affair
During his exile in Buenos Aires, Hafez befriended a supposed Lebanese trader named Kamal Amin Thaabet. Thaabet was actually an Egyptian-born Jewish Mossad agent, Eli Cohen. Thaabet/Cohen arrived in Syria in early 1962, a year before Hafez’s return, and soon began passing information about Syrian military plans to Israel.[2]
As president, Hafez groomed Thaabet/Cohen to be a future defence minister and possibly even his successor. He invited him to functions and have 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 and his own qualms, Hafez had Cohen publicly hanged in Damascus.[2]
[edit] Downfall
On 23 February 1966, he was overthrown by a radical Ba'athist faction headed by Chief of Staff Salah Jadid. A late warning telegram of the coup d'état was sent from President Gamal Abdel Nasser to Nasim Al Safarjalani (The General Secretary of Presidential Council), on the early morning of the coup d'état. The coup sprung out of factional rivalry between Jadid's "regionalist" (qutri) camp of the Ba'ath Party, which promoted ambitions for a Greater Syria and the more traditionally pan-Arab Hafiz faction, called the "nationalist" (qawmi) faction[3]. Jadid's supporters were also seen as more radically left-wing. But the coup was also supported and led by officers from Syria's religious minorities, especially the Alawite Muslims and the Druze, whereas Hafiz belonged to the majority Sunni population. Alawis have ruled Syria ever since.
[edit] Exile and return
After the coup, Hafiz lived in exile, first in Iraq, then in Egypt, until 2005, when he was quietly permitted to return to Syria[4]. He died in Aleppo on December 17, 2009.[1]
[edit] References
- ^ a b Syria-news (Arabic)
- ^ a b c http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/feb/16/syria
- ^ [1][dead link]
- ^ Syria Heralds Reforms, But Many Have Doubts
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