Talk:Hafez al-Assad

REDO

This man's webpage appears to be written by an emotional 18 year old. Who thinks Syria is a soviet satellite, what of the CIA coup attempts? where are teh sources for this page?? please make this go away. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.88.236.131 (talk) 06:43, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Eastern Euporean Origins?

His head shape, facial features and skin tone suggest clear Eastern Europeans origins. This would not be uncommon given the history of slavery in the Arabic so-called world. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.28.93.188 (talk) 18:08, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

• Unlikely (if not downright ridiculous) and unsourced. Anyhow, most slaves, regardless of origin, usually did not end in the Levant, but further south. Funkynusayri (talk) 01:03, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, try finding or tracing the family of slaves and having a source to back it up. It does not matter where MOST slaves had gone, it only matters that slaves were in Syria. The guy and his family are of clear European origins. If you did not know his name or where came from, you would swear he was fromEastern Europe.

• What can I say? No sources say so, so it's irrelevant. FunkMonk (talk) 16:33, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

• It is clear that he is not from Eastern Europe, otherwise he would have mentioned that he is, in his lifetime. Even if he looks like Eastern Europeans, it does not mean that he is not of Syrian origin. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.53.79.227 (talk) 21:36, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

name

It should be mentioned in the article that "al-Assad" means "The Lion" in Arabic, and whether this was the name he was born with (and if not, what was it). I was under the impression that he was born under a different name, and chose the descriptive "al-Assad" as his nomme-du-guerre (like Stalin chose his name meaning "man of steel"). But strangely, most sources I could find online that mention Assad being born under a different name, are articles with an overt Israeli bias; The name these sites mention is "al-Wahsh" (or al-Wahesh or al-Wahash), meaning "the beast". A perhaps less biased source that confirms this name is Asabbagh 01:13, 19 February 2007 (UTC)this. So, was "al-Wahsh" really the name he was born with? Or is this a bizarre urban legend used to slander him (because the name al-Wahsh supposedly carries negative connotations)? user:nyh

Reply: Hafiz al-Assad was born with the surname al-Assad, but it is true that al-Wahsh was his family name. His father changed his surname from al-Wahsh to al-Assad before Hafiz was born, so al-Assad is not a nom de guerre - it was the one he was born with.

The current article states that he was born al-Wahsh and changed his name to al-Assad "later in life". This contradicts this last comment. Can anyone point to a source? Nyh 21:08, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

He was born with the last name al-Assad. Asabbagh 01:13, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

rant

I cannot understand how this rant about life Syria can possibly be related to Hafez Assad?

Ever since Hafez's son, Bashar took power, Syria has been on fast track to pure, unadulterated, capitalistic prosperity. But it remains a rough place to live. Many of Syria's harder workers get jobs in Lebanon, where the wages are much better. The Lebanese Libra may be weak, but there is a whole lot more money in Lebanon to be able to afford Syrian work. But compared to Lebanese workers, they get paid next to nothing. Basically, these workers go around in 2 level buses packed to the brim doing contracting jobs, and getting very little amounts of money for what they do. When Lebanese employers are questioned about the ethics of their workers' wages, they most often respond with this phrase; "Who cares, they're Syrian?" This is mostly due to the economic strife caused by Hafez's poor decisions. Poor guys. running around in green gimp suits all day, working hard (Most of the time). When you see pictures of Syria, you can tell that something awful happened to that wretched place. Unless if you look at the beautiful town of Slenfah, and a few other towns in or near the valley. They hardly felt the aftershock of the Assads and the Alawites coups in the first place. But the people are now being kept a bit happy with 16k internet and way more Counter-Strike players per capita than could possibly be healthy.

I think this part should be removed. --Magabund 10:02, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Um, Photo?

He's a very influential man in the world, even though he's dead. Surely he's more deserving of a photo than Courtney Love, no?68.161.23.129 09:21, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Find one that is appropriate and fair use.- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg | Talk 09:37, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

when was he born ?

when was he born ?

birth year and year of death should stay at the top of the text

I'm sensing bias

with sentences such as the following that offer no citations, I'm ruling this article as biased

A shrewd power player, al-Assad would use diplomacy, terrorism and tank armadas to the same effect: invariably, he strived to build a strong Syria under his own one-man rule.
He was loved by many of is [sic] people but loathed by many too

-- Witchinghour 18:27, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Baseless Nonesense

His strongly authoritarian regime, under the leadership of the Baath Party dominated all aspects of Syrian political life.

Please spare us of these fairy tales. The Communist Party has been active in Syria since the 1970s and is by no means under the control of the Baathists.

can somebody please add this image

http://www.thedictatorship.com/ go to that website and look a little and you will find a picture of Hafez and not the one that is already showed —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.164.198.153 (talk) 23:24, 8 January 2007 (UTC).

No need anymore, the image is now good. Asabbagh 01:13, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

THis is terrible

Just rewrite the whole thing and don't forget SOURCES... woooweeee —Preceding unsigned comment added by FacistSpotter (talk • contribs) 23:16, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Contested statements removed to talk

• Assad was president until his death in 2000 from a heart attack while speaking on the telephone with Lebanese President Émile Lahoud. {{Fact|date=January 2007}}
• Most of the al-Assad and Makhlouf families have also grown tremendously wealthy{{Fact|date=November 2007}}

Please do not restore this information to the article without a citation.--BirgitteSB 03:03, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Incorrect Numbers

The article states that between 150,000 and 200,000 people died in the battle between the Syrian regime and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is quite outlandish to say the least. Whoever included it must have seen it in one of the books in reference to the death toll of the Lebanese civil war and assumed it was in reference to Syria. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.61.114.54 (talk) 07:54, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

A silly unsourced section.

I've removed the following paragraph: In 1999, Assad had his right-hand man, Mustafa Tlass, make an on-the-record statement labelling Arafat "the son of a whore", in addition to comparing him to a strip-tease dancer and a black cat, calling him a coward and, finally, pointing out that the Palestinian leader was getting uglier.

An effective strategy was undermining Arafat through support for radical groups both outside and inside the PLO. This way, Syria secured some influence over PLO politics, and was also able to literally blow up any attempts at negotiation with the US and Israel through pushing for terrorist attacks. The PLO's As-Sa'iqa faction was and is completely controlled by Syria, and under Hafez, groups such as the PFLP-GC were also turned into clients. In later years, Syria focused on supporting non-PLO Islamist groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

One, no sources are provided, and two, it seems that the insults traded where very unlikely.

Esed

more correct romanization. Böri (talk) 18:08, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

File:Hafez al-Assad.jpg Nominated for Deletion

An image used in this article, File:Hafez al-Assad.jpg, has been nominated for deletion at Wikimedia Commons in the following category: Deletion requests January 2012 What should I do? Don't panic; a discussion will now take place over on Commons about whether to remove the file. This gives you an opportunity to contest the deletion, although please review Commons guidelines before doing so. If the image is non-free then you may need to upload it to Wikipedia (Commons does not allow fair use) If the image isn't freely licensed and there is no fair use rationale then it cannot be uploaded or used. This notification is provided by a Bot --CommonsNotificationBot (talk) 17:19, 9 February 2012 (UTC)