Ba'ath Party

Ba'ath Party
For the Party's predecessor named "Ba'ath", see Arab Ba'ath Movement.
Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party
حزب البعث العربي الاشتراكي
Founded 1946 (1946)
Dissolved de facto 1966 (1966) (split into two factions: a pro-Iraqi Ba'ath faction and a pro-Syrian Ba'ath faction)
Newspaper Al-Baath
Ideology Ba'athism
International affiliation None
Official colors Black, Red, White and Green
Party flag
Flag of the Ba'ath Party.svg
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v · Arabic: حزب البعث العربي الاشتراكي‎) 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.[1] 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 Arab socialism is notably different in origins and practice from classical Marxism and is similar in outlook to 'third-worldism'.

The party was founded in 1946 by the Syrian 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.[2] 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.

Contents

Ideology

The motto "Unity, Liberty, Socialism" (Arabic وحدة، حرية، اشتراكية) was inspired by the French Jacobin political doctrine linking national unity and social equity,[3] 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. 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[4] and French “Positivists” such as Auguste Comte and professor Ernest Renan of the Collège de France in Paris.[5] 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.

Structure

The Ba'ath Party was created as a cell-based 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:

  • 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 1946 by Michel Aflaq, 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.[6] Following the end of World War II pan-Arab nationalist thinking became popular amongst Arabs.[7] 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.[8]

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.[9] 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.[10] 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.[11]

The Syrian Ba'ath Party organisation

Elections, the UAR and factionalism

Akram al-Hawrani (left) with Michel Aflaq as seen in 1957

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 election 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.[12] 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.[13] 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.[14] 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.[15]

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.[16] 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.[17]

A military coup in Damascus in 1961 brought the UAR to an end.[18] 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).[19] Following the UAR's dissolution, the Ba'ath Party was reestablished at the 1962 congress.[20] The Ba'ath Party managed to win only a handful of seats during 1961 parliamentary election.[18] 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.[21]

The Ba'ath coup (1963)

Main article: 1963 Syrian coup d'état

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 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)

See also: 1966 Syrian coup d'état

The Iraqi Ba'ath Party organisation

Early years and the 14 July Revolution

Foud al-Rikabi as seen before 1968

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.[22]

Sa'dun Hamadi, a Shia muslim,[23] and Fuad al-Rikabi, an Iraqi engineer and a Shia muslim, founded the Ba'ath Party's Iraqi cell in 1951[24] as an Arab nationalist party vague in its socialist orientation.[25] al-Rikabi, expelled from the party in 1961 for being a nasserist,[26] was a follower of Michel Aflaq, the founder of Ba'athism.[27] 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".[24] By 1953 the party, led by al-Rikabi, was engaged in subversive activities against the government.[28]

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.[29] 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.[30] 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.[31]

By the end of 1951 the party had at least 50 members.[32] 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.[33] In 1958, the year of the 14 July Revolution that overthrew the Hashemite monarchy, the Ba'ath Party had 300 members nationwide.[34] 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.[35]

Qasim's Iraq

Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath Party student cell, Cairo, in the period 1959–63.

However, shortly after taking power, Qasim changed his position on joining the UAR, and then started to campaign for the "Iraq first policy".[35] 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.[36] 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 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.[37] Abdul Karim al-Shaikhly, the leader of the operation, asked Hussein to join the operation when one of team members left.[38] 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.[39]

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.[38] At the time of the assassination attempt the Ba'ath Party had less than 1,000 members.[40]

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.[41] 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 Foud 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.[42]

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.[43] Several army units had refused to mobilise to support the Ba'athist coup, which led the fighting to drag on for two days;[44] the death toll ranges from a low 1,500 to 5,000 people dead.[45] 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.[44]

In power (1963)

Abdul Salam Arif became the President, Hussein al-Bakr became the Prime Minister[45] 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.[46]

In the aftermath of the successful coup, the National Guard, initiated an "orgy of violence" against all communist-elements and some left-wing forces.[45] 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.[47]

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".[48] 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.[49] 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.[50] 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.[51]

Union talks with Syria

Ahmen Hassan al-Bakr, as seen in 1974, led the Ba'athist coups of 1963 and 1968

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 Shabib led the pro-Aflaq wing.[46] 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 Hassan 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.[52]

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.[53] 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.[54]

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.[51]

The 1966 split

Main article: 1966 Syrian coup d'état

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.[55] He gained support in this from Syrian regional secretary Hamoud el Choufi, the General Secretary of the Syrian Regional Command,[56] Yasin al-Hafiz, one of the party’s few ideological theorists, and some members of the secret military committee supported al-Sadi's position.[57]

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",[58] "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.[59] In a coded attack on Michel Aflaq, the congress also condemned "ideological notability" within the party.[58] 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.[60]

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.[20] 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.[61] 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.[62]

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.[63] 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,[64] 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.[65]

The Syrian Ba'ath and the Iraqi 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.[60]

Modern Ba'athism

Transition, marxism and Assad-rule

Main article: Ba'ath Party (Syria)
Syrian President Hafez al-Assad (centre) with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (left), Algerian Foreign Minister Abdelaziz Bouteflika (right), and Syrian Vice-president Abdul Halim Khaddam (far right, half-covered)

At this juncture, the Syrian Ba'ath party split into two factions: the 'progressive' faction, led by President and Regional Secretary Nureddin al-Atassi 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.[66] 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.[67] 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.[68]

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."[69]

Current president and Ba'ath leader Bashar al-Assad

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,[70] it began dismantling Salah Jadid's support networks, facing ineffectual resistance from the civilian branch of the party that remained under his control.[71] 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.[62] 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.[72] 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.[73]

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[74] 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.[75] 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.[76] It remains essentially a patronage and supervisory tool of the regime elite.[77] 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,[78] 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.[79]

For more information regarding the Syrian Ba'athist movement, see Ba'ath Party (Syria)

Transition, coup and Ba'athist Iraq

Main articles: 17 July Revolution, Ba'ath Party (Iraq), and History of Iraq (1968–2003)

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 Hussein 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.[50] 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".[80] 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.[81]

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".[82]

Then Iraqi President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, right, and Saddam Hussein as seen in Baghdad, 1978.

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.[83] The plot was masterminded by al-Bakr,[84] but led on the ground by Hussein and Saleh Omar al-Ali.[83] 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.[85] Daud lost his ministership during an official visit to Jordan, while Nayid was exiled after threatening him and his family with death.[86]

At the time of the party's seizure of power, only 5,000 people were members,[87] by the late 1970s it had increased to 1.2 million members.[88] 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,[89] among them was Fuad al-Rikabi, the party's first General Secretary of the Regional Command.[90] Emerging as the party strongman,[91] Hussein eventually used his growing power[92] to push al-Bakr aside in 1979 and ruled Iraq until the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.[93] Under Saddam's tenure, before the Iran–Iraq War, Iraq experienced its most dramatic and successful period of economic growth,[94] 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,[95] and the Iraqi oil industry was nationalised[96] 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.[92]

For more information regarding the Iraqi Ba'athist movement, see Ba'ath Party (Iraq) and Ba'athist Iraq

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Bibliography

  • The Old Social Classes and New Revolutionary Movements of Iraq, Hanna Batatu, London, al-Saqi Books, 2000. ISBN 0-86356-520-4
  • Al-Baath wa-Lubnân [Arabic only] ("The Baath and Lebanon"), NY Firzli, Beirut, Dar-al-Tali'a Books, 1973
  • The Iraq-Iran Conflict, NY Firzli, Paris, EMA, 1981. ISBN 2-86584-002-6
  • Al-Baath wal Watan Al-Arabi [Arabic, with French translation] ("The Baath and the Arab Homeland"), Qasim Sallam, Paris, EMA, 1980. ISBN 2-86584-003-4
  • The Struggle for Power in Syria: Sectarianism, Regionalism and Tribalism in Politics, Nikolaos van Dam, London I B Tauris, 1979.
  • History of Syria Including Lebanon and Palestine, Vol. 2 Hitti Philip K. (2002) (ISBN 1-931956-61-8)

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