Bachar el-Assad

Bachar el-Assad (in Arab: rear RTL بشارالاسد), born the September 11th 1965 with Damas, is the current President of the Syrian Arab Republic and wire of the president Hafez el-Assad (1930 - 2000). May 29th, 2007, Bachar el-Assad is renewed with the presidency of the Republic with 97,62% of the votes cast at the time of a referendum organized on May 27th, 2007.

Biography

Bachar el-Assad made its studies at the school free-Arabic Al-Hurriyet of Damas. It learns there the English and the French that it usually speaks. Studying the Ophthalmology with London, Bachar el-Assad had in the beginning a weak craving for the policy. Hafez el-Assad had prepared his/her oldest son Bassel to take its succession. It makes knowledge in London of his future wife, Asma Al-Akhras, a Syrian woman of confession sunnite.

His/her Bassel brother who was to succeed his father Hafez el-Assad dies in an car accident in 1994. Hafez el-Assad calls then upon his/her son junior.

Bachar is constrained to return to Syria where it returns to the military academy of Homs. It becomes in 1999 colonel, and it carries out missions of confidence for the Syrian government. It in particular went to the Lebanon to return a visit to the president Emile Lahoud and in November 1999 it is received one-to-one by the president Jacques Chirac with the Elysium.

With died of the president Hafez el-Assad, the Syrian Parliament amends the constitution, to lower the minimum age of the candidate to presidential, the age passes from 40 to 34 years. He is elected two days later general-in-chief of the Syrian armed forces by vice president Khaddam. The Parliament proposes it like chair republic the June 25th 2000. He promises to implement economic reforms and policies in Syria, and he is elected president of the republic by a referendum which was held the July 10th 2000, the Syrian people saw in him a reformer who would democratize the country.

Following its election, the mode is liberalized timidly, it is what is called generally the “Spring of Damas”. Hundreds of political prisoners find their freedoms, of the forums gathering of the intellectuals speaking about the democratization of Syria and of the end of the state of emergency in force since 1963 is born. Under the pressure of the old guard of the mode of which in particular Khaddam which feared the “algerisation” of Syria. El-Assad puts an end to this liberal movement by declaring that there are red lines not to cross. It makes stop tens of intellectual thereafter.

It is sometimes described as a president having to compose with the most radical members of the administration of his father who always place themselves from a point of view of armed conflict with Israel. It however carried out some economic reforms. The economic liberalization of the country was very limited, the interventionism of the State remains extremely present and corruption continues to harm the economy of the country. In addition, the economic sanctions installation by the the United States complicate the situation.

Foreign politics

In spite of the relations tended that from Syria with Israel, president Assad requested the resumption of the peace negotiations, for the restitution of the plate of Golan occupied by Israel since 1967. The United States and Israel show it in addition, to actively support groups armed like the Hezbollah, the Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.

In May 2001, it accommodates the pope Jean-Paul II and makes a speech in Damas in which it criticizes the Jews and Israel, it in particular said:

“We note that justice is ridiculed: the territories are occupied in Lebanon, Golan and in Palestine. We intend them to massacre the principles of the equality when they say that God created people better than the others (...) They violate the crowned places, they try to kill all the principles of the celestial religions with the same mentality by which was betrayed then tortured the Christ and in the same way that they tried to betray and kill the Mohammed prophet. ”

Assad was opposed to the invasion of Iraq by the American army in 2003, by using the seat of Syria to the safety advice of UNO in spite of the animosity which exists between the Syrian and Iraqi mode. With the assassination of Lebanese the Prime Minister Rafic Hariri and the supposed lodging of Palestinian militant in Syria, it attracts itself the lightnings of Washington.

In the Arab world, Bachar included good relationship with PLO, and tried to establish good relationship with preserving Arab states, while being held parking diary nationalist Arabic of Syria.

2005, crisis of Lebanon

It initiated the withdrawal of the Syrian occupying forces to the Lebanon, under the international pressure. In June 2001, the large one of the Syrian forces had been withdrawn from Beirut and its area, and a new withdrawal of the forces of the capital and Metn had taken place in April 2002. These redeployments had brought back Syrian manpower to Lebanon from 35.000 to 20.000. In September and December 2004, Syria brought back its manpower to approximately 14.000 soldiers. The assassination, in February 2005 of the former Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafic Hariri, causes the anger of a broad part of the Lebanese population, the charges being focused quickly on the Syrian secret services. It has leads to a third redeployment of the Syrian troops, launched in March 2005. The complete withdrawal of the Lebanese territory is carried out at the end of April 2005.

In January 2006, the former Syrian vice-president Abdel Halim Khaddam, in exile in Paris, showed Bachar Al-Assad to have threatened Rafic Hariri, a few months before its assassination, like being one of the heads of a gangster system extending to the Syria and the Lebanon.

See too

List of the current leaders

External bonds

Information on the Syrian president
Portrait of Bachar el-Assad
Interview of Bachar el-Assad on an American television channel

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