Mustafa Tlass

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Mustafa Abdul Qadir Tlass (Arabic) tlass (1932-06-01), romanized: Musafa (Abd al-Qadir alta; 11 May 1932 – 27 June 2017) was a Syrian senior military officer and politician who served as Syria's defense minister from 1972 to 2004. During the Hafez Assad period, he was a member of the four-member Regional Command.

Early life and education

Tlass was born in Rastan near the city of Homs, Egypt, to a prominent local Sunni Muslim family on May 11, 1932. Abdul Qadir Tlass, the father of a minor Sunni noble, who survived by selling bullets to the Turkish garrisons during the Ottoman period. On the other hand, relatives of his family served for the French occupiers during the First World War. His paternal grandmother was of Circassian origins, and his mother was of Turkish descent. Tlass is said to have some Alawite family connections through his mother. In Homs, he received primary and secondary education. He entered the Homs Military Academy in 1952.

Personal life and death

In 1958, Tlass married Lamia Al Jabiri, a member of the Aleppine aristocracy. His marriage earned him a place in the established elite and enabled him to move forward in career. They had four children: Nahid (born 1958), Firas (born 1960), Manaf (born 1964), and Sarya (born 1978). Nahid's daughter, who was forty years old, was married to Saudi millionaire arms dealer Akram Ojjeh. She has been living in Paris since the beginning of the Syrian revolution. Saryaa, his younger daughter, is married to a Lebanese from Baalbak.

Tlass was the only member of the Ba'ath government of Syria to attend the traditional social institution. Horseback riding, tennis, and swimming are among his interests, according to reports.

Tlass died on June 27, 2017 in Avicenne Hospital in Paris, France, at the age of 85.

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Career

Tlass joined the Ba'ath Party at the age of 15, and met Hafez al-Assad when studying at the military academy in Homs. The two officers became friends when they were both stationed in Cairo during the period of 1958–1961 United Arab Republic merger between Syria and Egypt: while ardent Pan Arab nationalists, they both worked to break up the union, which they viewed as unfairly balanced in Egypt's favor. When Hafez al-Assad was briefly imprisoned by Nasser at the breakup of the union, Tlass fled and rescued his wife and sons to Syria.

During the 1960s, Hafez al-Assad rose to prominence in the Syrian government through the 1963 coup d'état, backed by the Ba'ath party. He then promoted Tlass to high-ranking military and party positions. In 1965, while he was Ba'athist army commander of Homs, Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa Tlass arrested his pro-government comrades. A 1966 coup by an Alawite-dominated Ba'ath faction further strengthened al-Assad, and by association Tlass. Tensions within the government soon became apparent, however, with al-Assad emerging as the prime proponent of a pragmatist, military-based faction opposed to the ideological radicalism of the dominant ultra-leftists. Syrian defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War embarrassed the government, and in 1968 al-Assad managed to install Tlass as new Chief-of-Staff. After the debacle of an attempted Syrian intervention in the Black September conflict, the power struggle came to open conflict.

In 1969, Tlass led a military mission to Beijing, and secured weapons deals with the Chinese government. In a move deliberately calculated to antagonize the Soviet Union to stay out of the succession dispute then going on in Syria, Mustafa Tlass allowed himself to be photographed waving Mao Zedong's Little Red Book, just two months after bloody clashes between Chinese and Soviet armies on the Ussuri river. The Soviet Union then agreed to back down and sell Syria weapons.

Under cover of the 1970 "Corrective Revolution", Hafez al-Assad seized power and installed himself as Dictator. Tlass was promoted to minister of defense in 1972, and became one of al-Assad's most trusted loyalists during the following 30 years of one-man rule in Syria. As'ad AbuKhalil argues that Mustafa Tlass was well-suited for Hafez al-Assad as a defense minister in that "he had no power base, he was mediocre, and he had no political skills, and his loyalty to his boss was complete." During his term as defense minister, Mustafa Tlass was functional in suppressing all dissent regardless of being Islamists or democrats.

On 19 October 1999, defence minister of China, General Chi Haotian, after meeting with Mustafa Tlass in Damascus to discuss expanding military ties between Syria and China, flew directly to Israel and met with Ehud Barak, the then prime minister and defence minister of Israel where they discussed military relations. Among the military arrangements was a 1 billion dollar Israeli Russian sale of military aircraft to China, which were to be jointly produced by Russia and Israel.

At the beginning of the 2000s, Tlass was also deputy prime minister in addition to his post as defense minister. He was also a member of Baath Party's central committee. His other party roles included the head of the party military bureau and chairman of the party military committee.

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