Assadization

Assadization^[1][2][3] (sometimes called Alawization^[4][5][6][7]) is a political term, mainly referring to the period of consolidation of power in Ba'athist Syria by President Hafez al-Assad. Assadization had no clear time frame - in fact, it began almost immediately after the Assad family came to power and continued until the fall of the Assad regime. The desire of the Assad family to build a personalistic dictatorship led to the general Assadization of all spheres of life in the country - the army, the party, the education system, as well as to the spread of propaganda and the cult of personality. The term "Assadization" has also become a household word in some news articles.^[8][9]

Portrait of Hafez al-Assad during the 1987 Mediterranean Games opening ceremony

The debunking of the personality cult and the entire legacy of the Assad regime became known as De-Assadization.^{[10][11][12][13]}

Hafez al-Assad's presidency

Main article: Presidency of Hafez al-Assad

Syrian army general Hafez al-Assad came to power in 1970, after he lauched a coup d'etat, known as the "Corrective Movement".^[14] Jadid's radical Marxist policies alienated almost all sectors of Syrian society, so his overthrow was greeted with equal relief by almost everyone.^[15] Despite serious disagreements, Assad supported most of Jadid's policies, but in contrast, he turned out to be much more pragmatic.^[15] The coup led to the final dominance of the security forces over the government and the party.

Economic reforms

 

Assad's official portrait

Assad announced Syria's abandonment of the radical political and social policies of his ousted predecessor Salah Jadid (which he disapproved of even before the coup) in favor of a more moderate policy.^[16] He called his reformist campaign the "Corrective Movement." Assad lowered prices on basic products (and in subsequent years they were constantly regulated by the state and remained low), abolished confiscation of goods, and encouraged the private sector.^[15] Assad's actions resulted in increased incomes for many workers and farmers, and the state provided citizens with better healthcare and education services, which were free. However, Assad's largely failed foreign policy (as well as events that he could not influence) led Syria back to isolation, and later to a deficit and shortages of goods, which led to the introduction of austerity measures in mid-1980s. The push for militarization, as well as huge (and ever-growing) military spending, also put significant pressure on the Syrian economy during the crisis years.

When the communist governments in the Eastern Bloc collapsed, an ideological crisis within the government arose. However, Assad and his supporters hit back, stating that because of the "Corrective Movement under the leadership of the warrior Hafez al-Assad", the principles of economic and political pluralism, which had been introduced "some two decades" beforehand, safeguarded the Syrian government from the possibility of collapse.^[17]

Political changes

At the 11th National Congress, Assad assured party members that his leadership was a radical change from that of Jadid, and he would implement a "corrective movement" to return Syria to the true "nationalist socialist line".^[18] At first, Assad took a course toward softening the government's repressive policies. He visited villages and listened to citizens' complaints, eased repression, and rehabilitated some of the victims of Jadid's regime.^[15]

However, political liberalization did not last very long - after the brutal suppression of the Islamist uprising in 1982, the Assad regime rolled back to a level of totalitarianism comparable to Jadid's. Assad has stepped up his drive to centralize power in the hands of the president (him) and has severely curtailed the role of the Ba'ath Party, banning open debate and ending the relatively democratic elections of its delegates to the congresses.^[19] In essence, Assad has returned to the version of totalitarian and militaristic Leninism that Jadid had previously promoted.^[19]

Policy of Assadization

Hafez al-Assad took into account the experience of his predecessors, who did not hold power for long. Therefore, he began a very active policy of consolidating power, known as Assadization. In fact, the Assad family pursued a policy of Assadization throughout most of their reign. The Assadization policy led to the formation of a broad system of family and Alawite elites in the state, which was initially structured as a military elite and grew out of the security forces.^[20][21] Assadization led to the monopolization of the political, military and economic elite by the Assad family.^[22] The armed forces and mukhabarat created by Hafez al-Assad from his trusted associates became the main support of his regime.^[23]

When Bashar al-Assad became president in 2000, he continued the policies of Assadization while simultaneously positioning himself as a progressive reformer.^[24][23] Under Bashar, the loyal oligarchy (so-called "New Class") gained even more power and influence.^[24] Thanks to the Assadization policy, Bashar was able to maintain his reliable support base for a long time during the civil war.^[25]

Social life

Main article: Hafez al-Assad's cult of personality

 

The badge of the Defense Brigades, second version of design. It contains face of president Assad.

In the social sphere of the country's life, Assadization led to the formation of an extensive personality cult, which, by some estimates, even surpassed the personality cult of Mao Zedong or Josip Broz Tito.^[26][27] State propaganda made great efforts to identify the entire Syrian state with the Assad family.^{[28][29][30][31][32]} Over the decades of Assad's rule, the term "Assadist Syria" has taken hold and spread. Although Assad was not a Stalinist, he built a personality cult around himself on the Stalinist model: it was formed in collaboration with propagandists from a number of communist regimes, such as the USSR, Romania and North Korea.

Hafez al-Assad was everywhere - in the form of statues and portraits on the streets, in government and educational institutions, on school notebooks, postage stamps, documents, even on the badge of the Defense Brigades militia (the model was adopted after 1984) his face was forged. His quotes were memorized in schools, songs were sung in his honor, and people marched through the streets with his portraits.

Religion

Assad's Ba'athist regime was extremely opposed to the political forms of Islam. The cult of personality sometimes presented Assad as a godlike figure - numerous portraits of him showed him apparently possessing magical powers or standing next to the Prophet Muhammad, and officials were forced to call him "the sanctified one" (al-Muqaddas).^[33] Propaganda called him an immortal and eternal leader.^[33] The Assadization of religion in Syria has led to it becoming another means of neo-Ba'athist propaganda - through it, the Assad regime promoted a neo-Ba'athist worldview and his own personality cult.^[34] The government also began the "nationalization" of religion through its loyal network of clergy, condemning anyone who deviated from the "Ba'athist version of Islam", calling them a threat to society.^[35] President Assad's actions have led to the formation of a leftist-nationalist worldview in Syrian society, aimed at rejecting Islamists and general subordination to the Alawite president.^[36] as Dr. Esther Meininghaus wrote, "The recent slogan of 'Bashar, Allah, Suriyya wa-bas' (Bashar, God, and Syria – that's it) possibly best epitomises how close the regime has come to creating a Syrian public religion in its own right. Whether the outward performance of 'regime rituals' was actually fully internalised or secretly mocked, it had to be practised and obeyed."^[34]

The Ba'ath Party promoted total secularism. During the civil war, it began to emphasize its secular ideas especially strongly, portraying all its enemies as Islamist fanatics. Since the start of the war, Bashar al-Assad's regime has equated religion with patriotism and openly linked religious affiliation with its security, relying on the faith of loyalists. In addition, the regime involved women in the process of Assadization of religion, under the pretext of its modernization, by appointing women to positions in religious ministries.^[3]

Army, mukhabarat and Ba'ath party

 

Syrians marching with portrait of president Assad

Almost from the very beginning, Assad began to form a political base for himself, separate from the Ba'ath Party.^[37] The longer Assad was in power, the more he "Assadized" the armed forces, the mukhabarat, and the ruling party. Assad consolidated power inthrough his relatives and through the Alawites (and occasionally the Sunnis who were very close to him). When Assad wanted to promote his close and loyal people, they could rise up the hierarchy to the highest positions with astonishing speed.^[20][21] Assad quickly purged all disloyal party members and officers, replacing them mainly with loyal Alawites: the purges completely destroyed the influence of non-Assadist groups in the party, such as the Aflaqists,^[15] and the Alawites became the dominant sect in the state apparatus and government.^[38]

Any dissent was also eliminated in the armed forces - as a result of the policy of Assadization of the army, 70 percent of the regular soldiers of the Syrian army and almost all of the high command were either Alawites or people personally close to Assad.^[39][40]

De-Assadization

De-Assadization was a policy of the new government formed from the opposition, which was carried out mainly after the fall of the Assad regime.

De-Assadization was characterized by the mass destruction of the Assad family personality cult (frescoes, statues, portraits, etc.) as well as a number of laws directed against Ba'athist organizations - for example, the Ba'ath Party, youth and paramilitary groups were disbanded and banned, and a number of members of the former regime were captured by the new security forces.^{[41][42][43][44][45]}

See also

• Ba'athist Syria
• Assad family
• Terrorism in Ba'athist Syria

References

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