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Baath Party

The Baath Party has been the ruling political

party in syria since 1963, and it was the party

that governed iraq briefly in 1963 and then again

from 1968 until its removal by U.S. and coalition

forces in spring 2003. Two Syrian schoolteachers

who had studied at the Sorbonne in Paris during

the 1920s founded it in the 1940s: Michel Aflaq

(1910–89), a Greek Orthodox Christian, and

Salah al-Din al-Bitar (1912–80), a Sunni Muslim.

These men envisioned the Baath Party as a mod-

ern revolutionary movement that would unite

arabs and liberate their lands from British and

French colonial control, which had become more

entrenched in the region as a result of the creation

of their mandate territories in Syria, Transjordan,

and Iraq after World War I. The Baath message of

pan-Arab unity held great appeal to the peoples

living in these territories in the 1940s, and by the

1960s, the party had become the major player in

Syrian and Iraqi politics.

The name of the Baath Party, officially known

as the Arab Socialist Baath Party, is based on the

Arabic word for resurrection or renewal. The

name refers to the rebirth of the glories of Arab

self-rule that the party has sought to bring about

after centuries of being governed by foreigners,

especially Turks and Europeans. The party rec-

ognizes islam as the authentic spiritual force that

can make this happen but not as the source for

specific institutions, laws, and policies. Muham-

mad is looked to as an exemplary Arab leader, not

as an object of religious devotion. In other words,

Baathists conceive of religion in secular terms, not

as a system of eternal truths to be used in actu-

ally running a government or drafting legislation.

In fact, however, party ideology has drawn more

upon elements of European fascism and commu-

nism than upon Islamic ideals and values. This

secUlarism is reflected in the party’s official motto:

“Unity, Freedom, and Arab Socialism.”

In the party’s early years, it sought to create a

base of support among the Arab masses. Failing in

this, the party allied itself with the military in the

1960s and built hierarchical networks of politi-

cal and security units that infiltrated all levels

of society down to the neighborhood and tribal

levels in the 1970s. In Iraq, the size of the army

was increased until it became one of the largest in

the region. In 1966, the Syrian and Iraqi branches

of the party divorced, and control of both fell

into the hands of local ethnoreligious minori-

ties—alaWi Shia in Syria, led by Hafiz al-Asad

(1930–2000), and Arab Sunnis from Tikrit in

Iraq, led by saddam hUsayn (1937–2006). These

two authoritarian rulers used their large security

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