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Salah Jadid صلاح جديد
Assistant Secretary of the Syrian Regional Command of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party
In office 1965 – 13 November 1970
Regional Secretary	Amin al-Hafiz Nureddin al-Atassi
Succeeded by	Zuhair Mushariqa
Chief of Staff of the Syrian Army
In office 1963–1966
Preceded by	Ziad al-Hariri
Succeeded by	Ahmad Suwaydani
Personal details
Born	1926 Latakia, Syria
Died	19 August 1993 (aged 67) Damascus, Syria
Nationality	Syrian
Political party	Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party (1947–1966) Syrian-led Ba'ath Party (Syrian branch: 1966–1970)
Religion	Alawi
Military service
Rank	General

Salah Jadid (1926 – 19 August 1993, Arabic: صلاح جديد) was a Syrian general and political figure in the Arab Socialist Baath Party in Syria, and the country's de facto leader from 1966 until 1970.

Early life and career[link]

Jadid was born in 1926 in the village of Duwayr B'abda, near the coastal city of Jableh,^[1] which in turn was close to Lattakia, to a Alawite family.^[2] He studied at the Homs Military Academy, and entered the Syrian Army in 1946.^[3] 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.^[1] Even so, Jadid remained close to the SNPP; 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 Liberation 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.^[4]

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 was only four members of the Military Committee, the others were Hafez al-Assad, Abd al-Karim al-Jundi and Mohammad Umran.^[4] The Military Committee also tried to save the Syrian Ba'ath movement from annihilation. Committee members were among them who blamed Aflaq for the Ba'ath Party's failing during the UAR years.^[5] 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.^[6] The Military Committee did not succeed in its aims, and in September 1961 the UAR was dissolved. Nazim al-Qudsi, who led the first post-UAR government, persecuted Jadid and the others for their Nasserite loyalities, and all of them were forced to retire from the Syrian Army.^[4]

Strongman of Baathist Syria[link]

While Jadid remained away from public view, as second secretary of the Baath 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 regime a sectarian character. Several were military men, and all belonged on the Baath Party's left wing.

Under Jadid's rule, Syria aligned itself with the Soviet bloc and pursued hardline policies towards Israel and "reactionary" Arab states especially Saudi Arabia, calling for the mobilization of a "people's war" against Zionism rather than inter-Arab military alliances. Domestically, Jadid attempted a socialist transformation of Syrian society at forced pace, creating unrest and economical difficulties. Opponents of the regime were harshly suppressed, while the Baath Party replaced parliament as law-making body and other parties were banned. Public support for his regime, 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.

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-Baathist 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 Baath 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[link]

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 Palestinian Liberation Army, based in Syria, into Jordan in order to help the PLO. This action was not supported by Assad's more pragmatic Baath faction, and the troops withdrew. The action helped trigger the simmering conflict between Jadid's and Assad's wings of the Baath Party and army. The Syrian communist party aligned itself with Salah Jadid. The Soviet ambassador, Nuradin Mukdinov was drawn in the power struggle. Hafez al Assad was angered by the meddling in Syrian politics by the Soviet Union, so he decided to scare the Soviets by sending Mustafa Tlass to Beijing to procure arms and wave Chairman Mao's little Red Book.^[7] In November 1970, Jadid attempted to fire Assad and his supporter Mustafa Tlass, which in turn caused Assad to launch an intra-party coup against Jadid, dubbed the Corrective Movement. Jadid was arrested, and remained in prison until his death in 1993, while al-Assad would remain in power until his death in 2000, and his son since then.

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Moubayed, Sami M. (2006). Steel & Silk: Men and Women who shaped Syria 1900–2000. Cune Press. ISBN 978-1-885942-41-8. 
• Seale, Patrick (1990). Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-06976-3. 
• Tucker, Spencer; Roberts, Priscilla Mary (2008). The encyclopedia of the Arab–Israeli conflict: a Political, Social, and Military History: A–F. 1. ABC-CLIO. ISBN [[Special:BookSources/978-1-85109-841-0|978-1-85109-841-0]]. 

v t e Chiefs of Staff of the Syrian Army since 1946 Abdullah Atfeh • Husni al-Za'im • Sami al-Hinnawi • Anwar Bannud • Fawzi Selu • Shawkat Shuqayr • Tawfiq Nizam al-Din • Afif al-Bizri • Jamal al-Faisal • Abd al-Karim Zahr al-Din • Ziad al-Hariri • Salah Jadid • Ahmad Suwaydani • Mustafa Tlass • Yusuf Shakkur • Hikmat al-Shihabi • Ali Aslan • Hasan Turkmani • Ali Habib Mahmud • Dawoud Rajiha • Fahd Jasem Al-Farij