Haitham al-Maleh - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaHaitham_
al-
Maleh
Wikipedia
Haitham al-
Maleh is a Syrian Islamist activist and former judge. He is a critic of the current Syrian government under Bashar al-Assad and has been imprisoned ...
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Alawite Baath party officers (Mohamed Omran, Salah Jadid and Hafez al-Assad) all played a major role in this. Within a few years, they were successful in neutralizing the Baath party’s historical leaders (Michel Aflaq, Salah al-Din al-Bitar and Akram El-Hourani), then dislodging them from political activity by staging a military coup. This happened despite the fact that (Sunni) El-Hourani had paved the way for them to enroll in the army.
Salah Jadid’s role emerged first, for he was able to neutralize the independent and Nasserite officers who took part in the 1963 coup. Salah Jadid used two senior officers (Major General Ziyad al-Hariri and Lieutenant General Amin al-Hafiz) to strike the Nasserite trend, before he later on got rid of them by deporting the former and staging a coup against the latter.
The Military Committee’s movements remained secret, and the Syrians knew nothing about it, even after it was dissolved as a result of disagreements between its Alawite leaders. Major General Mohamed Omran was murdered in his house in Tripoli, Lebanon, following accusations of being a liberalist and “conspiring” with Salah al-Din al-Bitar, who himself had left the Baath party following a disagreement with Aflaq.
Then came the role of Hafez al-Assad, who objected to Salah Jadid’s attempt to apply Marxism to the Baath party. As a result of al-Assad’s military coup, the “Ismaili” Chief of the Intelligence Apparatus Abdel Karim al-Jundi was either murdered or committed suicide, and Salah Jadid was imprisoned, together with the president and prime minister. In 1993, Salah Jadid died in jail, whereas Yusuf Zuaiyin, the prime minister, was released. As for “President” Nureddin al-Atassi, he was released in the same year, and a few weeks later died of cancer in a hospital in Paris.
Under Hafez al-Assad, the Alawite sect completed the process of securing absolute control of power. The Syrian people remained detached from politics and freedom, and they carried Hafez al-Assad on their shoulders after he was appointed as president. The Sunni majority rejected the Muslim Brotherhood’s call to stage civil disobedience to cripple the sectarian regime, and al-Assad returned the Sunnis’ favor by destroying their liberalist powers when independent unions (lawyers, doctors, engineers and pharmacists) demanded true democracy in 1980.
Nevertheless, al-Assad continued to promise to meet the Sunnis’ demands, and so the unions ended their sit-ins and strikes, and again he returned the favor by imprisoning those who participated in the strike for several years and by nationalizing all unions. Since then and until now, the Syrian security apparatuses has appointed the heads and members of unions.
Yet the tension in Lebanon seemed to exhaust Hafez al-Assad, who suffered life-threatening ills at a young age. Having regained consciousness following a long coma as a result of a heart attack, he found himself and his regime on the verge of collapse. His brother Rifaat, along with officers from the Alawite sect, who once were his opponents, quelled the Muslim Brotherhood’s protests in Hama by destroying the city with heavy bombardments in 1982. Subsequently, the victors disagreed with one another over al-Assad’s power legacy, believing that the president would not regain consciousness.
However, Hafez al-Assad, having recovered, sometimes resorted to maneuvers, sometimes to settlements, and sometimes to tricks and threats, until he eventually ended up successfully neutralizing his younger brother Rifaat by expelling him from Syria (in 1998) and discharging his opponents. The remaining Muslim Brotherhood members were pursued mercilessly, reminiscent of the 1,000 Brotherhood detainees who were killed in the Tadmor Prison massacre.
Al-Assad’s revenge extended even to previous, peaceful Brotherhood leaders; and the wife of former Brotherhood leader Isam al-Attar was assassinated in her house in Germany when the death squad failed to find her husband.
Hafez al-Assad’s patience was limitless; he gained control over Lebanon, struck the Maronites and the Sunnis there, relied upon the Shiites, contained the Druze, and maneuvered and declined to enforce the Taif Agreement. Having grown tired of the Syrian President, the US appointed Hafez al-Assad as its “policeman” in the region, and simultaneously, two Lebanese presidents were assassinated.
Rewarding him for his participation in the Second Gulf War (expelling Saddam Hussein from Kuwait), the US and Europe allowed al-Assad to besiege Michel Aoun, hence undermining his “state” and forcing him to flee to France. However, 15 years later, Bashar al-Assad allowed him to return home, but this time as an obedient allay.
The al-Assad regime, during the reign of both the father and the son, has a story worthy of narration, not only in terms of its well-known political aspect, but also in terms of its dark side; its intelligence guise.
Next week I will write again hoping that Adonis and his associates have reconsidered their support for the Syrian regime, regardless of their sectarian affiliation which I do not hold them accountable for. However, I do blame them for dedicating this sectarian orientation entirely to leveling accusations at the Syrian Sunni majority. Over 50 years, the sectarian regime has brainwashed the Syrian people to only think in terms of sect, rather than as Arabs. Here the regime today is repeating the same old tragedy by slaughtering the uprising and giving it a “sectarian orientation”.<<
A record of political assassinations
