Baath Party
Encyclopedia
The Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party was a political party mixing Arab
nationalist
and Arab socialist
interests, opposed to Western imperialism, and calling for the renaissance or resurrection and unification of the Arab world
into a single state. Ba'ath is also spelled Ba'th or Baath and means "rebirth," "resurrection," "restoration," or "renaissance" (reddyah). Its motto — "Unity, Liberty, Socialism" (wahda, hurriya, ishtirakiya) — refers to Arab unity, and freedom from non-Arab control and interference. Its ideology of ba'athism
is notably different in origins and practice from classical Marxism
and is similar in outlook to 'third-worldism
'.
The party was founded in 1947 by the Syria
n intellectuals Michel Aflaq
and Salah al-Din al-Bitar
. It has established branches in different Arab countries, although it has only ever held power in Syria
and Iraq
. In Syria
it has had a monopoly on political power since the party's 1963 coup. Ba'athists also seized power in Iraq in 1963, but were deposed some months later. They returned to power in a 1968 coup and remained the sole party of government until the 2003 Iraq invasion. Since the invasion the party has been banned in Iraq.
In 1966 a coup d'état
by the military against the historical leadership of Aflaq and Bitar led the Syrian and Iraqi parties to split into rival organizations — the Qotri (or regionalist) Syria-based party and the Qawmi (or nationalist) Iraq-based party. Both retained the Ba'ath name and parallel structures within the Arab world, but hostilities between them grew to the point that the Syrian Ba'ath regime became the only Arab government to support Iran
(a non-Arabic nation) against Iraq during the First Persian Gulf War.
وحدة، حرية، اشتراكية) was inspired by the French Jacobin
political doctrine linking national unity and social equity, Unity refers to Arab unity, or Pan-Arabism
; liberty emphasizes being free from foreign control and interference (self-determination); and socialism refers to Arab socialism
, rather than to European socialism
or communism
. The idea that the national freedom and glory of the Arab Nation had been destroyed by Ottoman
and Western imperialism was expounded on in Michel Aflaq
’s works On the Way of Resurrection
and The Battle for One Destiny
. Aflaq is commonly considered today as the father of Ba'athism
.
Arab nationalism had been influenced by 19th Century mainland European thinkers, notably conservative German philosophers such as Johann Gottlieb Fichte
of the Königsberg University Kantian school and French “Positivists” such as Auguste Comte
and professor Ernest Renan
of the Collège de France
in Paris. Tellingly, Ba'ath party co-founders Aflaq and Salah al-Bitar both studied at the Sorbonne in the early 1930s, at a time when Positivism
was still the dominant ideology amongst France’s academic elite.
The “Kulturnation” concept of Johann Gottfried Herder
and the Grimm Brothers had a certain impact. Kulturnation defines a nationality more by a common cultural tradition and popular folklore than by national, political or religious boundaries and was considered by some as being more suitable for the German, Arab or Ottoman and Turkic countries.
Germany was seen as an anti-colonial power and friend of the Arab world; cultural and economic exchange and infrastructure projects such as the Baghdad Railway
supported that impression. According to Paul Berman
, one of the early Arab nationalist thinkers Sati' al-Husri
was influenced by Fichte, a German philosopher famous for his conception of the nation state and his influence on the German unification movement.
The Ba'ath party also had a significant number of Christian Arabs among its founding members. For them, most prominently Aflaq, a resolutely nationalist and secular political framework was a suitable way to evade faith-based Islamic orientation and the minority status it would give non-Muslims and to get full acknowledgment as citizens. Also, during General Rashid Ali al-Gaylani's short-lived anti-British military coup in 1941, Iraq-based Arab
nationalists (Sunni Muslims as well as Chaldean Christians
) asked the Nazi German government to support them against British colonial rule.
organization, with an emphasis on withstanding government repression and infiltration. Hierarchical lines of command ran from top to bottom, and members were forbidden to initiate contacts between groups on the same level of organization; all contacts had to pass through a higher command level. This made the party somewhat unwieldy, but helped prevent the formation of factions and cordoned off members from each other, making the party very difficult to infiltrate, as even members would not know the identity of many other Ba'athists. As the U.S. and its allies discovered in Iraq in 2003, the cell structure has also made the Party highly resilient as an armed resistance organization.
A peculiarity stemming from its Arab unity ideology is the fact that it has always been intended to operate on a pan-Arab level, joined together by a supreme National Command, which is to serve as a party leadership for branches throughout the Arab world
.
From its lowest organizational level, the cell, to the highest, the National Command, the party is structured as follows:
, a Christian
, and Salah al-Din al-Bitar
, a Sunni muslim. At the very beginning the party worked as a vehicle for the national liberation movement
against French rule of Syria and Lebanon
. Soon after the Ba'ath Party established itself as a critic of what they considered the ideological inefficiencies of old Syrian nationalism
. Following the end of World War II
pan-Arab nationalist
thinking became popular amongst Arabs. For Aflaq, who was the 'father of ba'athist
ideology and a Christian, ba'athism drew heavily from Islam
and its values. For example, he wrote of the time of Muhammed, the Prophet
, as the ideal Arab community, and claimed the Arabs had "fallen" under the rules of the Ottomans
and the Europeans. The name Ba'ath and the party's programme called for Arab restoration through modernisation. The most important influence which Alfaq and al-Bitar brought back from Europe was socialism
, albeit a rather unique socialism with Arab characteristics
.
The party was formally established at its founding congress under the name Arab Ba'ath Party. According to the congress the party was "nationalist, populist, socialist, and revolutionary" and believed in the "unity and freedom of the Arab nation
within its homeland." The party opposed the theory of class conflict
, but supported the nationalisation of major industries, the unionisation of workers, land reform and supported private inheritance and private property rights to some degree. At first the party had about a hundred members, but that increased to 4,500 by the early 1950s. The majority of party members were either educated teachers or students. The Ba'ath Party merged with the Arab Socialist Party (ASP) led by Akram al-Hawrani
to establish the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party in Lebanon
following Adib Shishakli
's rise to power. The merger gave the ba'ath movement its first peasant constituency, the ASP's stronghold was Hama
. Most ASP member did not adhere to the merger and remained "passionately loyal to Hawrani's person." The merger was so weak that the ASP's infrastructure still remained intact. However, with the rise of Gamal Abdel Nasser
in Egypt and Arab nationalism, the Ba'ath Party grew rapidly. In 1955, the party decided to support Nasser and his pan-Arab policies.
that year. While sounding insignificant, the Ba'ath Party was the second largest party in parliament – the majority of the new members of parliament were independents. The Ba'ath Party was one of the most organised parties in parliament, only being eclipsed by the Syrian Communist Party
(SCP) and the People's Party
. Aside from the SCP, the Ba'ath Party was the only party able to organise mass protests amongst workers. The party was supported by the intelligentsia
, and aroused support with the party's pro-Egyptian and anti-imperialist stance coupled with support for social reform. The Ba'ath was one of these new formations, but faced considerable competition from ideological enemies, notably the Syrian Social Nationalist Party
(SSNP), which supported the establishment of a Greater Syria
, and the Ba'ath Party's main adversary, the SCP, whose support for class struggle and internationalism was also anathema to the Ba'ath. In addition to the parliamentary level, all these parties as well as Islamists competed in street-level activity and sought to recruit support among the military.
The assassination of Ba'athist colonel Adnan al-Malki
by a member of the SSNP in April 1955 allowed the Ba'ath Party and its allies to launch a crackdown on them, thus eliminating one rival. Two years later, in 1957, the Ba'ath Party entered into a partnership with the SCP in order to weaken the power of Syria's conservative parties. However, by the end of 1957, the SCP was able to weaken the Ba'ath Party to such an extent that the Ba'ath Party drafted a bill in December that very same year calling for a union with Egypt, a move that proved to be very popular. The Ba'ath Party was banned in the United Arab Republic
(UAR), the union between Egypt and Syria, due to Gamal Abdel Nasser
's hostility to parties not his own. The Ba'ath leadership which dissolved the party in 1958, gambled that the illegalisation of certain parties would hurt the SCP more than it would the Ba'ath. Meanwhile, a small group of Syrian Ba'athist officers stationed in Egypt were observing with alarm the party’s poor position and the increasing fragility of the union. They decided to form a secret military committee: its initial members were Lieutenant-Colonel Muhammad Umran, Major Salah Jadid
and Captain Hafiz al-Assad. At first, the committee did not play any political role in the ba'athist movement, there are even rumours that prominent ba'athist did not even know of the military committee's existence, but with the UAR's dissolution, it rose to prominence within the party.
A military coup in Damascus
in 1961 brought the UAR to an end. Sixteen prominent politicians signed a statement supporting the coup, among them al-Hawrani and Salah al-Din al-Bitar
(although the latter soon retracted his signature). Following the UAR's dissolution, the Ba'ath Party was reestablished at the 1962 congress. The Ba'ath Party managed to win only a handful of seats during 1961 parliamentary election
. The secession from the UAR was a time of crisis for the party, several groupings left the party, most notably al-Hawrani who formally resigned on 20 June 1962 and reestablished the Arab Socialist Party (ASP). However, al-Hawrani's popular appeal had weakened over the years, and the ASP's only electoral stronghold was the Hama Governorate
.
As historian Hanna Batatu
notes, this took place without the fundamental disagreement over immediate or "considered" reunification having been resolved. The Ba'ath moved to consolidate its power within the new regime, purging Nasserist officers in April. Subsequent disturbances led to the fall of the al-Bitar government, and in the aftermath of Jasim Alwan’s failed Nasserist coup in July, the Ba'ath monopolized power.
Sa'dun Hamadi, a Shia muslim, and Fuad al-Rikabi, an Iraqi engineer and a Shia muslim, founded the Ba'ath Party's Iraqi cell in 1951 as an Arab nationalist party vague in its socialist orientation
. al-Rikabi, expelled from the party in 1961 for being a nasserist, was a follower of Michel Aflaq
, the founder of Ba'athism
. During the party's early hey-days members not only discussed topics regarding Arab nationalism, but also the social inequalities that had grown out of the British "Tribal Disputes Regulation" and the Iragi parliament's Law 28 of 1932, "Governing the Rights and Duties of Cultivators". By 1953 the party, led by al-Rikabi, was engaged in subversive activities against the government.
The party initially consisted of a majority of shia muslims, as al-Rikabi recruited supporters mainly from his friends and family, but would slowly evolve into becoming sunni dominated. The Ba'ath Party, and other party's of pan-Arab orientation, had increasing difficulties in increasing Shi'ite membership within the party organisation. Most shi'ites saw pan-Arab thought as a largely sunni project since the majority of muslims in the Arab world
where sunnis, because of this the majority of shi'ites joined the Iraqi Communist Party
instead of the Ba'ath Party or other party's of nationalist orientation. In the mid-1950 eight people out of 17-manned Ba'ath leadership were Shia. According to Talib Shabib
, the Ba'ath foreign minister in the Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr
government, the secterian background of the leading Ba'ath members was considered of little importance because the majority of Ba'athist did not know each other's secterian denominations. Of the members in the Regional Command, the Ba'ath Party leadership, 54 percent of them were considered Shia muslims between 1952 an 1963. This majority could be largely explained by al-Rikabi's effective recruitment drive in Shi'i areas. Between 1963 and 1970, after al-Rikabi's resignation, members who where Shia in the Regional Command had dropped to 14 percent, however, out of the three inner-factions of the Ba'ath Party, two out of three factional leaders were Shia.
By the end of 1951 the party had at least 50 members. With the collapse of the pan-Arabist state, the United Arab Republic
(AUR), several leading Ba'ath members, including al-Rikabi, resigned from the party in protest. In 1958, the year of the 14 July Revolution
that overthrew the Hashemite monarchy
, the Ba'ath Party had 300 members nationwide. The leader of the Free Officer movement which overthrew the king, General Abd al-Karim Qasim, supported joining the pan-Arab state, the UAR. Several members of the Free Officer movements were also members of the Ba'ath Party. The Ba'ath Party, considering Gamal Abdel Nasser
, the President of Egypt
, the leader of the pan-Arab movement of being the most likeliest leader to succeed, supported Iraq joining the union. Of the sixteen members of Qasim's cabinet, 12 of them were Ba'ath Party members. However, the Ba'ath Party supported Qasim on the grounds that he was join Nasser's UAR.
However, shortly after taking power, Qasim changed his position on joining the UAR, and then started to campaign for the "Iraq first policy". To strengthen his own position within the government, Qasim created an alliance with the Iraqi Communist Party
, which was opposed to any notion of pan-Arabism. This change in policy was considered as betrayal by pan-Arab organisations, most notably the Ba'ath Party. Later that year, the Ba'ath Party leadership were planning to assassinate Qasim. Saddam Hussein
, the future President of Iraq
and General Secretary of the Iraqi-based Ba'ath Party, was a leading member of the operation. The choice of Hussein was, according to historian Con Coughlin
, "hardly surprising". At the time, the Ba'ath Party was more of an ideological experiment then a strong anti-government fighting machine. Also, the majority of its members were either educated professionals or students, Saddam easily fitted the bill to be a member of the operation. Abdul Karim al-Shaikhly, the leader of the operation, asked Hussein to join the operation when one of team members left. The idea of assassinating Qasim may have its origins from Nasser, and there are speculations that some of those who participated in the assassination attempt received training in Damascus, then part of the UAR.
The assassins were to ambush Qasim at Al-Rashid Street on 7 October 1959, one man was to kill those sitting at the back of the car, and the rest killing those sitting in front. During the operaton Hussein started to shot prematurely, which disorganised the whole operation. Qasim's chauffeur was killed, and Qasim himself was hit in the arm and shoulder. The assassins believed they had killed Qasim, and thus quickly retreated to their headquarters. However, Qasim would live to see another day. At the time of the assassination attempt the Ba'ath Party had less than 1,000 members.
Some of the plotters quickly managed to leave the country for Syria, the spiritual home of Ba'athist ideology
. Hussein was given full-membership in the party by Michel Aflaq
during his stay. Some members of the operation were arrested and taken into custody
by the Iraqi government. At the show trial
, six of the defendants were given the death sentence
, the sentences were not carried out for unknown reasons. Aflaq, the leader of the Ba'athist movement, organised the expulsion of leading Iraqi Ba'athist members, such as Fuad al-Rikabi, on the grounds that the party should not have initiated the assassination attempt on Qasim's life. At the same time, Aflaq managed to secure seats in the Iraqi Ba'ath leadership for his supporters, one them being Hussein.
Qasim was finally overthrowned in the February 1963 Iraqi coup d'état
, a coup masterminded by the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) and followed through by Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr
. Several army units had refused to mobilise to support the Ba'athist coup, which led the fighting to drag on for two days; the death toll ranges from a low 1,500 to 5,000 people dead. Qasim was captured, and killed by a firing squad one hour after his capture. To ensure the Iraqi public, the plotters broadcasted a film of Qasim's dead body being mutilated.
became the President
, Hussein al-Bakr became the Prime Minister
and Ali Salih al-Sadi, the General Secretary of the Regional Command of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, became Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior
, a post he lost on 11 May. Despite not being Prime Minister, al-Sadi had effective control over the Iraqi Ba'at Party, seven out of nine members supported his leadership in the party's Regional Command.
In the aftermath of the successful coup, the National Guard, initiated an "orgy of violence" against all communist-elements and some left-wing forces
. The terror reign in Baghdad led to the establishment of several interrogation chambers, and several private houses and public facilities were requisitioned by the government, an entire section of Kifah Street was used by the National Guard. Many of the victims were either innocent, or victims of personal vendettas. The most notorius torture chamber was located at the Palace of the End, a name it was given since the royal family was killed their in 1958. Nadhim Kazzer, the future Director of the Directorate of General Security
, was responsible for the acts committed their. There are some who consider this purge a forerunner for similar anti-leftist purges around the worst, most notably the one in Chile
under Augusto Pinochet
's rule.
The reign of terror did not last long however, and the party was ousted from government in November 1963, due to factionalism. The big question within the Ba'ath Party at the time was if the party would follow its ideological goal of establishing a union with Syria, or with both Syria and Egypt, or not at all. al-Sadi supported the creation of a union with Syria, which was under the rule of the Ba'ath Party, while the more conservative military wing suppored Qasim's "Iraq first policy". Factionalism, coupled with the ill-disciplined behaviour of the National Guard, led the military wing initiate a coup of the party's leadership; al-Sadi was forced into exile in Spain. al-Bakr, in an attempt to save the party, called for a meeting of the National Command of the Ba'ath Party. The convened National Command did not, however, solve the party's problem, quite to the contrary, it deepened it even more. It did not help that Aflaq, who saw himself as the leader of the pan-Arab ba'athist movement, declared his wishes to take political control over the Iraqi Ba'ath Party. The "Iraq first" wing were outraged, and coupled with President Arif's lose of patience with the Ba'ath, the Ba'ath Party was ousted from government on 18 November 1963. The 12 Ba'ath members of government were forced to resign, and the National Guard was dissolved only to be replaced by the Republican Guard. There are reasons to believe that Aflaq supported Arif's coup against the Ba'athist government; he supported the coup so he could weakened al-Sadi's position within the party, and strengthen his own.
led the pro-Aflaq wing. A bigger schism was on the way in the international Ba'athist movement, four major factions were under creation; the Old Guard, led by Aflaq, a civilian alliance between the General Secretaries of the Regional Commands of both Syria and Iraq led by Hammud al-Shufi and al-Sadi respectively, the Syrian Ba'ath Military Committee represented by Salah Jadid
, Muhammad Umran, Hafiz al-Assad, Salim Hatum, Amin al-Hafiz et al. and the Iraqi military wing, which supported Arif's presidency, represented by al-Bakr, Salih Mahdi Ammash, Tahir Yahya
and Hardan Tikriti. The military wings in both Syria and Iraq opposed creating a pan-Arab state, both al-Shufi and al-Sadi supported the union and Aflaq, while officially supporting it, opposed it because he was afraid that al-Sadi would become a potential challenger to his position as General Secretary of the National Command of the Ba'ath Party, the leader of the international Ba'athist movement.
On the transnational level, both Syria and Iraq, were under Ba'athist rule in 1963. When President Arif visited Syria on a state visit
, Sami al-Jundi, a Syrian cabinet minister, proposed the creation of a bilateral union between the two countries. Both Arif and Amin al-Hafiz, the President of Syria, supported the idea of a bilateral union, al-Jundi was given the task of setting up a committee to begin work on establishing the union. al-Sadi was elected as the Iraq's chief representative in the committee by al-Jundi, in a bid to strengthen al-Sadi's position within the Ba'ath Party. Work on the union continued with the signing of the Military Unity Charter which established the Higher Military Council, an organ which oversaw both the integration and control over the Syrian and Iraqi military. Ammash, the Iraqi Minister of Defense
, became the Chairman of the Higher Military Council. The unified headquarter was placed in Syria. The establishment of the military union was proven on 20 October 1963 when Syrian soldiers were revealed to be fighting alongside the Iraqi military in Iraqi Kurdistan
. At this stage, both Iraqi and Syrian ba'athist feared excluding Gamal Abdel Nasser
from the union talks, as Nasser, the unofficial leader of the pan-Arab movement, had a large following.
The fall of al-Bakr's first government was heavily criticised by the Syria state and its Ba'ath Party at first, before evolving into a more soft tone when they found out that some members of the cabinet were still Ba'ath Party members. This milder tone did not last long when, as the remaining Ba'athist were slowly removed from office. The Syrian Revolutionary Command Council responded by abrogating the Military Unity Charter on 26 April 1964, this action gave the death blow to Iraq's and Syria's the bilateral unification process.
The far-left tendency gained control at the party’s Sixth National Congress of 1963, where hardliners from the dominant Syrian and Iraqi regional parties joined forces to impose a hard left line, calling for "socialist planning", "collective farms run by peasants", "workers' democratic control of the means of production", a party based on workers and peasants, and other demands reflecting a certain emulation of Soviet-style socialism. In a coded attack on Michel Aflaq
, the congress also condemned "ideological notability" within the party. Aflaq, bitterly angry at this transformation of his party, retained a nominal leadership role, but the National Command as a whole came under the control of the radicals.
In 1963 the Ba'ath Party seized power, from then on the Ba'ath functioned as the only officially recognized Syrian political party, but factionalism and splintering within the party led to a succession of governments and new constitutions. On 23 February 1966, a bloody coup d'état led by left-wing extremists, a radical Ba'athist faction headed by Chief of Staff Salah Jadid
, overthrew the Syrian Government. The coup sprung out of factional rivalry between Jadid's "regionalist" (qutri) camp of the Ba'ath Party, which promoted ambitions for a Greater Syria
and the more traditionally pan-Arab, in power faction, called the "nationalist" (qawmi) faction. Jadid's supporters were also seen as more radically left-wing. Many of Jadid's opponents managed to make their escape and flee to Beirut
. The Ba'ath wing led by Jadid took power, and set the party out on a more radical line. Although they had not been supporters of the victorious far-left line at the Sixth Party Congress, they had now moved to adopt its positions and displaced the more moderate wing in power, purging from the party its original founders, Aflaq and al-Bitar.
During the factional struggles within Syria Ba'ath Party organisation in the 1960s, three factions emerged from the party had emerged. A pro-Nasser group split from the party at the breakup of union with Egypt in 1961, and later became the Socialist Unionists. This group later splintered several times, but one branch of the movement was coopted by the Ba'ath into the National Progressive Front
. The far-left line of Yasin al-Hafiz, which had impressed Marxist influences on the party in 1963, broke off the following year to form what later became the Arab Revolutionary Workers Party
, while Jadid's and Atassi's wing of the organization reunited as the clandestine Arab Socialist Democratic Ba'ath Party. Both the latter organizations in 1980 joined an opposition coalition called the National Democratic Gathering.
The Damascus-based Ba'ath and the Baghdad-based Ba'ath were by now two separate parties, each maintaining that it was the genuine party and electing a National Command to take charge of the party across the Arab world. However, in Syria, the Regional Command was the real centre of party power, and the membership of the National Command was a largely honorary position, often the destination of figures being eased out of the leadership.
gave priority to the radical Marxist-influenced line the Ba'ath was pursuing, but was closely linked to the security forces of Deputy Secretary Salah Jadid
, the country's strongman from 1966. This faction was strongly preoccupied with what it termed the "Socialist transformation" in Syria, ordering large-scale nationalization of economic assets and agrarian reform. It favored an equally radical approach in external affairs, and condemned "reactionary" Arab regimes while preaching "people's war" against Israel; this led to Syria's virtual isolation even within the Arab world. The other faction, which came to dominate the armed forces, was headed by Defense Minister Hafez al-Assad
. He took a more pragmatic political line, viewing reconciliation with the conservative Arab states, notably Egypt
and Saudi Arabia
, as essential for Syria’s strategic position regardless of their political color. He also called for reversing some of the socialist economic measures and for allowing a limited role for non-Ba'athist political parties in state and society.
In early January 1965 the Syrian Ba'ath Party nationalized about a hundred companies, "many of them mere workshops, employing in all some 12,000 workers." Conservative Damascus
merchants closing their shops and "with the help of Muslim preachers, called out the populace" to protest against the expropriation. The regime fought back with the Ba'ath Party National Guard and "newly formed Workers' Militia." In retaliation for the uprising the state assumed new powers to appoint and dismiss Sunni Muslim Friday prayer-leaders and took over the administration of religious foundations (awqaf), "the main source of funds of the Muslim establishment."
Despite constant maneuvering and government changes, the two factions remained in an uneasy coalition of power. After the 1967 Six-Day War
, tensions increased, and Assad's faction strengthened its hold on the military; from late 1968, it began dismantling Salah Jadid's support networks, facing ineffectual resistance from the civilian branch of the party that remained under his control. This duality of power persisted until November 1970, when, in another coup
, Assad succeeded in ousting Atassi as prime minister and imprisoned both him and Jadid. He then set upon a project of rapid institution-building, reopening parliament and adopting a permanent constitution for the country, which had been ruled by military fiat or provisional constitutional documents since 1963. The Ba'ath Party was turned into a patronage network closely intertwined with the bureaucracy, and soon became virtually indistinguishable from the state, while membership rules were liberalised; in 1987 the party had 50,000 members in Syria, with another 200,000 candidate members on probation. The party simultaneously lost its independence from the state, and was turned into a tool of the Assad regime, which remained based essentially in the security forces. Other socialist parties that accepted the basic orientation of the regime were permitted to operate again, and in 1972 the National Progressive Front
was established as a coalition of these legal parties; however, they were only permitted to act as junior partners to the Ba'ath, with very little room for independent organization.
al-Assad died in office as President of Syria and General Secretary of both the Regional Command and the National Command on 10 June 2000, when his son Bashar al-Assad
succeeded him as President and as General Secretary of the Regional Command while Abdullah al-Ahmar
succeeded him de facto
as General Secretary of the National Command through his office of Assistant General Secretary – al-Hafiz, even if dead, is still the de jure
General Secretary of the National Command. Since then, the party has experienced an important generational shift, and a discreet ideological reorientation decreasing the emphasis on socialist planning in the economy, but no significant changes have taken place in its relation to the state and state power. It remains essentially a patronage and supervisory tool of the regime elite. The Ba'ath today holds 134 of the 250 seats in the Syrian Parliament, a figure which is dictated by election regulations rather than by voting patterns, and the Syrian Constitution stipulates that it is "the leading party of society and state", granting it a legally enforced monopoly on real political power.
received full party membership and received a seat in the Regional Command of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party because he was a close protege of al-Bakr. With al-Bakr consent Hussein initiated a drive improve the party's internal security; the party's internal security organs would later work as Hussein's power base. During his exile in Egypt, Hussein had been influenced by thoughts and deeds of Joseph Stalin
, and frequently uttered Stalinists maxims such as "If there is a person there is a problem; if there is no person then there is no problem". In 1964 Hussein established the Jihaz Haneen, the party's secretive security apparatus, to act as a counterweight to the military officers in the party, to weaken the military's hold on the party.
In contrast to the 1963 coup, the 1968 coup led by civilian Ba'ath Party members. The President of Iraq
Abdul Rahman Arif
, who had taken over from his brother, was a weak leader. Hussein, through the Jihaz Haneen, managed to get in contact with several military officers before the coup who either supported the Ba'ath Party, or wanted to use the party as a vehicle to power. Some officers, such as Hardan al-Tikriti
, were already members of the party, while Abdul Razzak Nayif, the deputy head of military intelligence, and Colonel Ibrahim Daud, the commander of the Republican Guard were neither party members or sympathetic to their cause. In a surprising turn of events, on 16 July 1968, Nayif and Daud were summoned to the Presidential Palace to Arif, where he asked them if they knew of a imminent coup against him. Both Nayid and Daud denied knowledge of any coup. However, when the Ba'ath Party leadership got a hold on this information, they quickly convened a meeting at al-Bakr's house. The meeting came to the conclusion that the coup had to be initiated as quickly as possible, even if they had to concede to give Nayif and Daud the posts of Prime Minister and Defense Minister respectively. al-Bakr, at the meeting, declared "I am aware that the two officers have been imposed on us and that they want to stab the Party in the back in the service of some interest or other, but we have no choice. We should collaborate with them and liquidiated immediatley during, or after, the revolution. And i volunteer to carry out the task".
The so-called 17 July Revolution was in the purest sense, a military coup, and not a popular revolt against the incumbent regime. In comparison to the coups of 1958 and 1963, the 1968 was, according to historian Con Coughlin
, a "relatively civil affair". The coup, which begun in the early morning of 17 July, was initiated by the seizing of several key positions by the military and Ba'ath Party activists, such as the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense and television-, radio- and the electricity station. All the city's bridges were captured, all telephone lines were cut and at exactly 3 A.M. the order was given to march on the Presidential Palace. President Arif, who was fast asleep, had no control over the situation whatsoever. The plot was masterminded by al-Bakr, but led on the ground by Hussein and Saleh Omar al-Ali. A power struggle, which was anticipated and planned by al-Bakr, between the Ba'ath Party and the military, represented by Nayif and Daud, begun. Daud lost his ministership during an official visit to Jordan
, while Nayid was exiled after threatening him and his family with death.
At the time of the party's seizure of power, only 5,000 people were members, by the late 1970s it had increased to 1.2 million members. In 1974 the Iraqi Ba'athists formed the National Progressive Front
to broaden support for the government's initiatives. Wranglings within the party continued, and the government periodically purged its dissident members, among them was Fuad al-Rikabi, the party's first General Secretary of the Regional Command. Emerging as the party strongman, Hussein eventually used his growing power to push al-Bakr aside in 1979 and ruled Iraq until the 2003 Invasion of Iraq
. Under Saddam's tenure, before the Iran–Iraq War, Iraq experienced its most dramatic and successful period of economic growth, with its citizens enjoying standards of health care, housing, instruction and salaries/stipends well comparable to those of European countries. Several major infrastructures were laid down to help with the country's growth, and the Iraqi oil industry was nationalised with help from the Soviet Union; Alexei Kosygin, the Chairman
of the USSR Council of Ministers, signed the bilateral treaty, the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in 1972.
Arab world
The Arab world refers to Arabic-speaking states, territories and populations in North Africa, Western Asia and elsewhere.The standard definition of the Arab world comprises the 22 states and territories of the Arab League stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the...
nationalist
Arab nationalism
Arab nationalism is a nationalist ideology celebrating the glories of Arab civilization, the language and literature of the Arabs, calling for rejuvenation and political union in the Arab world...
and Arab socialist
Arab socialism
Arab socialism is a political ideology based on an amalgamation of Pan-Arabism and socialism. Arab socialism is distinct from the much broader tradition of socialist thought in the Arab world, which predates Arab socialism by as much as fifty years...
interests, opposed to Western imperialism, and calling for the renaissance or resurrection and unification of the Arab world
Arab world
The Arab world refers to Arabic-speaking states, territories and populations in North Africa, Western Asia and elsewhere.The standard definition of the Arab world comprises the 22 states and territories of the Arab League stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the...
into a single state. Ba'ath is also spelled Ba'th or Baath and means "rebirth," "resurrection," "restoration," or "renaissance" (reddyah). Its motto — "Unity, Liberty, Socialism" (wahda, hurriya, ishtirakiya) — refers to Arab unity, and freedom from non-Arab control and interference. Its ideology of ba'athism
Ba'athism
Ba'athism is an Arab nationalist ideology that promotes the development and creation of an Arab nation through the leadership of a vanguard party over a progressive revolutionary state. The ideology is officially based on the theories of Zaki al-Arsuzi , Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar...
is notably different in origins and practice from classical Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
and is similar in outlook to 'third-worldism
Third-worldism
Third-worldism is a tendency within left-wing political thought to regard the division between developed countries, and developing countries or "Third World" nations against the background of primary political importance...
'.
The party was founded in 1947 by the Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
n intellectuals Michel Aflaq
Michel Aflaq
Michel Aflaq was a Syrian philosopher, who is credited with being the ideological founder of ba'athism, a hybrid of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism.-Early life:...
and Salah al-Din al-Bitar
Salah al-Din al-Bitar
Salah ad-Din al-Bitar , was a Syrian politician who, with Michel Aflaq, founded the Arab Ba'th Party in the early 1940s. During their student days in Paris in the early 1930s, the two worked together to formulate a doctrine that combined aspects of nationalism and socialism...
. It has established branches in different Arab countries, although it has only ever held power in Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
and Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
. In Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
it has had a monopoly on political power since the party's 1963 coup. Ba'athists also seized power in Iraq in 1963, but were deposed some months later. They returned to power in a 1968 coup and remained the sole party of government until the 2003 Iraq invasion. Since the invasion the party has been banned in Iraq.
In 1966 a coup d'état
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
by the military against the historical leadership of Aflaq and Bitar led the Syrian and Iraqi parties to split into rival organizations — the Qotri (or regionalist) Syria-based party and the Qawmi (or nationalist) Iraq-based party. Both retained the Ba'ath name and parallel structures within the Arab world, but hostilities between them grew to the point that the Syrian Ba'ath regime became the only Arab government to support Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
(a non-Arabic nation) against Iraq during the First Persian Gulf War.
Ideology
The motto "Unity, Liberty, Socialism" (ArabicArabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
وحدة، حرية، اشتراكية) was inspired by the French Jacobin
Jacobin (politics)
A Jacobin , in the context of the French Revolution, was a member of the Jacobin Club, a revolutionary far-left political movement. The Jacobin Club was the most famous political club of the French Revolution. So called from the Dominican convent where they originally met, in the Rue St. Jacques ,...
political doctrine linking national unity and social equity, Unity refers to Arab unity, or Pan-Arabism
Pan-Arabism
Pan-Arabism is an ideology espousing the unification--or, sometimes, close cooperation and solidarity against perceived enemies of the Arabs--of the countries of the Arab world, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Sea. It is closely connected to Arab nationalism, which asserts that the Arabs...
; liberty emphasizes being free from foreign control and interference (self-determination); and socialism refers to Arab socialism
Arab socialism
Arab socialism is a political ideology based on an amalgamation of Pan-Arabism and socialism. Arab socialism is distinct from the much broader tradition of socialist thought in the Arab world, which predates Arab socialism by as much as fifty years...
, rather than to European socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
or communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
. The idea that the national freedom and glory of the Arab Nation had been destroyed by Ottoman
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
and Western imperialism was expounded on in Michel Aflaq
Michel Aflaq
Michel Aflaq was a Syrian philosopher, who is credited with being the ideological founder of ba'athism, a hybrid of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism.-Early life:...
’s works On the Way of Resurrection
On the Way of Resurrection
On the Way of Resurrection is a political literature book written by Michel Aflaq, one of the founders of Ba'athism. It is a five-volume work that is one of the founding documents of Ba'athism that described the ideology....
and The Battle for One Destiny
The Battle for One Destiny
The Battle for One Destiny is a political theory literature book of 1958 that composes a combined volume of the writings and chiefly editorial articles of Ba'athist leader Michel Aflaq....
. Aflaq is commonly considered today as the father of Ba'athism
Ba'athism
Ba'athism is an Arab nationalist ideology that promotes the development and creation of an Arab nation through the leadership of a vanguard party over a progressive revolutionary state. The ideology is officially based on the theories of Zaki al-Arsuzi , Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar...
.
Arab nationalism had been influenced by 19th Century mainland European thinkers, notably conservative German philosophers such as Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte was a German philosopher. He was one of the founding figures of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, a movement that developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Kant...
of the Königsberg University Kantian school and French “Positivists” such as Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte , better known as Auguste Comte , was a French philosopher, a founder of the discipline of sociology and of the doctrine of positivism...
and professor Ernest Renan
Ernest Renan
Ernest Renan was a French expert of Middle East ancient languages and civilizations, philosopher and writer, devoted to his native province of Brittany...
of the Collège de France
Collège de France
The Collège de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Écoles...
in Paris. Tellingly, Ba'ath party co-founders Aflaq and Salah al-Bitar both studied at the Sorbonne in the early 1930s, at a time when Positivism
Positivism
Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....
was still the dominant ideology amongst France’s academic elite.
The “Kulturnation” concept of Johann Gottfried Herder
Johann Gottfried Herder
Johann Gottfried von Herder was a German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic. He is associated with the periods of Enlightenment, Sturm und Drang, and Weimar Classicism.-Biography:...
and the Grimm Brothers had a certain impact. Kulturnation defines a nationality more by a common cultural tradition and popular folklore than by national, political or religious boundaries and was considered by some as being more suitable for the German, Arab or Ottoman and Turkic countries.
Germany was seen as an anti-colonial power and friend of the Arab world; cultural and economic exchange and infrastructure projects such as the Baghdad Railway
Baghdad Railway
The Baghdad Railway , was built from 1903 to 1940 to connect Berlin with the Ottoman Empire city of Baghdad with a line through modern-day Turkey, Syria, and Iraq....
supported that impression. According to Paul Berman
Paul Berman
Paul Berman is an American writer. His articles have been published in numerous periodicals, such as: The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review and Slate...
, one of the early Arab nationalist thinkers Sati' al-Husri
Sati' al-Husri
Sāti` al-Husrī was an Ottoman and Syrian writer, educationalist and an influential Arab nationalist thinker in the 20th century.-Early life:...
was influenced by Fichte, a German philosopher famous for his conception of the nation state and his influence on the German unification movement.
The Ba'ath party also had a significant number of Christian Arabs among its founding members. For them, most prominently Aflaq, a resolutely nationalist and secular political framework was a suitable way to evade faith-based Islamic orientation and the minority status it would give non-Muslims and to get full acknowledgment as citizens. Also, during General Rashid Ali al-Gaylani's short-lived anti-British military coup in 1941, Iraq-based Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
nationalists (Sunni Muslims as well as Chaldean Christians
Chaldean Christians
Chaldean Christians are ethnic Assyrian adherents of the Chaldean Catholic Church, most of whom entered communion with the Catholic Church from the Church of the East, which was already Catholic, but most wanted to stray away from the Catholic Church, causing the split in the 17th and 18th...
) asked the Nazi German government to support them against British colonial rule.
Structure
The Ba'ath Party was created as a cell-basedClandestine cell system
A clandestine cell structure is a method for organizing a group of people in such a way that it can more effectively resist penetration by an opposing organization. Depending on the group's philosophy, its operational area, the communications technologies available, and the nature of the mission,...
organization, with an emphasis on withstanding government repression and infiltration. Hierarchical lines of command ran from top to bottom, and members were forbidden to initiate contacts between groups on the same level of organization; all contacts had to pass through a higher command level. This made the party somewhat unwieldy, but helped prevent the formation of factions and cordoned off members from each other, making the party very difficult to infiltrate, as even members would not know the identity of many other Ba'athists. As the U.S. and its allies discovered in Iraq in 2003, the cell structure has also made the Party highly resilient as an armed resistance organization.
A peculiarity stemming from its Arab unity ideology is the fact that it has always been intended to operate on a pan-Arab level, joined together by a supreme National Command, which is to serve as a party leadership for branches throughout the Arab world
Arab world
The Arab world refers to Arabic-speaking states, territories and populations in North Africa, Western Asia and elsewhere.The standard definition of the Arab world comprises the 22 states and territories of the Arab League stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the...
.
From its lowest organizational level, the cell, to the highest, the National Command, the party is structured as follows:
- The Party Cell or Circle, composed of three to seven members, constitutes the basic organisational unit of the Ba'ath Party. There are two sorts of Cells: Member Cells and Supporter Cells. The latter consist of candidate members, who are being gradually introduced into Party work without being allowed membership privileges or knowledge of the party apparatus; at the same time, they are expected to follow all orders passed down to them by the full member that acts as the contact for their Cell. This serves both to prevent infiltration and to train and screen Party cadres. Cells functioned at the neighborhood, workplace or village level, where members would meet to discuss and execute party directives introduced from above.
- A Party Division comprises two to seven Cells, controlled by a Division Commander. Such Ba'athist groups occur throughout the bureaucracy and the military, where they function as the Party’s watchdog, an effective form of covert surveillance within a public administration.
- A Party Section, which comprises two to five Divisions, functions at the level of a large city quarter, a town, or a rural district.
- The Branch comes above the Sections; it comprises at least two sections, and operates at the provincial level and also, at least in Syria, with one Branch each in the country's four universities.
- The Regional Congress, which combines all the branches, was set up to elect the Regional Command as the core of the Party leadership and top decision-making mechanism, even if this later changed to an appointive procedure in Syria. A "Region" (quṭr), in Ba'athist parlance, is an Arab state, such as Syria or Iraq or Lebanon, reflecting the Party's refusal to acknowledge them as nation-states.
- The National Command of the Ba'ath Party ranked over the Regional Commands. Until the 1960s, it formed the highest policy-making and coordinating council for the Ba'ath movement throughout the Arab world at large in both theory and practice. However, from 1966, there has existed two rival National Commands for the Ba'ath Party, both largely ceremonial, after the Iraqi and Syrian Regional Commands entered into conflict and set up puppet National Commands in order to further their rival claims to represent the original party.
Founding and early years
The Ba'ath Party was founded in 1947 by Michel AflaqMichel Aflaq
Michel Aflaq was a Syrian philosopher, who is credited with being the ideological founder of ba'athism, a hybrid of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism.-Early life:...
, a Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
, and Salah al-Din al-Bitar
Salah al-Din al-Bitar
Salah ad-Din al-Bitar , was a Syrian politician who, with Michel Aflaq, founded the Arab Ba'th Party in the early 1940s. During their student days in Paris in the early 1930s, the two worked together to formulate a doctrine that combined aspects of nationalism and socialism...
, a Sunni muslim. At the very beginning the party worked as a vehicle for the national liberation movement
Wars of national liberation
In Marxist terminology, wars of national liberation or national liberation revolutions are conflicts fought by oppressed nationalities against imperial powers to establish separate sovereign states for the subjugated nationality. From a Western point of view, these same wars are called insurgencies...
against French rule of Syria and Lebanon
French Mandate of Syria and Lebanon
Officially the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon was a League of Nations mandate founded after the First World War and the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire...
. Soon after the Ba'ath Party established itself as a critic of what they considered the ideological inefficiencies of old Syrian nationalism
Syrian nationalism
Syrian nationalism refers to the nationalism of Syria, or the Fertile Crescent as a cultural or political entity. It should not be confused with the Arab nationalism that is the official state doctrine of the Syrian Arab Republic's ruling Baath Party, nor should it be assumed that Syrian...
. Following the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
pan-Arab nationalist
Pan-Arabism
Pan-Arabism is an ideology espousing the unification--or, sometimes, close cooperation and solidarity against perceived enemies of the Arabs--of the countries of the Arab world, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Sea. It is closely connected to Arab nationalism, which asserts that the Arabs...
thinking became popular amongst Arabs. For Aflaq, who was the 'father of ba'athist
Ba'athism
Ba'athism is an Arab nationalist ideology that promotes the development and creation of an Arab nation through the leadership of a vanguard party over a progressive revolutionary state. The ideology is officially based on the theories of Zaki al-Arsuzi , Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar...
ideology and a Christian, ba'athism drew heavily from Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
and its values. For example, he wrote of the time of Muhammed, the Prophet
Prophet
In religion, a prophet, from the Greek word προφήτης profitis meaning "foreteller", is an individual who is claimed to have been contacted by the supernatural or the divine, and serves as an intermediary with humanity, delivering this newfound knowledge from the supernatural entity to other people...
, as the ideal Arab community, and claimed the Arabs had "fallen" under the rules of the Ottomans
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
and the Europeans. The name Ba'ath and the party's programme called for Arab restoration through modernisation. The most important influence which Alfaq and al-Bitar brought back from Europe was socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
, albeit a rather unique socialism with Arab characteristics
Arab socialism
Arab socialism is a political ideology based on an amalgamation of Pan-Arabism and socialism. Arab socialism is distinct from the much broader tradition of socialist thought in the Arab world, which predates Arab socialism by as much as fifty years...
.
The party was formally established at its founding congress under the name Arab Ba'ath Party. According to the congress the party was "nationalist, populist, socialist, and revolutionary" and believed in the "unity and freedom of the Arab nation
Arab world
The Arab world refers to Arabic-speaking states, territories and populations in North Africa, Western Asia and elsewhere.The standard definition of the Arab world comprises the 22 states and territories of the Arab League stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the...
within its homeland." The party opposed the theory of class conflict
Class conflict
Class conflict is the tension or antagonism which exists in society due to competing socioeconomic interests between people of different classes....
, but supported the nationalisation of major industries, the unionisation of workers, land reform and supported private inheritance and private property rights to some degree. At first the party had about a hundred members, but that increased to 4,500 by the early 1950s. The majority of party members were either educated teachers or students. The Ba'ath Party merged with the Arab Socialist Party (ASP) led by Akram al-Hawrani
Akram al-Hawrani
Akram al-Hawrani |transcribe]]d Hourani or Hurani) , was a Syrian politician who played a prominent role in the formation of a widespread populist, nationalist movement in Syria and in the rise of the Ba'th Party...
to establish the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party in Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...
following Adib Shishakli
Adib Shishakli
Adib ibn Hasan Shishakli was a Syrian military leader and President of Syria .Born into a notable Syrian-Kurdish family of Hama, Shishakli served with the French Army during the mandate era...
's rise to power. The merger gave the ba'ath movement its first peasant constituency, the ASP's stronghold was Hama
Hama
Hama is a city on the banks of the Orontes River in west-central Syria north of Damascus. It is the provincial capital of the Hama Governorate. Hama is the fourth-largest city in Syria—behind Aleppo, Damascus, and Homs—with a population of 696,863...
. Most ASP member did not adhere to the merger and remained "passionately loyal to Hawrani's person." The merger was so weak that the ASP's infrastructure still remained intact. However, with the rise of Gamal Abdel Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein was the second President of Egypt from 1956 until his death. A colonel in the Egyptian army, Nasser led the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 along with Muhammad Naguib, the first president, which overthrew the monarchy of Egypt and Sudan, and heralded a new period of...
in Egypt and Arab nationalism, the Ba'ath Party grew rapidly. In 1955, the party decided to support Nasser and his pan-Arab policies.
Elections, the UAR and factionalism
Syrian politics took a dramatic turn in 1954 when the military regime of Adib al-Shishakli was overthrown and the democratic system restored. The Ba'ath, now a large and popular organisation, won 15 out of 142 seats in parliament in the Syrian electionSyrian parliamentary election, 1954
Parliamentary elections were held in Syria on 24 and 25 September 1954, with a second round held between 4 and 5 October. Independent candidates emerged as the largest bloc in Parliament, whilst the People's Party became the largest single party, with 30 seats. The Muslim Brotherhood did not...
that year. While sounding insignificant, the Ba'ath Party was the second largest party in parliament – the majority of the new members of parliament were independents. The Ba'ath Party was one of the most organised parties in parliament, only being eclipsed by the Syrian Communist Party
Syrian Communist Party
The Syrian Communist Party was a political party in Syria, founded in 1944. It became a member of the National Progressive Front in 1972...
(SCP) and the People's Party
People's Party (Syria)
People's Party was a Syrian political party that was active during the 1950s and the early 1960s. The party was established in 1948 as the main opposition party to the National Party...
. Aside from the SCP, the Ba'ath Party was the only party able to organise mass protests amongst workers. The party was supported by the intelligentsia
Intelligentsia
The intelligentsia is a social class of people engaged in complex, mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them...
, and aroused support with the party's pro-Egyptian and anti-imperialist stance coupled with support for social reform. The Ba'ath was one of these new formations, but faced considerable competition from ideological enemies, notably the Syrian Social Nationalist Party
Syrian Social Nationalist Party
The Syrian Social Nationalist Party , is a secular nationalist political party in Lebanon and Syria. It advocates the establishment of a Syrian nation state spanning the Fertile Crescent, including present day Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, the Palestinian Territories, Israel, Cyprus, Kuwait,...
(SSNP), which supported the establishment of a Greater Syria
Greater Syria
Greater Syria , also known simply as Syria, is a term that denotes a region in the Near East bordering the Eastern Mediterranean Sea or the Levant....
, and the Ba'ath Party's main adversary, the SCP, whose support for class struggle and internationalism was also anathema to the Ba'ath. In addition to the parliamentary level, all these parties as well as Islamists competed in street-level activity and sought to recruit support among the military.
The assassination of Ba'athist colonel Adnan al-Malki
Adnan al-Malki
Adnan al-Malki was a Syrian Army officer and political figure in the mid-20th century. He served as the deputy-chief of staff of the army and was one of the most powerful figures in the army and in national politics until his assassination in 1955.-Political career:Malki was a member of the Baath...
by a member of the SSNP in April 1955 allowed the Ba'ath Party and its allies to launch a crackdown on them, thus eliminating one rival. Two years later, in 1957, the Ba'ath Party entered into a partnership with the SCP in order to weaken the power of Syria's conservative parties. However, by the end of 1957, the SCP was able to weaken the Ba'ath Party to such an extent that the Ba'ath Party drafted a bill in December that very same year calling for a union with Egypt, a move that proved to be very popular. The Ba'ath Party was banned in the United Arab Republic
United Arab Republic
The United Arab Republic , often abbreviated as the U.A.R., was a sovereign union between Egypt and Syria. The union began in 1958 and existed until 1961, when Syria seceded from the union. Egypt continued to be known officially as the "United Arab Republic" until 1971. The President was Gamal...
(UAR), the union between Egypt and Syria, due to Gamal Abdel Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein was the second President of Egypt from 1956 until his death. A colonel in the Egyptian army, Nasser led the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 along with Muhammad Naguib, the first president, which overthrew the monarchy of Egypt and Sudan, and heralded a new period of...
's hostility to parties not his own. The Ba'ath leadership which dissolved the party in 1958, gambled that the illegalisation of certain parties would hurt the SCP more than it would the Ba'ath. Meanwhile, a small group of Syrian Ba'athist officers stationed in Egypt were observing with alarm the party’s poor position and the increasing fragility of the union. They decided to form a secret military committee: its initial members were Lieutenant-Colonel Muhammad Umran, Major Salah Jadid
Salah Jadid
Salah Jadid was a Syrian general and political figure in the Baath Party, and the country's de facto leader from 1966 until 1970.- Rise to power :...
and Captain Hafiz al-Assad. At first, the committee did not play any political role in the ba'athist movement, there are even rumours that prominent ba'athist did not even know of the military committee's existence, but with the UAR's dissolution, it rose to prominence within the party.
A military coup in Damascus
Damascus
Damascus , commonly known in Syria as Al Sham , and as the City of Jasmine , is the capital and the second largest city of Syria after Aleppo, both are part of the country's 14 governorates. In addition to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Damascus is a major...
in 1961 brought the UAR to an end. Sixteen prominent politicians signed a statement supporting the coup, among them al-Hawrani and Salah al-Din al-Bitar
Salah al-Din al-Bitar
Salah ad-Din al-Bitar , was a Syrian politician who, with Michel Aflaq, founded the Arab Ba'th Party in the early 1940s. During their student days in Paris in the early 1930s, the two worked together to formulate a doctrine that combined aspects of nationalism and socialism...
(although the latter soon retracted his signature). Following the UAR's dissolution, the Ba'ath Party was reestablished at the 1962 congress. The Ba'ath Party managed to win only a handful of seats during 1961 parliamentary election
Syrian parliamentary election, 1961
The Syrian parliamentary elections of 1961 were the first free democratic elections held in Syria after seceding from the United Arab Republic. The election was held on 1—2 December 1961.-Preparations:...
. The secession from the UAR was a time of crisis for the party, several groupings left the party, most notably al-Hawrani who formally resigned on 20 June 1962 and reestablished the Arab Socialist Party (ASP). However, al-Hawrani's popular appeal had weakened over the years, and the ASP's only electoral stronghold was the Hama Governorate
Hama Governorate
Hama is one of the fourteen governorates of Syria. It is situated in western-central Syria. Its area depends of sources. It varies from 8,844 km² to 8,883 km². Governorate has a population of 1,593,000...
.
The Ba'ath coup (1963)
That same year, the Syrian party’s military committee succeeded in persuading Nasserist and independent officers to make common cause with it, and they successfully carried out a military coup on 8 March. A National Revolutionary Command Council took control and assigned itself legislative power; it appointed Salah al-Din al-Bitar as head of a "national front" government. The Ba'ath participated in this government along with the Arab Nationalist Movement, the United Arab Front and the Socialist Unity Movement.As historian Hanna Batatu
Hanna Batatu
Hanna Batatu was a Palestinian American Marxist historian specialising in the history of Iraq and the modern Arab east. His work on Iraq is widely considered the pre-eminent study of modern Iraqi history.Born in Jerusalem in 1926, Hanna Batatu emigrated to the United States in 1948, the year of...
notes, this took place without the fundamental disagreement over immediate or "considered" reunification having been resolved. The Ba'ath moved to consolidate its power within the new regime, purging Nasserist officers in April. Subsequent disturbances led to the fall of the al-Bitar government, and in the aftermath of Jasim Alwan’s failed Nasserist coup in July, the Ba'ath monopolized power.
Before the schism: (1963–1966)
Early years and the 14 July Revolution
The party can trace its origins back to the official founding congress of the international Ba'ath Party in Damascus in 1947. At the congress two Iraqis, Abd ar Rahman ad Damin and Abd al Khaliq al Khudayri, attended and became members of the party. Upon their return to Baghdad, they initiated the Iraqi Ba'athist movement. Damin became the movement's leader.Sa'dun Hamadi, a Shia muslim, and Fuad al-Rikabi, an Iraqi engineer and a Shia muslim, founded the Ba'ath Party's Iraqi cell in 1951 as an Arab nationalist party vague in its socialist orientation
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
. al-Rikabi, expelled from the party in 1961 for being a nasserist, was a follower of Michel Aflaq
Michel Aflaq
Michel Aflaq was a Syrian philosopher, who is credited with being the ideological founder of ba'athism, a hybrid of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism.-Early life:...
, the founder of Ba'athism
Ba'athism
Ba'athism is an Arab nationalist ideology that promotes the development and creation of an Arab nation through the leadership of a vanguard party over a progressive revolutionary state. The ideology is officially based on the theories of Zaki al-Arsuzi , Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar...
. During the party's early hey-days members not only discussed topics regarding Arab nationalism, but also the social inequalities that had grown out of the British "Tribal Disputes Regulation" and the Iragi parliament's Law 28 of 1932, "Governing the Rights and Duties of Cultivators". By 1953 the party, led by al-Rikabi, was engaged in subversive activities against the government.
The party initially consisted of a majority of shia muslims, as al-Rikabi recruited supporters mainly from his friends and family, but would slowly evolve into becoming sunni dominated. The Ba'ath Party, and other party's of pan-Arab orientation, had increasing difficulties in increasing Shi'ite membership within the party organisation. Most shi'ites saw pan-Arab thought as a largely sunni project since the majority of muslims in the Arab world
Arab world
The Arab world refers to Arabic-speaking states, territories and populations in North Africa, Western Asia and elsewhere.The standard definition of the Arab world comprises the 22 states and territories of the Arab League stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the...
where sunnis, because of this the majority of shi'ites joined the Iraqi Communist Party
Iraqi Communist Party
Since its foundation in 1934, the Iraqi Communist Party has dominated the left in Iraqi politics. It played a fundamental role in shaping the political history of Iraq between its foundation and the 1970s. The Party was involved in many of the most important national uprisings and demonstrations...
instead of the Ba'ath Party or other party's of nationalist orientation. In the mid-1950 eight people out of 17-manned Ba'ath leadership were Shia. According to Talib Shabib
Talib Shabib
Talib El-Shibib was an Iraqi politician. Born in Babylon, he studied engineering at Imperial College in London.Shibib was elected to the leadership of Ba'ath party, and was one of a triumvirate who planned the later coup against President Abdul Karim Qassim. He became foreign minister under the...
, the Ba'ath foreign minister in the Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr
Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr
General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr , was the fourth President of Iraq from 1968 to 1979.-Military career:...
government, the secterian background of the leading Ba'ath members was considered of little importance because the majority of Ba'athist did not know each other's secterian denominations. Of the members in the Regional Command, the Ba'ath Party leadership, 54 percent of them were considered Shia muslims between 1952 an 1963. This majority could be largely explained by al-Rikabi's effective recruitment drive in Shi'i areas. Between 1963 and 1970, after al-Rikabi's resignation, members who where Shia in the Regional Command had dropped to 14 percent, however, out of the three inner-factions of the Ba'ath Party, two out of three factional leaders were Shia.
By the end of 1951 the party had at least 50 members. With the collapse of the pan-Arabist state, the United Arab Republic
United Arab Republic
The United Arab Republic , often abbreviated as the U.A.R., was a sovereign union between Egypt and Syria. The union began in 1958 and existed until 1961, when Syria seceded from the union. Egypt continued to be known officially as the "United Arab Republic" until 1971. The President was Gamal...
(AUR), several leading Ba'ath members, including al-Rikabi, resigned from the party in protest. In 1958, the year of the 14 July Revolution
14 July Revolution
The 14 July Revolution was a coup which took place on 14 July 1958 in Iraq, marking the overthrow of the Hashemite monarchy established by King Faisal I in 1932 under the auspices of the British. In 1958, the coup overthrew King Faisal II, the regent and Crown Prince 'Abd al-Ilah, and Prime...
that overthrew the Hashemite monarchy
Hashemite
Hashemite is the Latinate version of the , transliteration: Hāšimī, and traditionally refers to those belonging to the Banu Hashim, or "clan of Hashim", a clan within the larger Quraish tribe...
, the Ba'ath Party had 300 members nationwide. The leader of the Free Officer movement which overthrew the king, General Abd al-Karim Qasim, supported joining the pan-Arab state, the UAR. Several members of the Free Officer movements were also members of the Ba'ath Party. The Ba'ath Party, considering Gamal Abdel Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein was the second President of Egypt from 1956 until his death. A colonel in the Egyptian army, Nasser led the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 along with Muhammad Naguib, the first president, which overthrew the monarchy of Egypt and Sudan, and heralded a new period of...
, the President of Egypt
President of Egypt
The President of the Arab Republic of Egypt is the head of state of Egypt.Under the Constitution of Egypt, the president is also the supreme commander of the armed forces and head of the executive branch of the Egyptian government....
, the leader of the pan-Arab movement of being the most likeliest leader to succeed, supported Iraq joining the union. Of the sixteen members of Qasim's cabinet, 12 of them were Ba'ath Party members. However, the Ba'ath Party supported Qasim on the grounds that he was join Nasser's UAR.
Qasim's Iraq
Iraqi Communist Party
Since its foundation in 1934, the Iraqi Communist Party has dominated the left in Iraqi politics. It played a fundamental role in shaping the political history of Iraq between its foundation and the 1970s. The Party was involved in many of the most important national uprisings and demonstrations...
, which was opposed to any notion of pan-Arabism. This change in policy was considered as betrayal by pan-Arab organisations, most notably the Ba'ath Party. Later that year, the Ba'ath Party leadership were planning to assassinate Qasim. Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
, the future President of Iraq
President of Iraq
The President of Iraq is the head of state of Iraq and "safeguards the commitment to the Constitution and the preservation of Iraq's independence, sovereignty, unity, the security of its territories in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution." The President is elected by the Council of...
and General Secretary of the Iraqi-based Ba'ath Party, was a leading member of the operation. The choice of Hussein was, according to historian Con Coughlin
Con Coughlin
Con Coughlin is a British journalist and author, currently an editor for the Daily Telegraph.-Early years:He was born in London, England, the son of the Daily Telegraph crime correspondent C.A. Coughlin. The eldest of four children he grew up in Upminster, Essex...
, "hardly surprising". At the time, the Ba'ath Party was more of an ideological experiment then a strong anti-government fighting machine. Also, the majority of its members were either educated professionals or students, Saddam easily fitted the bill to be a member of the operation. Abdul Karim al-Shaikhly, the leader of the operation, asked Hussein to join the operation when one of team members left. The idea of assassinating Qasim may have its origins from Nasser, and there are speculations that some of those who participated in the assassination attempt received training in Damascus, then part of the UAR.
The assassins were to ambush Qasim at Al-Rashid Street on 7 October 1959, one man was to kill those sitting at the back of the car, and the rest killing those sitting in front. During the operaton Hussein started to shot prematurely, which disorganised the whole operation. Qasim's chauffeur was killed, and Qasim himself was hit in the arm and shoulder. The assassins believed they had killed Qasim, and thus quickly retreated to their headquarters. However, Qasim would live to see another day. At the time of the assassination attempt the Ba'ath Party had less than 1,000 members.
Some of the plotters quickly managed to leave the country for Syria, the spiritual home of Ba'athist ideology
Ba'athism
Ba'athism is an Arab nationalist ideology that promotes the development and creation of an Arab nation through the leadership of a vanguard party over a progressive revolutionary state. The ideology is officially based on the theories of Zaki al-Arsuzi , Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar...
. Hussein was given full-membership in the party by Michel Aflaq
Michel Aflaq
Michel Aflaq was a Syrian philosopher, who is credited with being the ideological founder of ba'athism, a hybrid of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism.-Early life:...
during his stay. Some members of the operation were arrested and taken into custody
Custody
Custody may refer to:* Legal custody* Child custody, a description of the legal relationship between a parent and child* Police custody or detention, a lawful holding of a person by removing their freedom of liberty...
by the Iraqi government. At the show trial
Show trial
The term show trial is a pejorative description of a type of highly public trial in which there is a strong connotation that the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal to present the accusation and the verdict to the public as...
, six of the defendants were given the death sentence
Death Sentence
Death Sentence is a short story by the American science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the November 1943 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and reprinted in the 1972 collection The Early Asimov.-Plot summary:...
, the sentences were not carried out for unknown reasons. Aflaq, the leader of the Ba'athist movement, organised the expulsion of leading Iraqi Ba'athist members, such as Fuad al-Rikabi, on the grounds that the party should not have initiated the assassination attempt on Qasim's life. At the same time, Aflaq managed to secure seats in the Iraqi Ba'ath leadership for his supporters, one them being Hussein.
Qasim was finally overthrowned in the February 1963 Iraqi coup d'état
February 1963 Iraqi coup d'état
The February 1963 Iraqi coup d'état was a February 8, 1963 armed military coup by the Ba'ath Party's Iraqi wing which overthrew the regime of the Prime Minister of Iraq, Brigadier General Abd al-Karim Qasim. General Ahmed Hasan al-Bakr became the new Prime Minister and Colonel Abdul Salam Arif...
, a coup masterminded by the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
(CIA) and followed through by Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr
Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr
General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr , was the fourth President of Iraq from 1968 to 1979.-Military career:...
. Several army units had refused to mobilise to support the Ba'athist coup, which led the fighting to drag on for two days; the death toll ranges from a low 1,500 to 5,000 people dead. Qasim was captured, and killed by a firing squad one hour after his capture. To ensure the Iraqi public, the plotters broadcasted a film of Qasim's dead body being mutilated.
In power (1963)
Abdul Salam ArifAbdul Salam Arif
Abdul Salam Mohammed Arif Aljumaily was President of Iraq from 1963 till his death. He played a leading role in the coup in which the Hashemite monarchy was overthrown on July 14, 1958.-1958 revolution and conflict with Qasim:...
became the President
President of Iraq
The President of Iraq is the head of state of Iraq and "safeguards the commitment to the Constitution and the preservation of Iraq's independence, sovereignty, unity, the security of its territories in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution." The President is elected by the Council of...
, Hussein al-Bakr became the Prime Minister
Prime Minister of Iraq
The Prime Minister of Iraq is Iraq's head of government. Prime Minister was originally an appointed office, subsidiary to the head of state, and the nominal leader of the Iraqi parliament. Under the newly adopted constitution the Prime Minister is to be the country's active executive authority...
and Ali Salih al-Sadi, the General Secretary of the Regional Command of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, became Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior
Ministry of Interior (Iraq)
The Ministry of Interior of Iraq handles policing and border control in Iraq. The MoI consists of several elements, including the Iraqi Police, Highway Patrol, Traffic Department, Emergency Response Unit, Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit, and Department of Border Enforcement...
, a post he lost on 11 May. Despite not being Prime Minister, al-Sadi had effective control over the Iraqi Ba'at Party, seven out of nine members supported his leadership in the party's Regional Command.
In the aftermath of the successful coup, the National Guard, initiated an "orgy of violence" against all communist-elements and some left-wing forces
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
. The terror reign in Baghdad led to the establishment of several interrogation chambers, and several private houses and public facilities were requisitioned by the government, an entire section of Kifah Street was used by the National Guard. Many of the victims were either innocent, or victims of personal vendettas. The most notorius torture chamber was located at the Palace of the End, a name it was given since the royal family was killed their in 1958. Nadhim Kazzer, the future Director of the Directorate of General Security
Directorate of General Security
The Directorate of General Security also called Internal State Security, secret police or some variation thereof was a domestic Iraqi intelligence agency.-History:...
, was responsible for the acts committed their. There are some who consider this purge a forerunner for similar anti-leftist purges around the worst, most notably the one in Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
under Augusto Pinochet
Augusto Pinochet
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, more commonly known as Augusto Pinochet , was a Chilean army general and dictator who assumed power in a coup d'état on 11 September 1973...
's rule.
The reign of terror did not last long however, and the party was ousted from government in November 1963, due to factionalism. The big question within the Ba'ath Party at the time was if the party would follow its ideological goal of establishing a union with Syria, or with both Syria and Egypt, or not at all. al-Sadi supported the creation of a union with Syria, which was under the rule of the Ba'ath Party, while the more conservative military wing suppored Qasim's "Iraq first policy". Factionalism, coupled with the ill-disciplined behaviour of the National Guard, led the military wing initiate a coup of the party's leadership; al-Sadi was forced into exile in Spain. al-Bakr, in an attempt to save the party, called for a meeting of the National Command of the Ba'ath Party. The convened National Command did not, however, solve the party's problem, quite to the contrary, it deepened it even more. It did not help that Aflaq, who saw himself as the leader of the pan-Arab ba'athist movement, declared his wishes to take political control over the Iraqi Ba'ath Party. The "Iraq first" wing were outraged, and coupled with President Arif's lose of patience with the Ba'ath, the Ba'ath Party was ousted from government on 18 November 1963. The 12 Ba'ath members of government were forced to resign, and the National Guard was dissolved only to be replaced by the Republican Guard. There are reasons to believe that Aflaq supported Arif's coup against the Ba'athist government; he supported the coup so he could weakened al-Sadi's position within the party, and strengthen his own.
Union talks with Syria
At the time of al-Sadi's removal from office as Interior Minister, factionalism and discontent was growing within the party; al-Sadi and Mundur al-Windawi, the leader of the Ba'ath Party's National Guard, led the civilian wing, while President Arif led the military wing and Talib ShabibTalib Shabib
Talib El-Shibib was an Iraqi politician. Born in Babylon, he studied engineering at Imperial College in London.Shibib was elected to the leadership of Ba'ath party, and was one of a triumvirate who planned the later coup against President Abdul Karim Qassim. He became foreign minister under the...
led the pro-Aflaq wing. A bigger schism was on the way in the international Ba'athist movement, four major factions were under creation; the Old Guard, led by Aflaq, a civilian alliance between the General Secretaries of the Regional Commands of both Syria and Iraq led by Hammud al-Shufi and al-Sadi respectively, the Syrian Ba'ath Military Committee represented by Salah Jadid
Salah Jadid
Salah Jadid was a Syrian general and political figure in the Baath Party, and the country's de facto leader from 1966 until 1970.- Rise to power :...
, Muhammad Umran, Hafiz al-Assad, Salim Hatum, Amin al-Hafiz et al. and the Iraqi military wing, which supported Arif's presidency, represented by al-Bakr, Salih Mahdi Ammash, Tahir Yahya
Tahir Yahya
Tahir Yahya was Prime Minister of Iraq twice, from 1963 to 1965 and a short term in 1967-1968. He was educated at the Baghdad Military College and the Staff College.Commander of 20th Brigade 1955...
and Hardan Tikriti. The military wings in both Syria and Iraq opposed creating a pan-Arab state, both al-Shufi and al-Sadi supported the union and Aflaq, while officially supporting it, opposed it because he was afraid that al-Sadi would become a potential challenger to his position as General Secretary of the National Command of the Ba'ath Party, the leader of the international Ba'athist movement.
On the transnational level, both Syria and Iraq, were under Ba'athist rule in 1963. When President Arif visited Syria on a state visit
State visit
A state visit is a formal visit by a foreign head of state to another nation, at the invitation of that nation's head of state. State visits are the highest form of diplomatic contact between two nations, and are marked by ceremonial pomp and diplomatic protocol. In parliamentary democracies, heads...
, Sami al-Jundi, a Syrian cabinet minister, proposed the creation of a bilateral union between the two countries. Both Arif and Amin al-Hafiz, the President of Syria, supported the idea of a bilateral union, al-Jundi was given the task of setting up a committee to begin work on establishing the union. al-Sadi was elected as the Iraq's chief representative in the committee by al-Jundi, in a bid to strengthen al-Sadi's position within the Ba'ath Party. Work on the union continued with the signing of the Military Unity Charter which established the Higher Military Council, an organ which oversaw both the integration and control over the Syrian and Iraqi military. Ammash, the Iraqi Minister of Defense
Ministry of Defence (Iraq)
The Ministry of Defence is the Iraq government agency responsible for Defence of Iraq. It is also involved with internal security.- Authority :...
, became the Chairman of the Higher Military Council. The unified headquarter was placed in Syria. The establishment of the military union was proven on 20 October 1963 when Syrian soldiers were revealed to be fighting alongside the Iraqi military in Iraqi Kurdistan
Iraqi Kurdistan
Iraqi Kurdistan or Kurdistan Region is an autonomous region of Iraq. It borders Iran to the east, Turkey to the north, Syria to the west and the rest of Iraq to the south. The regional capital is Arbil, known in Kurdish as Hewlêr...
. At this stage, both Iraqi and Syrian ba'athist feared excluding Gamal Abdel Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein was the second President of Egypt from 1956 until his death. A colonel in the Egyptian army, Nasser led the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 along with Muhammad Naguib, the first president, which overthrew the monarchy of Egypt and Sudan, and heralded a new period of...
from the union talks, as Nasser, the unofficial leader of the pan-Arab movement, had a large following.
The fall of al-Bakr's first government was heavily criticised by the Syria state and its Ba'ath Party at first, before evolving into a more soft tone when they found out that some members of the cabinet were still Ba'ath Party members. This milder tone did not last long when, as the remaining Ba'athist were slowly removed from office. The Syrian Revolutionary Command Council responded by abrogating the Military Unity Charter on 26 April 1964, this action gave the death blow to Iraq's and Syria's the bilateral unification process.
The 1966 split
The challenges of building a Ba'athist state led to considerable ideological discussion and internal struggle within the party. The Iraqi branch was increasingly dominated by Ali Salih al-Sadi, who surprisingly declared himself a Marxist, surprising because of his previously anti-communist stance, in the summer of 1963. He gained support in this from Syrian regional secretary Hamoud el Choufi, the General Secretary of the Syrian Regional Command, Yasin al-Hafiz, one of the party’s few ideological theorists, and some members of the secret military committee supported al-Sadi's position.The far-left tendency gained control at the party’s Sixth National Congress of 1963, where hardliners from the dominant Syrian and Iraqi regional parties joined forces to impose a hard left line, calling for "socialist planning", "collective farms run by peasants", "workers' democratic control of the means of production", a party based on workers and peasants, and other demands reflecting a certain emulation of Soviet-style socialism. In a coded attack on Michel Aflaq
Michel Aflaq
Michel Aflaq was a Syrian philosopher, who is credited with being the ideological founder of ba'athism, a hybrid of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism.-Early life:...
, the congress also condemned "ideological notability" within the party. Aflaq, bitterly angry at this transformation of his party, retained a nominal leadership role, but the National Command as a whole came under the control of the radicals.
In 1963 the Ba'ath Party seized power, from then on the Ba'ath functioned as the only officially recognized Syrian political party, but factionalism and splintering within the party led to a succession of governments and new constitutions. On 23 February 1966, a bloody coup d'état led by left-wing extremists, a radical Ba'athist faction headed by Chief of Staff Salah Jadid
Salah Jadid
Salah Jadid was a Syrian general and political figure in the Baath Party, and the country's de facto leader from 1966 until 1970.- Rise to power :...
, overthrew the Syrian Government. The coup sprung out of factional rivalry between Jadid's "regionalist" (qutri) camp of the Ba'ath Party, which promoted ambitions for a Greater Syria
Greater Syria
Greater Syria , also known simply as Syria, is a term that denotes a region in the Near East bordering the Eastern Mediterranean Sea or the Levant....
and the more traditionally pan-Arab, in power faction, called the "nationalist" (qawmi) faction. Jadid's supporters were also seen as more radically left-wing. Many of Jadid's opponents managed to make their escape and flee to Beirut
Beirut
Beirut is the capital and largest city of Lebanon, with a population ranging from 1 million to more than 2 million . Located on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanon's Mediterranean coastline, it serves as the country's largest and main seaport, and also forms the Beirut Metropolitan...
. The Ba'ath wing led by Jadid took power, and set the party out on a more radical line. Although they had not been supporters of the victorious far-left line at the Sixth Party Congress, they had now moved to adopt its positions and displaced the more moderate wing in power, purging from the party its original founders, Aflaq and al-Bitar.
During the factional struggles within Syria Ba'ath Party organisation in the 1960s, three factions emerged from the party had emerged. A pro-Nasser group split from the party at the breakup of union with Egypt in 1961, and later became the Socialist Unionists. This group later splintered several times, but one branch of the movement was coopted by the Ba'ath into the National Progressive Front
National Progressive Front
The National Progressive Front , established in 1972, is a coalition of political parties in Syria that support the socialist and Arab nationalist orientation of the government and accept the "leading role in society" of the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party, .The Front was established by Syrian...
. The far-left line of Yasin al-Hafiz, which had impressed Marxist influences on the party in 1963, broke off the following year to form what later became the Arab Revolutionary Workers Party
Arab Revolutionary Workers Party
The Arab Revolutionary Workers Party is a political party, active in Syria and Iraq. As of 2008 the general secretary of the party is Abdul Hafiz Hafiz. As of 2011, the chairman of the party is Tariq Abu al Hassan....
, while Jadid's and Atassi's wing of the organization reunited as the clandestine Arab Socialist Democratic Ba'ath Party. Both the latter organizations in 1980 joined an opposition coalition called the National Democratic Gathering.
The Damascus-based Ba'ath and the Baghdad-based Ba'ath were by now two separate parties, each maintaining that it was the genuine party and electing a National Command to take charge of the party across the Arab world. However, in Syria, the Regional Command was the real centre of party power, and the membership of the National Command was a largely honorary position, often the destination of figures being eased out of the leadership.
Transition, marxism and Assad-rule
At this juncture, the Syrian Ba'ath party split into two factions: the 'progressive' faction, led by President and Regional Secretary Nureddin al-AtassiNureddin al-Atassi
Noureddin Mohammed Ali al-Atassi was President of Syria from February 1966 to November 1970...
gave priority to the radical Marxist-influenced line the Ba'ath was pursuing, but was closely linked to the security forces of Deputy Secretary Salah Jadid
Salah Jadid
Salah Jadid was a Syrian general and political figure in the Baath Party, and the country's de facto leader from 1966 until 1970.- Rise to power :...
, the country's strongman from 1966. This faction was strongly preoccupied with what it termed the "Socialist transformation" in Syria, ordering large-scale nationalization of economic assets and agrarian reform. It favored an equally radical approach in external affairs, and condemned "reactionary" Arab regimes while preaching "people's war" against Israel; this led to Syria's virtual isolation even within the Arab world. The other faction, which came to dominate the armed forces, was headed by Defense Minister Hafez al-Assad
Hafez al-Assad
Hafez ibn 'Ali ibn Sulayman al-Assad or more commonly Hafez al-Assad was the President of Syria for three decades. Assad's rule consolidated the power of the central government after decades of coups and counter-coups, such as Operation Wappen in 1957 conducted by the Eisenhower administration and...
. He took a more pragmatic political line, viewing reconciliation with the conservative Arab states, notably Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
and Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
, as essential for Syria’s strategic position regardless of their political color. He also called for reversing some of the socialist economic measures and for allowing a limited role for non-Ba'athist political parties in state and society.
In early January 1965 the Syrian Ba'ath Party nationalized about a hundred companies, "many of them mere workshops, employing in all some 12,000 workers." Conservative Damascus
Damascus
Damascus , commonly known in Syria as Al Sham , and as the City of Jasmine , is the capital and the second largest city of Syria after Aleppo, both are part of the country's 14 governorates. In addition to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Damascus is a major...
merchants closing their shops and "with the help of Muslim preachers, called out the populace" to protest against the expropriation. The regime fought back with the Ba'ath Party National Guard and "newly formed Workers' Militia." In retaliation for the uprising the state assumed new powers to appoint and dismiss Sunni Muslim Friday prayer-leaders and took over the administration of religious foundations (awqaf), "the main source of funds of the Muslim establishment."
Despite constant maneuvering and government changes, the two factions remained in an uneasy coalition of power. After the 1967 Six-Day War
Six-Day War
The Six-Day War , also known as the June War, 1967 Arab-Israeli War, or Third Arab-Israeli War, was fought between June 5 and 10, 1967, by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt , Jordan, and Syria...
, tensions increased, and Assad's faction strengthened its hold on the military; from late 1968, it began dismantling Salah Jadid's support networks, facing ineffectual resistance from the civilian branch of the party that remained under his control. This duality of power persisted until November 1970, when, in another coup
1970 Syrian Corrective Revolution
The 1970 Syrian Corrective Revolution, better known as the Syrian Corrective Movement, was a military-pragmatist faction's takeover within the Ba'ath party regime of Syria on November 13, 1970, bringing Hafez al-Assad to power.-Background:...
, Assad succeeded in ousting Atassi as prime minister and imprisoned both him and Jadid. He then set upon a project of rapid institution-building, reopening parliament and adopting a permanent constitution for the country, which had been ruled by military fiat or provisional constitutional documents since 1963. The Ba'ath Party was turned into a patronage network closely intertwined with the bureaucracy, and soon became virtually indistinguishable from the state, while membership rules were liberalised; in 1987 the party had 50,000 members in Syria, with another 200,000 candidate members on probation. The party simultaneously lost its independence from the state, and was turned into a tool of the Assad regime, which remained based essentially in the security forces. Other socialist parties that accepted the basic orientation of the regime were permitted to operate again, and in 1972 the National Progressive Front
National Progressive Front
The National Progressive Front , established in 1972, is a coalition of political parties in Syria that support the socialist and Arab nationalist orientation of the government and accept the "leading role in society" of the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party, .The Front was established by Syrian...
was established as a coalition of these legal parties; however, they were only permitted to act as junior partners to the Ba'ath, with very little room for independent organization.
al-Assad died in office as President of Syria and General Secretary of both the Regional Command and the National Command on 10 June 2000, when his son Bashar al-Assad
Bashar al-Assad
Bashar al-Assad is the President of Syria and Regional Secretary of the Ba'ath Party. His father Hafez al-Assad ruled Syria for 29 years until his death in 2000. Al-Assad was elected in 2000, re-elected in 2007, unopposed each time.- Early Life :...
succeeded him as President and as General Secretary of the Regional Command while Abdullah al-Ahmar
Abdullah al-Ahmar
Abdullah Al-Ahmar is a Syrian politician and prominent member of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party. He is the deputy general secretary of the National Command of the party....
succeeded him de facto
De facto
De facto is a Latin expression that means "concerning fact." In law, it often means "in practice but not necessarily ordained by law" or "in practice or actuality, but not officially established." It is commonly used in contrast to de jure when referring to matters of law, governance, or...
as General Secretary of the National Command through his office of Assistant General Secretary – al-Hafiz, even if dead, is still the de jure
De jure
De jure is an expression that means "concerning law", as contrasted with de facto, which means "concerning fact".De jure = 'Legally', De facto = 'In fact'....
General Secretary of the National Command. Since then, the party has experienced an important generational shift, and a discreet ideological reorientation decreasing the emphasis on socialist planning in the economy, but no significant changes have taken place in its relation to the state and state power. It remains essentially a patronage and supervisory tool of the regime elite. The Ba'ath today holds 134 of the 250 seats in the Syrian Parliament, a figure which is dictated by election regulations rather than by voting patterns, and the Syrian Constitution stipulates that it is "the leading party of society and state", granting it a legally enforced monopoly on real political power.
- For more information regarding the Syrian Ba'athist movement, see Ba'ath Party (Syrian-led faction)Ba'ath Party (Syrian-led faction)The Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party is a Ba'athist political party, with branches across the Arab world. The party emerged out of a split in the original Ba'ath Party in 1966. The party leads the government in Syria. For many years, the party was led by the Syrian president Hafiz al-Assad...
Transition, coup and Ba'athist Iraq
In the aftermath of the coup led against the Ba'ath Party, al-Bakr became the dominant driving force behind the party, and was elected General Secretary of the Regional Command sometime during the mid-to-late 1960s. Saddam HusseinSaddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
received full party membership and received a seat in the Regional Command of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party because he was a close protege of al-Bakr. With al-Bakr consent Hussein initiated a drive improve the party's internal security; the party's internal security organs would later work as Hussein's power base. During his exile in Egypt, Hussein had been influenced by thoughts and deeds of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
, and frequently uttered Stalinists maxims such as "If there is a person there is a problem; if there is no person then there is no problem". In 1964 Hussein established the Jihaz Haneen, the party's secretive security apparatus, to act as a counterweight to the military officers in the party, to weaken the military's hold on the party.
In contrast to the 1963 coup, the 1968 coup led by civilian Ba'ath Party members. The President of Iraq
President of Iraq
The President of Iraq is the head of state of Iraq and "safeguards the commitment to the Constitution and the preservation of Iraq's independence, sovereignty, unity, the security of its territories in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution." The President is elected by the Council of...
Abdul Rahman Arif
Abdul Rahman Arif
Hajj Abdul Rahman Mohammed Arif Aljumaily was president of Iraq from April 16, 1966 to July 17, 1968.-Biography:...
, who had taken over from his brother, was a weak leader. Hussein, through the Jihaz Haneen, managed to get in contact with several military officers before the coup who either supported the Ba'ath Party, or wanted to use the party as a vehicle to power. Some officers, such as Hardan al-Tikriti
Hardan al-Tikriti
Hardan ’Abdul Ghaffar al-Tikriti was a senior Iraqi Air Force commander, Iraqi politician and ambassador who was assassinated on the orders of Saddam Hussein, the then vice chairman of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council....
, were already members of the party, while Abdul Razzak Nayif, the deputy head of military intelligence, and Colonel Ibrahim Daud, the commander of the Republican Guard were neither party members or sympathetic to their cause. In a surprising turn of events, on 16 July 1968, Nayif and Daud were summoned to the Presidential Palace to Arif, where he asked them if they knew of a imminent coup against him. Both Nayid and Daud denied knowledge of any coup. However, when the Ba'ath Party leadership got a hold on this information, they quickly convened a meeting at al-Bakr's house. The meeting came to the conclusion that the coup had to be initiated as quickly as possible, even if they had to concede to give Nayif and Daud the posts of Prime Minister and Defense Minister respectively. al-Bakr, at the meeting, declared "I am aware that the two officers have been imposed on us and that they want to stab the Party in the back in the service of some interest or other, but we have no choice. We should collaborate with them and liquidiated immediatley during, or after, the revolution. And i volunteer to carry out the task".
The so-called 17 July Revolution was in the purest sense, a military coup, and not a popular revolt against the incumbent regime. In comparison to the coups of 1958 and 1963, the 1968 was, according to historian Con Coughlin
Con Coughlin
Con Coughlin is a British journalist and author, currently an editor for the Daily Telegraph.-Early years:He was born in London, England, the son of the Daily Telegraph crime correspondent C.A. Coughlin. The eldest of four children he grew up in Upminster, Essex...
, a "relatively civil affair". The coup, which begun in the early morning of 17 July, was initiated by the seizing of several key positions by the military and Ba'ath Party activists, such as the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense and television-, radio- and the electricity station. All the city's bridges were captured, all telephone lines were cut and at exactly 3 A.M. the order was given to march on the Presidential Palace. President Arif, who was fast asleep, had no control over the situation whatsoever. The plot was masterminded by al-Bakr, but led on the ground by Hussein and Saleh Omar al-Ali. A power struggle, which was anticipated and planned by al-Bakr, between the Ba'ath Party and the military, represented by Nayif and Daud, begun. Daud lost his ministership during an official visit to Jordan
Jordan
Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...
, while Nayid was exiled after threatening him and his family with death.
At the time of the party's seizure of power, only 5,000 people were members, by the late 1970s it had increased to 1.2 million members. In 1974 the Iraqi Ba'athists formed the National Progressive Front
National Progressive Front (Iraq)
The National Progressive Front was an Iraqi Popular Front announced on July 16, 1973 and constituted in 1974, ostensibly formed within the framework of a "joint action programme" to establish a coalition between the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, the Iraqi Communist Party, the Kurdistan...
to broaden support for the government's initiatives. Wranglings within the party continued, and the government periodically purged its dissident members, among them was Fuad al-Rikabi, the party's first General Secretary of the Regional Command. Emerging as the party strongman, Hussein eventually used his growing power to push al-Bakr aside in 1979 and ruled Iraq until the 2003 Invasion of Iraq
2003 invasion of Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq , was the start of the conflict known as the Iraq War, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 21 days of major combat operations...
. Under Saddam's tenure, before the Iran–Iraq War, Iraq experienced its most dramatic and successful period of economic growth, with its citizens enjoying standards of health care, housing, instruction and salaries/stipends well comparable to those of European countries. Several major infrastructures were laid down to help with the country's growth, and the Iraqi oil industry was nationalised with help from the Soviet Union; Alexei Kosygin, the Chairman
Premier of the Soviet Union
The office of Premier of the Soviet Union was synonymous with head of government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics . Twelve individuals have been premier...
of the USSR Council of Ministers, signed the bilateral treaty, the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in 1972.
- For more information regarding the Iraqi Ba'athist movement, see Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Iraq RegionArab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Iraq RegionThe Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Iraq Region is a ba'athist regional organisation founded in 1951 by Fuad al-Rikabi...
, Ba'ath Party (Iraqi-led faction)Ba'ath Party (Iraqi-led faction)The Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party is a pan-Arab nationalist and Arab socialist political party which was headquartered in Baghdad...
and History of Iraq (1968–2003)