Walid al-Muallem

Walid Mohi Edine al Muallem (13 January 1941 – 16 November 2020) was a Syrian diplomat and Ba'ath Party member who served as foreign minister from 11 February 2006 until his death, and as deputy prime minister from 2012 until his death. He represented Syria as ambassador to the United States for a decade (1990–2000) and was the Syrian regime's best-known diplomatic face at international forums during the civil war. ^{1 2}

Muallem was born in Damascus into a Sunni family of the Mezzeh quarter; the leads of both the English and Arabic articles give his birth date as 13 January 1941, while the Arabic article's early-life section and one of Wikidata's two values give 17 July 1941. He received his primary and secondary education in public schools from 1948 to 1960, took his secondary certificate in Tartus, and obtained a bachelor's degree in economics from Cairo University in 1963. ^{1 2}

Muallem began his career at the foreign ministry in 1964 and served in Syrian missions to Tanzania, Saudi Arabia, Spain and the United Kingdom. As a political attaché in Saudi Arabia, he and a colleague, Jaber Bajbuj, were declared persona non grata in May 1967 over alleged contacts with Ba'ath agents and ordered to leave within 24 hours. He was then ambassador to Romania from 1975 to 1980, head of the authentication and translation department (1980–1984) and head of the private offices department (1984–1990). ¹

He served as ambassador to the United States from 1990 to 2000, the period of the Syrian-Israeli peace negotiations, and was present at the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. He was named assistant foreign minister in 2000, deputy foreign minister in 2005 with the Lebanese file assigned to him by President Bashar al-Assad, and foreign minister on 11 February 2006 in a reshuffle in which his predecessor Farouk al-Sharaa became vice-president. In August 2006 he stated, "I am ready to be one of Hassan Nasrallah's soldiers", said Syria had a special relationship with Iran, and was involved in Israeli-Syrian negotiations before and during his tenure. ^{1 2}

Early in the civil war, Muallem held frequent press conferences with Syrian and Arab media. In August 2012 he gave his first interview with a Western journalist since the war began, in English, telling the Europeans, "I don't understand your slogan of fighting international terrorism when you are supporting this terrorism in Syria", and stating the government's position that the United States was "the major player against Syria" as it sought to contain Iran. He denied the existence of the Shabiha, the pro-government militiamen alleged to have committed atrocities, and blamed 60 per cent of Syria's violence on Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia "with the United States exercising its influence over all others". ¹

At the UN General Assembly in September 2013 he claimed that "terrorists from more than 83 countries" were killing Syrian soldiers and civilians, and compared the civil war's events to the September 11 attacks. At the Geneva II conference at Montreux in January 2014 he described the opposition as traitors and terrorists and accused states of supporting terrorism, speaking for over forty minutes despite the ten-minute rule and repeatedly ignoring Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's attempts to conclude his speech. In February 2016 he warned that foreign soldiers entering Syria without government consent would "return home in wooden coffins". After the September 2016 Deir ez-Zor air raid, which killed up to 100 Syrian soldiers, he said the government "holds the United States fully responsible because facts show that it was an intentional attack, and not an error, even if the United States claims otherwise". ^{1 2}

The Arabic article lists four books by him: "Palestine and Armed Peace" (1970), "Syria in the Mandate Period, 1917–1948", "Syria from Independence to Unity, 1948–1958", and "The World and the Middle East in the American Perspective". ²

This section should be read as an account of positions reported by the sources, not as the museum's judgement on them. The English and Arabic encyclopaedia articles carried these positions, and the museum has not reviewed the original statements of the parties.

European Union sanctions: in 2012 the European Union sanctioned Muallem, saying that as a government minister he "shares responsibility for the Syrian regime's violent repression of the civilian population"; he remained on the list until his death. ^{1 2}

His stated positions: he became known for lines from his press conferences, among them "we will forget that Europe is on the map", said months into the 2011 crisis. In October 2012 he rejected Ban Ki-moon's calls for a unilateral ceasefire, insisting that the governments that "finance, train and deliver weapons to the armed groups, notably Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey" be stopped; he called Western concerns over chemical weapons "a joke" and a pretext for an Iraq-style campaign; and in December 2012 he blamed US and EU sanctions for Syria's suffering. In January 2013, after UN and Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said Bashar al-Assad should not take part in a transitional government, he called on opposition groups to join a new cabinet under al-Assad so long as they "reject foreign intervention". ^{1 2}

Muallem was married to Sawsan Khayat and had three children, Tarek, Shatha and Khaled. He died on the morning of 16 November 2020 at Shami Hospital in Damascus, aged 79; the cause of death was not disclosed, but he had suffered from heart problems for years. He was buried at Mezzeh Cemetery. ^{1 2}

Muallem served fourteen years as foreign minister, among the longest tenures in modern Syria, and was the voice the world heard from Damascus through the war's first decade — at the General Assembly, at Geneva and in press conferences whose bluntness and sarcasm the sources record along with their substance. ¹

• The defined sources cited above, registered in data/source/.
• Later translations and revisions of this article require periodic review with clear update dates.