Born at Al-Tall, Ahmar joined the Ba'ath Party in the 1950s and graduated from the Faculty of Law at the University of Damascus in 1964. Soon after, he was appointed as a governor of Hama (1967–1969) then Idlib (1969–1970). In 1970, the regional Ba'ath conference elected him to the Syrian Regional Command together with Hafez Al-Assad after an internal coup in the party that expelled Salah Jadid's faction from power. A few months later, Assad's faction held a meeting and appointed a new National Command that elected Assad as a general secretary and Ahmar his deputy. This National Command is competing with another one that was based in Iraq on being the sole legitimate National Command.