Amin al-Hafiz

This article is about the Syrian politician. For similarly named Lebanese politician and Prime Minister, see Amin al-Hafez (Lebanon).

Amin al-Hafez أمين الحافظ
Regional Secretary of the Regional Command of the Syrian Regional Branch
In office 4 October 1964 – 19 December 1965
Secretary General	Michel Aflaq Munif al-Razzaz
Preceded by	Shibli al-Aysami
Succeeded by	Nureddin al-Atassi (Regional Command dissolved in December 1965, new Regional Secretary elected in March 1966)
President of Syria
In office 27 July 1963 – 23 February 1966
Preceded by	Lu'ay al-Atassi
Succeeded by	Nureddin al-Atassi
Prime Minister of Syria
In office 4 October 1964 – 23 September 1965
Preceded by	Salah al-Din Bitar
Succeeded by	Yusuf Zu'ayyin
In office 12 November 1963 – 13 May 1964
Preceded by	Salah al-Din Bitar
Succeeded by	Salah al-Din Bitar
Member of the National Command of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party
In office 23 October 1963 – 23 February 1966
Member of the Regional Command of the Syrian Regional Branch
In office 1 February 1964 – 19 December 1965
Personal details
Born	1918 Aleppo, Syria
Died	Aleppo, Syria
Political party	Syrian Regional Branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party
Spouse(s)	Zeinab al-Hafiz
Religion	Sunni Islam

Amin al-Hafiz أمين الحافظ
Born	1918
Died
Allegiance	Syria
Service/branch	Syrian Arab Army
Years of service	1938-1966
Rank	General of the Army

Amin al-Hafiz (or Hafez; 1918(?) – 17 December 2009) (Arabic: أمين الحافظ‎‎) was a Syrian politician, General and member of the Ba'ath Party.

Career

Early life

Al-Hafiz was born in the city of Aleppo.

His first main political role was in 1958, as a Brigadier and leader of a Syrian Army delegation that visited Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian president. The two states duly merged into one United Arab Republic in February that year, and Hafez was posted to Cairo. The union crumbled after a Syrian uprising in September 1961, and the resultant secessionist government banished Hafez to Argentina as Syria's military attaché.

Rise to power

Hafiz (right) with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser on his arrival to Cairo for the Arab League summit, 1964

The 1963 Syrian coup d'état led by the Military Committee introduced Hafiz to public life. In the aftermath of the coup the National Council of the Revolutionary Command (NCRC) became the country's supreme organ. The NCRC was dominated by the Syrian branch of the radical, pan-Arab Ba'ath Party, and Hafiz became its President. As President, he instituted socialist reforms and oriented his country towards the Eastern Bloc.

Al Hafiz with King Hussein

Eli Cohen affair

The details of Eli Cohen and his covert operations are impossible to verify, and his importance maybe exaggerated by Israeli historians. In any case Al-Hafiz himself rebutted and denied the allegations of his stature within the Syrian military or political sphere. Allegedly, during his exile in Buenos Aires, Hafez befriended a supposed Lebanese trader named Kamal Amin Thaabet, an allegation which he flatly denies. According to Hafez he never met Cohen in Argentina. His account was that Cohen was a socialite who befriended officers in the Syrian Army but was never a part of the military in any official capacity. Generally, the importance of the intelligence provided to the Israeli's was greatly exaggerated. Thaabet was actually an Egyptian-born Israeli Mossad agent, Eli Cohen. Thaabet/Cohen arrived in Syria in early 1962, a year before Hafez’s return, and soon began passing information about Syrian military plans to Israel.

As president, Hafez groomed Thaabet/Cohen to be a future defence minister and possibly even his successor. An allegation which he also flatly denied and challenged. He invited him to functions and gave him tours of secret fortifications in the Golan Heights. When Cohen was revealed as a spy in January 1965, Hafez personally interrogated him and ordered the arrest of 500 of his highly placed friends. Despite international pleas for clemency, Hafez had Cohen publicly hanged in Damascus.

Downfall

On 23 February 1966, he was overthrown by a radical Ba'athist faction headed by Chief of Staff Salah Jadid. A late warning telegram of the coup d'état was sent from President Nasser to Nasim al-Safarjalani (The General Secretary of Presidential Council), on the early morning of the coup d'état. The coup sprung out of factional rivalry between Jadid's "regionalist" (qutri) camp of the Ba'ath Party, which promoted ambitions for a Greater Syria and the more traditionally pan-Arab Hafiz faction, called the "nationalist" (qawmi) faction. Jadid's supporters were also seen as more radically left-wing. But the coup was also supported and led by officers from Syria's religious minorities, especially the Alawite Muslims and the Druze, whereas Hafiz belonged to the majority Sunni population. Alawis have ruled Syria ever since.

Exile and return

After being wounded in the three-hour shootout that preceded the coup, in which 2 of his own children were seriously wounded, Hafez was jailed in Damascus's Mezzeh prison before being sent to Lebanon in June 1967. A year later he was relocated to Baghdad. In 1971, the courts of Damascus sentenced him to death in absentia, however Saddam Hussein "treated him and his fellow exile, Ba'ath founder Michel Aflaq, like royalty" and the sentence was not carried out. After the fall of Saddam in the Iraq War of 2003, al-Hafiz was quietly allowed to return to Syria. He died in Aleppo on December 17, 2009; reports of his age differ, but he was believed to be in his late 80's. He received a state sponsored funeral.