Abd al-Halim Khaddam

1932 -

Syrian politician.

Born in 1932 to a Sunni family of modest means from the coastal town of Jabla, just north of Banyas, Abd al-Halim Khaddam became active in Baʿth party politics while attending secondary school in Latakia in the late 1940s. During his student days, he forged a fast friendship with another young fire-brand, Hafiz al-Asad. After graduating from the Faculty of Law at Damascus University, he practiced law and taught school before devoting himself to a career inside the party apparatus. He married into a prominent Alawi family in 1954.

By 1964 Khaddam had become governor of the troubled city of Hama, whose citizenry rose in rebellion against the Baʿth-dominated regime that April. He was governor of Qunaytra when the Israelis overran the Golan three years later. He then served as governor of Damascus city, before assuming the post of minister of the economy and foreign trade during the turbulent final years of the Salah Jadid period (1966 - 1970). When his old friend Hafiz al-Asad seized power in November 1970, Khaddam was promoted to the post of foreign minister. President al-Asad entrusted him with the thankless duty of negotiating the May 1974 disengagement agreement with Israel and with the difficult task of mediating among rival Lebanese factions during the tense period between the outbreak of the civil war in April 1975 and Syria's intervention in the conflict the following June. He was also given the delicate assignment of lobbying Arab leaders to reject the Egyptian - Israeli peace initiative of 1977 - 1978 and the tricky role of emissary between Damascus and Tehran during the uncertain months immediately following the 1978 - 1979 Iranian revolution.

When President al-Asad fell ill at the end of November 1983, Khaddam was appointed to the six-person committee charged with keeping affairs of state in order. Four months later, in a move clearly intended to counterbalance the influence of the president's ambitious brother Rifʿat, al-Asad named Khaddam as one of Syria's first three vice presidents, forcing him to relinquish the foreign ministership. Shortly thereafter, one of his sons married a daughter of the venerable al-Atasi clan in a lavish ceremony at the Damascus Sheraton Hotel. By the mid-1990s, some felt that his evident astuteness and longevity made him the most likely candidate to succeed Hafiz al-Asad as president of the republic. Yet al-Asad began grooming his youngest son Bashshar al-Asad for the job, and Bashshar assumed the presidency when his father died in June 2000. Khaddam remained a vice president, but not being a protegé of the younger al-Asad, slipped into a largely ceremonial role in Syrian politics.

Bibliography

Batatu, Hanna. Syria's Peasantry, the Descendants of Its Lesser Rural Notables, and Their Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.

Seale, Patrick. Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East. London: Tauris, 1988.

— FRED H. LAWSON
UPDATED BY MICHAEL R. FISCHBACH