Hafez al-Assad was a Syrian statesman, military officer and revolutionary who served as the 18th president of Syria from 1971 until his death in 2000. He had previously served as prime minister of Syria from 1970 to 1971 as well as regional secretary of the regional command of the Syrian regional branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party and secretary general of the National Command of the Ba'ath Party from 1970 to 2000. Hafez al-Assad was a key participant in the 1963 Syrian coup d'état, which brought the Syrian regional branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party to power in the country.
The Alawite State, officially named the Territory of the Alawites, after the locally-dominant Alawites from its inception until its integration to the Syrian Federation in 1922, was a French mandate territory on the coast of present-day Syria after World War I. The French Mandate from the League of Nations lasted from 1920 to 1946.
The Alawites, also known as Nusayrites, are an Arab muslim sect that live primarily in the Levant and follow Alawism, a religious sect that splintered from early Shi'ism as a ghulat branch during the ninth century. Alawites venerate Ali ibn Abi Talib, revered as the first Imam in the Twelver school, as the physical manifestation of God. The group was founded by Ibn Nusayr during the 9th century. Ibn Nusayr was a disciple of the tenth Twelver Imam, Ali al-Hadi and of the eleventh Twelver Imam, Hasan al-Askari. For this reason, Alawites are also called Nusayris.
The Hama massacre occurred in February 1982 when the Syrian Arab Army and the Defense Companies, under orders of president Hafez al-Assad, besieged the town of Hama for 27 days in order to quell an uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood against the Ba'athist government. The campaign that had begun in 1976 by Sunni Muslim groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, was brutally crushed in an anti-Sunni massacre at Hama, carried out by the Syrian Arab Army and Alawite militias under commanding General Rifaat al-Assad.
The Muslim Brotherhood of Syria is a Syrian branch of the Sunni Islamist Muslim Brotherhood organization. Its objective is the transformation of Syria into an Islamic state governed by Sharia law through a gradual legal and political process.
Terrorism in Syria has a long history dating from the state-terrorism deployed by the Ba'athist government since its seizure of power through a violent coup in 1963. The Ba'athist government have since deployed various types of state terrorism; such as ethnic cleansing, forced deportations, massacres, summary executions, mass rapes and other forms of violence to maintain its totalitarian rule in Syria. The most extensive use of state terrorism in the 20th century was during 1970s and 1980s, when Islamic uprisings across Syria where crushed through bloody campaigns of intense repression, culminating in the 1982 Hama massacre which killed around 40,000 civilians.
The Brigades for the Defense of the Revolution, commonly referred to as Defense Companies, Defense Corps or Defense Brigades were an all-Alawite paramilitary force in Syria that were commanded by Rifaat al-Assad. Their task was to defend the Assad government, and Damascus, from internal and external attack.
The 1964 Hama riot was the first significant clash between the newly installed Ba'ath Party leadership of Syria and the Muslim Brotherhood. It occurred in April 1964, after the 1963 Ba'athist coup d'état. The insurrection was suppressed with heavy military force, resulting in 70-100 mortal casualties and partial destruction of the old Hama city neighborhoods. Hama continued to be a center of Islamists and a focal point of the 1976-1982 Islamist uprising in Syria.
The Islamist uprising in Syria comprised a series of protests, assassinations, bombings, and armed revolts led by Sunni Islamists, mainly members of the Fighting Vanguard and, after 1979, the Muslim Brotherhood, from 1976 until 1982. The uprising aimed to establish an Islamic Republic in Syria by overthrowing the Ba'athist government, in what has been described by Ba'ath Party as a "long campaign of terror".
The siege of Aleppo refers to a military operation conducted by forces of the Syrian government led by Hafez al-Assad in 1980 during the armed conflict between the Sunni groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Syrian government. Government forces committed several massacres in the course of the operation.
The 1981 Hama massacre was an incident in which over 300 residents of Hama, Syria, were killed by government security forces.
Shabiha is a term for state sponsored militias of the Syrian government loyal to Assad family. The mercenaries consist exclusively of Alawite men paid by the regime to eliminate figures of its domestic opposition and alleged fifth-columnists. Shabiha were established in the 1980s to smuggle weapons to the Syrian soldiers stationed in Lebanon during the Syrian occupation of Lebanon.
The Syrian Civil War is an intensely sectarian war. After the early years of cross-sectarian opposition to the rule of Bashar al-Assad, the civil war has largely transformed into a conflict between ruling minority Alawite government and allied Shi'a governments such as Iran; pitted against the country's Sunni Muslim majority who are aligned with the Syrian opposition and its Turkish and Persian Gulf state backers. Sunni Muslims make up the majority of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and many hold high administrative positions, while Alawites and members of almost every minority have also been active on the rebel side.
Ahmad Moaz Al-Khatib Al-Hasani is a former president of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces. He is also a former imam of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus.
The National Alliance for the Liberation of Syria was a coalition of Syrian opposition groups, supported by the Iraqi government. The foundation of the National Alliance took place in Paris in March 1982. The charter of the National Alliance was tramsitted by Voice of Arab Syria on March 22, 1982. The National Alliance called for armed popular struggle in order to topple the al-Assad regime.
The Syrian Resistance, formerly known as the Popular Front for the Liberation of the Sanjak of Iskandarun, is a Marxist-Leninist pro-Syrian government militia operating in northwest Syria.
Adnan Uqla was a Syrian Islamist insurgent who served as the leader of the Fighting Vanguard; a Sunni militant group connected to the Muslim Brotherhood that led the failed Islamist insurrection in Syria. He was noted as being particularly pious and of being the Vanguard's most charismatic and influential figure.
Adnan Saad al-Din (1929–2010) was the fourth supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria between 1976 and 1981.
The Fighting Vanguard of the Mujahidin or the Fighting Vanguard of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria was a splinter group of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria that took part in violent actions against the ruling Baath regime during the Islamist uprising in Syria mainly between 1976 and 1982.
