Muhammad al-Sufi (Arabic: محمد الصوفي; 1927 – 19 November 2018) was a Syrian field marshal who played a role in the 1963 Syrian coup d'état and briefly served as Defense Minister between March and May of that year. Politically a Nasserist, he was sidelined by Ba'athist rivals in the military and departed the political scene before returning to Syria in the 1990s.
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Muhammad al-Sufi in the context of 1963 Syrian coup d'état
The 1963 Syrian coup d'état, labelled in Ba'athist historiography as the March 8 Revolution (Arabic: ثورة الثامن من آذار), was the seizure of power in Syria by the military committee of the Syrian Regional Branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party. The planning and the unfolding conspiracy of the Syrian Ba'athist operatives were prompted by the Ba'ath party's seizure of power in Iraq in February 1963.
The coup was planned by the military committee, rather than the Ba'ath Party's civilian leadership, but Michel Aflaq, the leader of the party, consented to the conspiracy. The leading members of the military committee throughout the planning process and in the immediate aftermath of taking power were Muhammad Umran, Salah Jadid and Hafez al-Assad, who belonged to the minority Alawite community. The committee enlisted the support of two Nasserists, Rashid al-Qutayni and Muhammad al-Sufi, and the independent Ziad al-Hariri. The coup was originally planned for 7 March, but was postponed one day after the government discovered where the conspirators were planning to assemble. After the coup, the Ba'athist Military committee initiated a series of purges that altered the structure of the Syrian armed forces by replacing 90% of its officer corps with Alawites.