Assad consolidated his power by imposition of mass surveillance on the society and ran a military dictatorship characterised by human rights violations, arbitrary detentions, extrajudicial killings and elimination of leftist and conservative opposition.

[7] While continuing to use the Ba'ath Party, its ideology and its expanding apparatus as instruments of his rule and policies, Assad established a powerful, centralized presidential system with absolute authority for the first time in Syria's modern history.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Islamic jihad became almost an open rebellion as many Alawite soldiers, officers and senior officials were killed, and government and military centres were bombed by the Muslim mujahideen.

[18] Assad became increasingly reliant on the further cultivation of his close constituencies as a support base and a new political community consisting of large sections of peasants and workers, salaried middle-class and public employees—both Sunnis and non-Sunnis.

These groups, mostly organized in the Ba'ath Party, mass syndicates, and trade unions, like most Alawites, and Christians, greatly benefited from Assad's policies, and either depended on him or were ideologically identified with his government.

Assad's main support base remained the Alawite community, the combat units of the Syrian Armed Forces and the wide network of security and intelligence organizations.

Inefficiency, mismanagement, and corruption in the government, public, and private sectors, illiteracy, poor education, particularly in rural areas, the increasing emigration of professionals, inflation, a growing trade deficit, a high cost of living and shortages of consumer goods were among the problems Syria faced.

Syria lacked sugar, bread, flour, wood, iron, and construction equipment, which resulted in soaring prices, long queues, and rampant black marketeering.

Assad's government implemented emergency measures that included loans and compensation to farmers and distribution of fodder free charge in order to save sheep and cattle.

This tendency did not stem only from Assad's expectations to score quick and spectacular gains in his foreign policies at a time when the socio-economic issues of Syria required long-term and painstaking efforts without a promise of immediate positive results.

In addition to his ambition to turn Syria into a regional power and to himself become a pan-Arab leader, Assad calculated that working for Arab unity and stepping up the struggle against Israel were likely to strengthen his legitimacy and leadership among the various sections of the Syrian population.

Assad's skill as a cool, proud, tough, and shrewd negotiator in the post war period enabled him to gain the town of Kuneitra and the respect and admiration of many Arabs.

He regarded the confrontation with Israel as a zero-sum[clarification needed] struggle, and as a strategist who understood power politics, he had sought to counterbalance Israeli military might with an all-Arab political-military alliance.

During the period 1975 – 1980, Assad significantly advanced political, military, and economic cooperation with Jordan, extended his control over large parts of Lebanon, and intervened in the Lebanese Civil War, and sustained his strategic alliance with the PLO.

A newly formed Likud government in Israel developed political and military relations with the Maronite Lebanese Forces and contributed to the undermining of Assad's regional position.

[39] Also in 1979, under the impact of the Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty, and in view of Syria's regional predicament, King Hussein of Jordan withdrew from his association with Assad in favor of a closer relationship with Iraq.

The growing Syrian debt to the Soviet Union led to a reduction of the arms trade between the countries, and Syria turned to China and North Korea for its weapons supplies.

Radio Damascus denied claims that the Soviet Union and Syria were becoming distant and stated that the Assad's visit had renewed the momentum in the relations between the countries, consolidating their common view of the Arab–Israeli conflict.

During the visit, Assad asked to acquire the S-300 missile system, but Mikhail Gorbachev refused to deliver, due to U.S. and Israeli rejection and Syrian accumulated debt from previous arms deals.

Syria refused to do so, claiming that Russia was not a successor state of the Soviet Union, but later agreed to pay part of the debt by exporting citrus fruit worth $US800 million.

Despite Syria's efforts to portray itself as having dissociated itself from these groups, it was not removed from the list of countries sponsoring terrorist organizations that appeared in annual US Department report on "Patterns of Global Terrorism".

[52] Assad met President Bill Clinton twice in 1994 in Syria,[53] and 2000 in Geneva, Switzerland,[54] where they discussed Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, and Syrian presence in Lebanon, as a prelude to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Middle East.

Aiming primarily at confronting Israel single-handedly, this doctrine engendered fresh intra-Arab policies and was directed toward consolidating Assad's domestic front, which had suffered setbacks since 1977.

Attempts to bomb an El-Al airliner in London in April 1986 and in Madrid in June 1986 were part of an attrition campaign that Assad had been directing against Israel to damage its economy, morale, and social fabric and weaken its military capacity.

With the help of the Soviet Union, Assad built a large military equipped with modern tanks, airplanes and long-range ground-to-ground missiles capable of launching chemical warheads into most Israeli cities.

Assad regarded the September 1993 Israeli accord with the PLO—which ended the first intifada (resistance) in the Occupied Territories without giving the Palestinians any substantial gains—and the increasingly friendly relationship between Israel and Jordan as set-backs.

[65] However, except for securing Arab financial support and verbal commitments, and obtaining large quantities of free and discounted Iranian oil, Assad failed to achieve the goals of his Gulf strategy; instead it further worsened Syria's regional position.

[24] Terrorism against Palestinians and Jordanian targets in the mid-1980s contributed to thwart the rapprochement between King Hussein of Jordan and the PLO and the slowing down of Jordanian-Israeli political cooperation in the West Bank.

A more important issue between the countries was water supply and Syria's support to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA).

[88] After the PKK was dissolved in Syria, Turkish-Syrian political relations improved considerably, but issues such as water supplies from the Euphrates and Tigris rivers and Hatay remained unsolved.