Mustafa Tlass

Mustafa Abdul Qadir Tlass (مصطفى عبد القادر طلاس; 11 May 1932 – 27 June 2017) was a Syrian senior military officer and politician who was Syria's minister of defense from 1972 to 2004.

He was part of the four-member Regional Command during the Hafez Assad era.

Tlass was born in Rastan near the city of Homs to a prominent local Sunni Muslim family on 11 May 1932.

His father, Abdul Qadir Tlass, was a minor Sunni noble who made a living during the Ottoman period by selling ammunition to the Turkish garrisons.

On the other hand, members of his family also worked for the French occupiers after the First World War.

His paternal grandmother was of Circassian origin and his mother was of Turkish descent.

Tlass is said to also have some Alawite family connections through his mother.

He received primary and secondary education in Homs.

In 1952, he entered the Homs Military Academy.

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.

There have been three missing Israeli soldiers in the Bekaa valley since the June 1982 war in Lebanon.

Tlass allegedly told a Saudi magazine: "We sent Israel the bones of dogs, and Israel may protest as much as it likes."

During his career, Tlass also became known for colorful language.

In 1998, Syrian Defense Minister Tlass boasted to Al Bayan newspaper that he was the one who gave the green light to "the resistance" in Lebanon to attack and kill 241 US marines and 58 French paratroopers, but that he prevented attacks on the Italian soldiers of the multi-national force because "I do not want a single tear falling from the eyes of [Italian actress] Gina Lollobrigida, whom [I] loved ever since my youth."

In October of the same year, Tlass stated that there was no such country as Jordan, but only "South Syria".

Tlass had also boasted to the National Assembly about cannibalist atrocities committed against Israeli soldiers who fell captive in the Yom Kippur war.

"I gave the Medal of the Republic's Hero, to a soldier from Aleppo, who killed 28 Jewish soldiers. He did not use the military weapon to kill them but utilized the ax to decapitate them. He then devoured the neck of one of them and ate it in front of the people. I am proud of his courage and bravery, for he actually killed by himself 28 Jews by count and cash."

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.

Tlass attempted to create a reputation for himself as a man of culture and emerged as an important patron of Syrian literature.

He published several books of his own, and started a publishing house, Tlass Books, which has been internationally criticized for publishing alleged anti-Semitic materials.