# Salah Jadid

Salah Jadid (Arabic: صلاح جديد, romanized: Ṣalāḥ Jadīd; 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, and the de facto leader of Ba'athist Syria from 1966 until 1970, when he was ousted by Hafez al-Assad's Corrective Movement.

## Early life and career

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.
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. A faction within the party, led by al-Hawrani, called for Syria's secession. The Military Committee did not succeed in its aims, and in September 1961 the UAR was dissolved. Nazim al-Kudsi, 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.
In March of 1963, Ba'athists 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'athists took control over country's 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. The neo-Ba'athist military officers, through their increased political and military influence, began initiating pruges across bureacratic structures of the Syrian state and rapidly monopolized control over various organs of the Syrian Ba'ath party.
In April of 1964, a Muslim Brotherhood uprising broke out in Hama against the ruling Ba'ath Party. The decision to suppress the Hama riot led to a schism in the Military Committee between Muhammad Umran and Jadid. Umran opposed force, instead wanting the Ba'ath Party to create a coalition with other pan-Arab forces. Jadid desired a strong one-party state, similar to those in the communist countries of Europe, also viewing it as a necessary means to protect Ba'athist power against "class enemies." The uprising was eventually suppressed by military force, and the following month the NCRC implemented a provisional constitution providing for a cabinet, a Presidential Council, and an appointed legislature composed of "people's organizations."

## Leader of Ba'athist Syria

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). 1966 coup marked the total ideological transformation of the Ba'ath party's Syrian regional branch into a militarist "neo-Ba'athist" organization which became independent of the National Command of the original Ba'ath party. Jadid'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 not long 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.
New regime was the most radical in Syrian history. While 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; Yousuf Zouayyen, as prime minister; Ibrahim Makhous as foreign minister, Hafez al-Assad as defense minister; Abd al-Karim al-Jundi, as security chief. Many of these men were Alawis (e.g. all of the above except Atassi, Jundi, and Zouayyen, who were Sunni, giving the government a sectarian character. Several were military men, and all belonged to the Ba'ath Party's left-wing.
The Military Committee, which had been the officers' key decision-making process during 1963–66, lost its central institutional authority under Jadid because the fight against the Aflaqites was over – the key reason for the committee's existence in the first place, and NCRC was dissolved. In the sphere of foreign policy, the neo-Ba'athist government established close ties with the Soviet Union, began receiving large amounts of weaponry from the Soviet military, and pursued hardline policies towards Israel and "reactionary" Arab states especially Saudi Arabia and Jordan (because of this, Syria did not receive aid from other Arab countries. Egypt and Jordan, which participated in the war, received £135 million per year for an undisclosed period), calling for the mobilization of a "people's war" against Zionism rather than inter-Arab military alliances. Jadid pursued an isolationist policy until 1969, which led to very tense relations with a number of countries in the region. Domestically, Jadid attempted a socialist transformation of Syrian society at a forced pace, creating unrest and economic difficulties. 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. Jadid and his supporters prioritised socialism and the "internal revolution". 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 properties of traders, local businessmen and land owners were confiscated by Jadid's radical leftist regime, while the Syrian military forces became thoroughly politicized with neo-Ba'athist officers. Salim Hatum, who helped Jadid come to power and commanded the coup operations, was disappointed in him and attempted a counter-coup, but it failed: Hatum fled to Jordan, and when he returned to Syria after the Six-Day War in 1967, he was immediately captured and executed by the neo-Ba'athist regime. In the aftermath of the attempted coup Jadid purged the party's military organization, removing 89 officers; Minister of Defence, Hafez Assad, removed an estimated 400 officers, Syria's largest military purge to date. The purges, which began when the Ba'ath Party took power in 1963, had left the military weak. Public support for his government, such as it was, declined sharply following Syria's defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel captured the Golan Heights, and as a result of the troubled internal conditions of the country: it provoked a furious quarrel among Syria's leadership. The civilian leadership blamed military incompetence, and the military responded by criticizing the civilian leadership.
After the war, in particular, tensions began to increase between Jadid's followers and those who argued that the situation called for a more moderate stance on socialism and international relations. This group coalesced around Defense Minister Hafez al-Assad, who protested the "adventurism" of Jadid, and demanded a normalization of the internal situation by adopting a permanent constitution, liberalizing the economy, and mending ties with non-Ba'athist groups, as well as the external situation, by seeking an alliance with conservative Arab states such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia. While Jadid retained the allegiance of most of the civilian Ba'ath apparatus, Assad as defense minister gradually asserted control over the military wing of the party. In 1969, Assad purged several Jadid loyalists, and from that point on Jadid had lost his preeminence in the state.

## Downfall and death

In 1970, when conflict erupted between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Jordanian army, Jadid sent Syrian-controlled Palestinian troops of the nominally PLO-run Palestine Liberation Army, based in Syria, into Jordan to aid the PLO, but in fact it was regular troops of the Syrian army. 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, which was due to the almost full 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 their invaded army. The decision to invade Jordan was not generally welcomed by Assad's more moderate Ba'ath faction, and the troops withdrew.
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. In November 1970, Jadid tried to fire Assad and his supporter Mustafa Tlass. Assad responded by launching an intra-party coup dubbed the Corrective Movement. 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 in Damascus until his death of a heart attack on 19 August 1993. 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.