Zeid Heidar
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Zeid Heidar (Arabic: زيد حيدر) belongs to the tiny Shiite community of Damascus.
Born in Syria in the mid-1930s to an upper-middle class family of Arab nationalist lawyers and intellectuals, he studied political science and international relations in Beirut, were he joined the Arabian Revivalist a.k.a. “The Baath” youth movement in 1956.
Zeid Heidar moved to Iraq in 1968 in the wake of Saddam Hussein’s successful coup d’état and the ensuing establishment of a powerful Baathist regime in Baghdad. His intimate knowledge of the Beirut-based Palestinian exile and activist milieu led the new rulers of Iraq to appoint Zeid Heidar as Secretary-General of the “Arab Liberation Front” (ALF), the nom de guerre of the right-wing (pro-Iraqi) Baath party’s Palestinian branch.