Group+4.4+Ba'th+Party+(Syria+and+Iraq)

__ The Foundations and Birth of the Ba’ath __ By Louis Rudner __Aflaq and al-Bitar__

The Ba’th party had two primary founding members, Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar. Both were born in 1912 and attended primary school in French colonized Syria, then headed to Paris to study at the Sorbonne in Paris, France where they met and became inseparable. Upon completing their studies they returned to teach in Damascus where they began to develop their ideals and build a following among their students. By 1940, Aflaq and al-Bitar founded the Ba’th party. Aflaq was the primary Ideologue of the duo and has produced the main body of Ba’thist literature in his own poetic and eloquent style. While acting as the party’s main philosopher and overall strategist, he kept himself removed from perfunctory administrative details. Although the son of a Greek Orthodox grain merchant, he had no use for comforts and advocated a Spartan style of living. Al-Bitar, sometimes described as Aflaq’s opposite, was the administrator and organizer and held a multitude of political offices including Minister of foreign affairs leading up to the UAR merger with Egypt, Minister of State in the UAR and Prime Minister under the Ba’thist Syria. As Aflaq amassed writings and support he preached a complete transformation of Arab society: the mission to end “social injustice, class exploitation, and tyranny and to establish freedom democracy and socialism.” (Cleveland, 325) Through unity he planned to restore Arab dignity and virtue which seems appropriate considering that “Ba’th” translates literally to resurrection. “In April of [1947] the first Ba’th conference was held in Damascus, with 200 representatives from Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon attending.” (Torrey, 446) At this first conference the BASP’s (Ba’th Arab Socialist Party) constitution was approved.

__The BASP Constitution__ The overarching principles laid out in the BASP constitution amount roughly to Pan-Arab Socialism. Of the three categories listed under Fundamental Principles, the first is “The Arab Nation Unity and Liberty.” Here Aflaq denotes that The Arabs (as a people) constitute one sovereign and indivisible nation (political and economic) ordained by natural right. The Arabs have a homeland that belongs to them and are the only people with the right to rule over it. He says that all differences between Arab peoples are fake and can be dissipated by awakening the “Arab Conscience.” The second lays out individual rights of speech, assembly, belief and Art as holy and untouchable by authority. Now that citizens are placed on “equal” footing, a person’s value can be judged on how they benefit the Arab Nation. The Third is the Arab Mission. This Mission criminalized colonialism and its variants and pledged that all Arabs must combat it with any means available. Aflaq also links humanity as one whole and extends the Arab hand to all who seek to establish just systems. In the constitution an Arab is defined as a person who speaks Arabic and lives in the Arabic territory or aspires to do so and believes in his affiliation with the Arab nation. Despite this and his Christianity, it is well known that Michel Aflaq “made Islam an integral part of the Ba’thist ideology. He equated Islam and Arabism. . . which he saw as expressions of the Arab spirit.” (Cleveland, 325)

__Political Ventures__

In the postwar (WWII) years, Syria was politically unstable and highly factionalized, partly due to the divide and rule policy of the French colonials and the inexperienced political leadership that was a byproduct of the hegemony. After a long series of military coups, objective and program based political parties began to coalesce and in 1954 elections both opposing the Communist and Ba’th parties demonstrated significant influence. By 1957 the Syrian Ba’thists sought assistance from outside the country to consolidate their power. Linking up with Nasser’s (then non-aligned) Egypt and the United Arab Republic in 1958, the prospects for the Pan-Arab Nation looked promising. Unfortunately the Ba’thists had less influence than they expected and the UAR disintegrated in 1961 while the party fell out of influence. By 1963 a second wave of young Ba’thists had risen up in Syria, creatively known as the Neo-Ba’thists. A military coup d’état was led by a bright military trained peasant named Hafiz al-Asad, restoring the party to power. The new party was partly focused on uprooting the old influential families and strengthening ties with the lower middle class, schoolteachers, civil servants, college students and rural peoples who backed the party. By 1966 al-Asad decided to purge any old minded party members including the founders Aflaq and al-Bitar. Al-Bitar fled first to Lebanon, and then to Paris where he was assassinated in 1980 (after being pardoned and apologizing). Michel Aflaq fled to Iraq where he joined up with the local Ba’athists.

__Sources:__

1. Gordon H. Torrey.The Ba'th Ideology and Practice. Middle East Journal. Vol. 23, No. 4 (Autumn, 1969), pp. 445-470. Middle East Institute .

2. Cleveland, William. A History of the Modern Middle East. 3rd ed. Westview. 2004. Boulder, Co.

3. Constitution. []. 3/03/2011

4. Michel Aflak 1910-1989 Founder of the Ba’th Party. http://albaath.online.fr/English/index-English.htm.3/05/2011

by: Danielle Palermo
 * The Organizational Structure of the Ba’ath Party **

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T he basic organizational unit of the Ba’ath party was called the party cell or circle. The party cell was composed of between three and seven members. Cell-level members operated at the neighborhood or village level, where members met to discuss and to carry out directions from higher powers within the organization. A minimum of two and a maximum of seven cells formed a party division. Divisions operated in larger villages, offices, factories, schools, and other more urban areas. Division units were spread throughout the military, where they functioned as the eyes and ears of the party. Two to five divisions formed a section. A section operated at the level of a large city, town, or rural district. Above the section was the branch, which was composed of at least two sections and which operated at the regional level. There were twenty-one Ba’ath Party branches in Iraq, one in each of the eighteen provinces and three in Baghdad. Together, the branches formed the party's congress, which elected the Regional Command. ======

__ The Regional Command __

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The Regional Command was the top decision-making body. It had nine members, who were elected for five-year terms at a time. The Regional Command’s secretary general was the party's leader. The responsibility of the Regional Congress was to meet annually to debate, approve or amend the Ba’ath Party's policies and programs. The Iraqi Regional Command was supposed to make decisions about Ba’ath Party policy based on a general consensus, but in reality, most decisions were made by the party's secretary general, Saddam Husayn. ======

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Above the Regional Command was the National Command of the Baath Party. The National Command was the highest policy-making and coordinating commission for the Ba’ath movement throughout the Arab world. The National Command consisted of representatives from all regional commands and was responsible to the National Congress, which met periodically. The Regional Command had the power to guide, coordinate, and supervise the general direction of the movement, especially when it came to relationships with other regional Ba’ath parties and also with the outside world. ======

__ Membership __
The Ba’ath party was never a mass party. Regime policy kept membership relatively small because party admission was highly selective. Recruits had to be nominated by a member and pass through a rigorous initiation period of at least two years before becoming members. The The Ba’ath Party’s theory behind a rigorous initiation process was to limit membership to only the ideologically committed, believing that indiscriminate recruitment would dilute the party's effectiveness. As of early 1988, the Baath Party claimed about 10 percent of the population with a total of 1.5 million supporters and sympathizers and an estimated 30,000 full members, which translates into only 0.2 percent of the population.

Devlin, J.F. (1991) The Baath Party: Rise and Metamorphosis, The American Historical Review, vol. 96, No.5 pp. 1396-1407. Hinnebusch, R.A. (1993) State and Civil Society in Syria, Middle East Journal, vol. 47, no.2, pp. 243-257. Robinson, G.E. (1998) Elite Cohesion, Regime Succesion and Political Instability in Syria, Middle East Policy, vol.5 pp. 159-176. The library of congress country studies; cia world factbook. (n.d.). . Retrieved March 1st, 2011 from http://www.photius.com/countries/iraq/government/iraq_government_the_baath_party.html.
 * Sources **

**Rise of the Minority Power in Syria and Iraq** by William Reminga

The Ba’ath party was founded as a secular, socialist, and Arab nationalist party. Its secular nature, intended to allow full integration and citizenship of all citizens, has allowed for the rise of power of minority citizens in Iraq and Syria. Although both countries have different majority populations, in both countries, dramatic rises to political power within the Ba’ath party has helped to place the minority population in control of the country.

The Ba’ath party began its rise to power in Syria in 1963. The party’s political goals in Syria at the time were that of it’s founder Michel Afleq, an Arab Christian. Their focus was a renewed Arab nationalism, secular rule, an Arab socialist economic structure, and the development of a Pan-Arabic political structure throughout the Middle East. At that time, Sunni Muslims were the majority population in Syria. Alawi Muslims accounted for roughly 10 percent of Syria’s population. They traditionally had little political power, and they were often viewed by the Sunni Muslim population as “infidels” for their religious beliefs. Through several internal coups, bloody and peaceful, the Alawites, a Shi’a Muslim sect quickly came to control the military and government. In 1970 Hafaz al-Assad took power in Syria and took control of the ruling Ba’ath party. Himself an Alewite, he quickly appointed Alawi’s to high ranking political and military posts. The differences in his political goals for the Ba’ath party were evident immediately. Included in his new constitution were articles that both validated the Alewite religion, and instituted Muslim control of Syria’s presidency. Alewite Muslims currently control the majority of positions of political power in both the military and government of Syria.

The Ba’ath party took control of Iraq for the first time in 1963. Through three internal coups in the mid 1960’s, it finally solidified its political power in 1968. The man responsible for orchestrating the newly formed government was Ahmad Hasan al-Bakar. Al-Bakar was a Sunni Muslim from the small, rural town of Tikrit. Sunni Muslims are the minority Muslim sect in Iraq. Positions of power in the new government were immediately filled with Sunni Muslims from Tikrit. Tikriti’s quickly came to rule the Ba’ath party in Iraq. Through the 1970’s, the Ba’ath party in Iraq quickly crushed all dissent, and worked towards the goal of one party rule in Iraq. The key individual in realizing this goal was Saddam Hussein, a cousin of al-Bakar from Tikrit. Although he established an oppressive, minority controlled, authoritarian regime, he remained a secular ruler. His distain for the Shi’a population majority was mostly political. Through oppression of the Shi’a Muslims and the Kurd’s in the north, Saddam Hussein consolidated Iraq into essentially a one man dictatorship. Only Ba’ath party members were allowed to participate in government.

The intention of the Ba’ath party was to be an instrument of social justice with the central mission of bringing about Arab unity. “The Ba’ath’s platform offered the appealing vision of an Arab renaissance.”(Cleveland, 375) In the cases of Syria and Iraq however, this ideology was quickly adopted by authoritarian leaders, and used to consolidate power in the hand s of a select few.

__Sources__

Cleveland, William. A History of the Modern Middle East. 3rd ed. Westview. 2004. Boulder, Co.

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At the age of 20 in 1957, 2 years after finishing primary school, Saddam Hussein joined the Ba’ath Party, an Arab socialist and secular political entity in Iraq. 3 years later in 1963, the Ba’ath Party overthrew the existing government by means of a military coup and assumed power over the Iraqi people. A year later, Hussein was jailed for his involvement with the Ba’ath Party when an anti Ba’ath group led by Rahman Arif seized power of the country, but then escaped in 1967 and jockeyed for position within the Ba’ath party which regained power in 1968. =====

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Hussein continued to work his way through the ranks of the party and by means of manipulation of fellow party representatives and the general population, he emerged and the president of Iraq in 1979. As president, he continued his methods of divisiveness and exploitation to effectively eliminate the working middle class within the country, and leave the majority of the general population heavily dependent on his strengthening regime. Continuous exploitation of the country’s rich oil reserves by Hussein and a select few elites within the Ba’ath Party and lack of succession of the party members resulted in the formation of a dictatorship that lasted until his forceful removal by United States troops in 2003 in ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’. =====

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The dictatorship was a discrete one as people with views and beliefs opposing those of the party were subject to terrorism and intimidation by government forces. To much of the outside world, the Iraqi population appeared to be content with its political leaders as they were routinely shown on international news and media chanting pro-government and pro-Ba’ath slogans in ‘support’ of the Hussein regime. However, this view is a product of government propaganda, and very few people (those that benefit from natural resource exploitation with Hussein) are in support of his polices and governance. Gatherings in ‘support’ of Hussein that were shown in the media were out of fear of violent oppression that was rampant across the country, rather than loyalty, thus moving away from the ‘founding principles’ of the Ba’ath Party. =====

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Faleh A Jabar talks about the “intricate and thorny” legacy left behind by the Saddam Hussein dictatorship and one of the terms he uses to describe it is the spread or displacement from “fundamentalist Islamism”. Since the times of the Ottoman Empire in the 1870s, the Iraqi nation has become synonymous with acceptance of new tendencies which oppose those established in the Quran and by early followers of Islam. Such tolerance for distancing from established cultures is what enabled Hussein and fellow Ba’ath Party leaders to establish their regime. The very nature of the Ba’ath Party and its policies and actions closely resemble the gradual separation between Iraqis and fundamentalist Islamic customs and traditions. Intimidation and terrorism are not methods of rule which are acceptable to fundamentalist Muslims, but, over the years, such oppression had become common place. =====



Above: Saddam Hussein and another Senior Member of the Ba’ath Party

__Sources:__ 1. [] 2. Do Iraqis really support Saddam? Large demonstrations may have more to do with fear than loyalty; Greg James; The Toronto Star, September 18, 1990, Tuesday, FINAL EDITION, NEWS;Pg.A17, [] 3. [] 4. Four-Headed Dragon; Faleh A. Jabar; The World Today; Vol. 59, No. 3 (Mar., 2003), pp. 11-12; Published by: Royal Institute of International Affairs; Stable URL: []