This article details the history of the Syrian Regional Branch of the Ba'ath Party (the original one and that of the Syrian-dominated group).

The Ba'ath Party was founded on 7 April 1947 by Michel Aflaq – a Christian, Salah al-Din al-Bitar – a Sunni Muslim and Zaki al-Arsuzi – an Alawite. It was a merger of the Arab Ba'ath, founded and led by al-Arsuzi, and the Arab Ba'ath Movement, led by Aflaq and al-Bitar, which established the party.^[1] The party initially was a vehicle for the national liberation movement against French rule in Syria and Lebanon. Soon after, the Ba'ath Party established itself as a critic of the perceived ideological inefficiencies of old Syrian nationalism.^[1] Pan-Arabism became popular among Arabs after World War II.^[2]

Aflaq, the main originator of Ba'athist ideology, drew heavily from Islam and its values. He wrote that the time of Muhammad represented the ideal Arab community and that the Arabs had fallen under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and the Europeans. Ba'ath means restoration, and the party's programme called for Arab restoration through modernisation. The most important influence upon Alfaq and al-Bitar was European socialism, which became the basis of their Arab socialism.^[3]

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.^[4] Party membership increased from around 100 to 4,500 by the early 1950s; most members were either 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.^[5] Most ASP members did not adhere to the merger and remained, according to George Alan, "passionately loyal to Hawrani's person."^[6] The merger was so weak that the ASP's original infrastructure remained intact. 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.^[6]

Syrian politics took a dramatic turn in 1954 when the military government 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 parliamentary seats in the Syrian election that year, becoming the second-largest party in parliament. Most of the new members of parliament were independents. The Ba'ath Party was one of the most organised parties in parliament, rivaled only by the Syrian Communist Party (SCP) and the People's Party. The SCP and the Ba'ath Party were the only parties able to organise mass protests among workers.^[7]

The Ba'ath Party was supported by the intelligentsia because of their pro-Egyptian and anti-imperialist stance and their advocation of social reform.^[8] The Ba'ath faced considerable competition from ideological enemies, notably the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), which supported the establishment of a Greater Syria. The Ba'ath Party's main adversary was the SCP, whose support for class struggle and internationalism was anathema to the Ba'ath.^[9] All these parties competed with each other and Islamists in street-level activity and sought support among the military.^[10]

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, thus eliminating one rival. In 1957, the Ba'ath Party partnered with the SCP to weaken the power of Syria's conservative parties. By the end of that year, the SCP weakened the Ba'ath Party to such an extent that in December the Ba'ath Party drafted a bill calling for a union with Egypt, a move that was very popular. The union between Egypt and Syria went ahead and the United Arab Republic (UAR) was created, and the Ba'ath Party was banned in the UAR because of Nasser's hostility to parties other than his own. The Ba'ath leadership dissolved the party in 1958, gambling that the legalisation of certain parties would hurt the SCP more than it would the Ba'ath.^[11]

Meanwhile, a small group of Syrian Ba'athist officers stationed in Egypt watched the party's poor position and the increasing fragility of the union with alarm. They formed a secret military committee whose initial members were Lieutenant-Colonel Muhammad Umran, Major Salah Jadid and Captain Hafez al-Assad. At first, the committee did not play a political role in the Ba'athist movement; its unclear whether leading Ba'athist officials knew of the Military Committee's existence before the 8th of March Revolution.^[12]

Militant secularism was emphasized in the "Declaration of Principles" manifesto published by the Ba'ath party in 1960; which declared that the party's "educational policy" was to build a "new generation of Arabs that believes in the unity of the nation and the eternity of its mission".^[13] The manifesto also stated that this envisaged Ba'athist generation would be "committed to scientific thought freed from the shackles of superstition and backward customs" and replace religion with Arab nationalism as their belief system.^[14]

A military coup in Damascus in 1961 brought the UAR to an end.^[15] Sixteen prominent politicians, including al-Hawrani and Salah al-Din al-Bitar – who later retracted his signature, signed a statement supporting the coup.^[16] The Ba'athists won several seats during the 1961 parliamentary election.^[15]

The secession from the UAR was a time of crisis for the party; several groups, including al-Hawrani, left the Ba'ath Party. al-Hawrani formally resigned on 20 June 1962 and re-established the ASP, but his popular appeal had weakened over the years, and the ASP's only electoral stronghold was the Hama Governorate.^[17] In 1962, Aflaq convened a congress which re-established the Ba'ath Party.^[18] The division in the original Ba'ath Party between the National Command led by Michel Aflaq and the “regionalists” in the Syrian party stemmed from the break-up of the United Arab Republic. Aflaq had sought to control the regionalist elements – an incoherent grouping led by Fa'iz al-Jasim, Yusuf Zuayyin, Munir al-Abdallah and Ibrahim Makhus. The regionalists hailed from towns in the Syrian periphery, where local Ba'ath Party structures had not dissolved during the years of union with Nasser.^[19] Aflaq retained the support of the majority of the non-Syrian National Command members (13 at the time).^[20]

Aflaq convened the Fifth Congress in Homs. Al-Hawrani was not invited; cells that had defied Aflaq's orders and remained active, and Ba'athists who become Nasserists during the period of the UAR, were not invited to the congress. Aflaq was re-elected the National Command's Secretary General, and ordered the re-establishment of the Syrian-regional Ba'ath organisation. During the congress, Aflaq and the Military Committee, through Muhammad Umran, made contact for the first time; the committee asked for permission to initiate a coup d'état, which Aflaq supported.^[21] The Military Committee did not show itself to the civilian wing of the party at this congress.^[22]

Following the success of the February 1963 coup d'état in Iraq, led by the Ba'ath Party's Iraqi cell, the Military Committee hastily convened to plan a coup against Nazim al-Kudsi's presidency. The coup – dubbed the 8th of March Revolution – was successful and a Ba'athist government was installed in Syria.^[23] The plotters' first order was to establish the National Council of the Revolutionary Command (NCRC), which consisted entirely of Ba'athists and Nasserists, and was controlled by military personnel rather than civilians.^[24]

While the Ba'ath Party had attained power, it experienced problems with internal infighting. The Military Committee, which was a tiny minority of the already small Ba'ath Party membership, was forced to rule by force. The Ba'ath Party, which had only 2,500 members by mid-1963, lacked a popular base. Hanna Batatu called the period from 1963 to 1970 the "Transitional Ba'ath";^[25] she wrote that the "Old Ba'ath" was removed and was replaced with the "Neo Ba'ath" led by Salah Jadid and Hafez al-Assad in 1966.^[25] The neo-Ba'ath also made drastic changes to foreign policy, by aligning Syria with the Soviet Bloc. Following the Sixth National Congress, the party publicly adopted the doctrine of close alliance with Soviet Bloc:

"The Arab Socialist Ba'th Party had placed the question of the struggle against imperialism in its international and human framework and considered the socialist camp a positive, active force in the struggle against imperialism... a homeland crushed and exploited by imperialism render the fundamental starting points of the socialist camp more harmonious with the interests of our Arab homeland and more in sympathy with our Arab people."^[26]

The civilian wing was riven with infighting between the radical socialist and moderate factions, while the military was more unified. The Syrian Regional Command slowly amassed powers by weakening the National Command, culminating in the 1966 Syrian coup d'état. According to Batatu, the power struggle was not ideological in character:^[27]

The internal party discords were never purely sectarian or purely regional in character... Often personal factors or aspirations for sheer power were at play. Ideological affinities had some role but do not appear to have been decisive. To be sure, the labels 'leftists' and 'rightists' were freely tossed about. But the political conduct of the period's central figure, Salah Jadid, did not point to a clear or consistent ideological commitment."

Jadid served as the Assistant Secretary of the Regional Command of the party in Syria, while General Amin al-Hafiz served as Regional Secretary. al-Hafiz removed Jadid as the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, which forced Jadid to concentrate on building a support base within the party. On 21 December 1965 the National Command dissolved the Syrian Regional Command and on 18 February 1966, Aflaq denounced the Jadid group as a regional separatist deviation. A coup d'état took place on 23 February 1966, the bloodiest coup Syria had experienced since 1949. Jadid and the Syrian Regional Command, backed by army units under their control, seized power.^[28] Other leaders of the coup were Hafez al-Assad – an Alawite general, and Nureddin al-Atassi.^[18] The new rulers of Syria expelled the former members of the National Command from the party and from Syria. Aflaq and Bitar were released from jail and went into exile shortly after the coup.^[28] This effectively split the Ba'ath Party National Command in two: one based in Syria, the other in Iraq.^[29] In Syria, Ba'athist civilian politicians were made leaders of state institutions; Atassi became President, Yusuf Zuayyin became Prime Minister and Ibrahim Makhus became Minister for Foreign Affairs. Jadid sought to avoid suspicions against a military dictatorship and did not formally join the government. During an attempted coup in September 1966, Jadid formed "Workers Battalions", inspired by the Red Guards of the People's Republic of China, to defend the government.^[28]

After the 1967 Six-Day War, tensions between Jadid and Al-Assad increased, and al-Assad and his associates were strengthened by their hold on the military. In late 1968,^[30] they began dismantling Jadid's support network, facing ineffectual resistance from the civilian branch of the party that remained under Jadid's control.^[31] This duality of power persisted until the Corrective Revolution of November 1970, when al-Assad ousted and imprisoned Atassi and Jadid. He then set upon a project of rapid institution-building, reopened parliament and adopted a permanent constitution for the country, which had been ruled by military fiat and a provisional constitutional documents since 1963.^[32]

• History of the Ba'ath Party