A few days after the fall of former Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad’s regime in Syria, the international news agencies reported that the leadership of the formerly ruling Baath Arab Socialist Party has issued a brief statement declaring the suspension of the activities of the party in Syria until further notice.
Although the declaration was unnoticed by many observers of the developments on the Syrian political scene over the past few weeks, it carried an important message that is amenable to various interpretations on the part of all those interested in ideological and political developments in the Arab world since World War II.
The Baath Party, originally established in Syria in 1943 and a few years later merging with the Arab Socialist Party to be called the Baath Arab Socialist Party, has played a significant role in Arab politics at both the intellectual and practical levels over the past three quarters of a century.
During that period, the Baath Party ruled in two Arab countries, Syria since the 8 March 1963 coup until 8 December 2024, and Iraq between the 18 July 1968 coup and the fall of late Iraqi president Saddam Hussein at the hands of the US-led invasion of the country in April 2003. However, before, during and after these periods, the party was also ideologically and politically active in many other Arab countries, particularly Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Yemen, Libya, Sudan, Tunisia, and Mauritania.
There is no doubt that the rift between the Baath in Syria and Iraq, as a result of the 21-23 February 1966 coup in Syria, has largely contributed to the overall exhaustion of the Baath both as an ideology and as a political movement. This intra-Baath rivalry turned into severe, and occasionally violent, confrontations between the party in the two countries until the end of Baath rule in Iraq in 2003, with the exception of a brief period between November 1977 and March 1979 when there was a short-lived rapprochement between the two “branches” of the party.
This was in an attempt to counter the “peace initiative strategy” adopted by the late Egyptian president Anwar Al-Sadat, starting with his visit to Jerusalem on 19-21 November 1977.
The rift between the two branches of the Baath left the leadership of the party in Syria and Iraq to argue over who was the legitimate representative of Baath ideology and political aspirations in achieving Arab unity, freedom, and socialism, as embodied in the slogans of the party.
The rivalry did not stop at that level, as each of the two branches of the party claimed to possess the legitimate “Pan-Arab leadership” in its country and, from that perspective, tried to control the branches of the party in other Arab countries as well, along with those of the Arab communities in the Diaspora.
This led to overall losses for the Baath as a whole, since in several Arab countries the Baath branches were divided between a pro-Iraqi Baath and a pro-Syrian Baath. The third dramatic, and occasionally violent, aspect of the confrontation between the Syrian and the Iraqi Baath was the attempt by each of them to overthrow the other and replace it by a faction of the party loyal to itself.
In addition to the intra-Baath rivalries that weakened the party as a whole over time, the Baath’s rivalries and confrontations were interrupted by short periods of alliance or peaceful co-existence with other ideological and political forces in the Arab world, including those where there were some common or shared ideological grounds. However, these alliances also contributed to weakening the party and distracting it from focusing on its three original goals of Arab unity, freedom, and socialism among the Arab peoples.
There were temporary alliances, or confrontations, with other pan-Arab forces such as the Nasserists and the Arab Nationalist Movement (Harakat Al-Qawmeyeen Al-Arab), in addition to confrontations with various leftist movements and their variants.
Such confrontations also extended to other ideological and political forces among the Arab peoples, including liberal movements and fundamentalist or jihadist Islamist ideologies and movements, despite the fact that in Syria from independence in 1943 until the unity with Egypt in 1958 there was peaceful co-existence between the Baathists and the liberals and in Iraq there were attempts to mobilise support among Islamist factions for the Baathist regime. These took place during and after the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, as well as in the attempted Baathist/ Islamist cooperation and coordination against US military forces when they were occupying Iraq following the 2003 invasion.
The overthrow of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime in Iraq was followed by what was called the “de-Baathification” law that aimed not only at ending the existence of the Baath Party as a political party, but also at ending its presence in all state institutions in Iraq, particularly the armed forces, the security agencies, and the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. Any expression of affiliation to or sympathy with the party and its ideology was outlawed.
It is not yet clear what, if any, measures will be taken by the new rulers in Damascus towards the Baath Party in Syria, but it is certain that the rule of the Baath in the Arab countries has now come to an end, at least during the present period and probably for some time to come. This poses additional challenges to the Baath parties in other Arab countries, whether they have a legal existence or are acting in a clandestine way, as they can no longer receive support from any Baathist government in the Arab world.
However, like for any other ideology, it cannot be argued that the Baath ideology is now “dead” or will disappear from the Arab ideological and political scene. History has taught us that ideologies never die. However, it is to be expected that once the Baathists in the Arab world are free from the pressures exerted by Baathist governments, they will enter into a period of self-evaluation and self-critique in order to understand why so many people in Iraq in 2003 and Syria in 2024 celebrated the fall of the Baath Party’s rule, whether at the hands of a foreign invasion or armed political factions.
The outcome of such self-evaluation and self-critique will be instrumental for the future of the Baath at the ideological and political levels.
* The writer is a diplomat and commentator.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 19 December, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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