Assadization, sometimes also called Alawization, refers to the process of consolidation of power in Ba'athist Syria, which started under President Hafez al-Assad. Assadization had no clear time frame, with it beginning almost immediately after the Assad family came to power and continuing 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, including 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.
The debunking of the personality cult and the entire legacy of the Assad regime became known as De-Assadization.
Hafez al-Assad's presidency
Syrian army general Hafez al-Assad came to power in 1970, after he launched a coup d'etat, known as the "Corrective Revolution".
Jadid's radical Marxist policies alienated almost all sectors of Syrian society, so his overthrow was greeted with equal relief by almost everyone. Despite serious disagreements, Assad supported most of Jadid's policies, but in contrast, he turned out to be much more pragmatic. The coup led to the final dominance of the security forces over the government and the party.
Economic reforms
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. 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. 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.
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". 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.
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. In essence, Assad has returned to the version of totalitarian and militaristic Leninism that Jadid had previously promoted.
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 which persisted for the entire duration of the Assad family's rule in Syria. 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. Assadization led to the monopolization of the political, military and economic elite by the Assad family. The armed forces and mukhabarat created by Hafez al-Assad from his trusted associates became the main support of his regime.
When Bashar al-Assad became president in 2000, he continued the policies of Assadization while simultaneously positioning himself as a progressive reformer. Under Bashar, the loyal oligarchy (so-called "New Class") gained even more power and influence. Thanks to the Assadization policy, Bashar was able to maintain his reliable support base for a long time during the civil war.
Social life
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. State propaganda made great efforts to identify the entire Syrian state with the Assad family. 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. Assadization also led to the formation of large-scale propaganda and sowed fear of the government among the population.
Religion Hafez al-Assad was extremely opposed to the political forms of Islam during his reign in Ba'athist Syria. The Assad family's 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). Propaganda called him an immortal and eternal leader. 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. 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. 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. 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."
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.
Army, mukhabarat and Ba'ath party
Almost from the very beginning, Assad began to form a political base for himself, separate from the Ba'ath Party. The longer Assad was in power, the more he "Assadized" the armed forces, the mukhabarat, and the ruling party. Assad consolidated power through 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. 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, and the Alawites became the dominant sect in the state apparatus and government.
Formation of al-Jama'a
The Assad's inner circle, helped implement the Assadization campaign, was the most powerful political elite in the country, was called the "al-Jama'a" ("Company"). It was this group of people who were the most important of all those who influenced the president's decisions. The al-Jama'a main tasks were to assist Assad in defending the regime from his opponents; to assist in the effective governance of Syria; and to advise Assad on the most important domestic and foreign policy issues. Conflicts persisted within the al-Jama'a, but it was entirely loyal to Hafez al-Assad personally. Elite army unit commanders (for example, those responsible for guarding the presidential palace or media stations) occupied a special place within the al-Jama'a. The most prominent were the Special Forces and (until 1984) the Defense Companies.
Purges
1971-1972 Assad went on to establish a separate power base apart from the party. As early as January 1971, a number of Syrians were arrested on charges of collaborating with Iraqi intelligence services. Suspecting sympathisers of the Old Guard as a threat to his power, Hafez al-Assad carried out a purge in 1971, rounding up hundreds of party members and conducted a showtrial against Michel Aflaq, former Syrian President Amin al-Hafiz and numerous Ba'athists. Aflaq, Amin and three Baath leaders were sentenced to death via absentia, while ninety-nine party members were imprisoned on accusations of collaboration with the Iraqi Ba'ath. Leaders of the Old Guard like Aflaq and Amin al-Hafiz had found refuge in Baghdad, following the 1968 Ba'athist seizure of power in Iraq. The purges erased all remaining influence of Aflaqists within the Syrian Ba'ath party.
Assad also carried out numerous purges and repressions against suspected and proven supporters of Salah Jadid, arresting them on charges of sabotaging the government. In 1971, one of the deposed leader's relatives, Izzat Jadid, was arrested; in June, numerous people were arrested on charges of supporting the deposed regime; in December 1972, a new wave of arrests and detentions took place on the same charges.
1984
In what became known as the "poster war", personnel from the Defense Companies replaced posters of Assad in Damascus with those of Rifaat al-Assad. The security service, still loyal to Hafez, responded by replacing Rifaat al-Assad's posters with Hafez's. The poster war lasted for a week until Assad's health improved.Shortly after the poster war, all of Rifaat al-Assad's proteges were removed from positions of power. This decree nearly sparked a clash between the Defense Brigades and the Republican Guard on 27 February 1984.
1990s