THE LEGACY OF THE ASSAD FAMILY’S DECADES-LONG RULE IN SYRIA : PART 1 – HAFEZ AL-ASSAD

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🇸🇾THE LEGACY OF THE ASSAD FAMILY’S DECADES-LONG RULE IN SYRIA (PART 1 – HAFEZ AL-ASSAD)

(1/5) Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s peaceful transfer of power to the armed opposition marked the end of the Assad family’s 53-year rule in Syria. We take a look at the major features of this half-century of government

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(2/5) Hafez al-Assad, a Ba’ath Party member, served as the 18th president of Syria from March 14, 1971 until his death on June 10, 2000.

“Assad Sr’s intelligence and experience played a very big role in the fact that the chaos of governments in Syria stopped for a long period and military coups stopped happening,” said Elena Suponina, an international relations and Middle East expert, referring to the string of government overthrows in Syria between 1946 and 1970.

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(3/5) SOCIETY

Even the CIA acknowledged in 1978 that al-Assad brought “an unprecedented degree of stability to Syria,” a country previously known for its deep divisions and upheavals.

Assad was able to strike an interreligious balance: the Alawites, a Shiite sect, controlled the army and security forces – while the Sunnis dominated the economy, Alexander Kuznetsov, a political scientist at the Higher School of Economics, told Sputnik.

Syrian peasants received land and political rights and citizens benefited from free universal education and healthcare. Women’s rights were secured.

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(4/5) FOREIGN POLICY

Hafez al-Assad maintained close ties with the Soviet Union, drawing hostility from the US. Syria has been designated a “sponsor of terrorism” by Washington since 1979 due to its cooperation with Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

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(5/5) ECONOMY

Domestically, the Assad government featured a great degree of public ownership, with significant portions of national income, industrial production and means of production under state control. Syria did not depend on food imports and produced its own oil.

In the 1990s, Syria’s economy grew by 5-7% annually, the trade balance improved and inflation was kept under control.