A 77-Year Reign Ends: The Ba’ath Party’s Collapse
Published on 09.12.2024
“Damascus Without Assad”—a phrase Syrians have long dreamed of saying. Today, that dream has become reality. The regime has fallen, and Syrians are experiencing a historic moment of joy.
The fall of Bashar al-Assad bears striking similarities to Saddam Hussein’s iconic downfall more than 20 years ago. In 2024, the toppling of statues of Assad, his father, and his brother Bassel mirrored the scenes of Saddam’s statues being torn down in 2003. The burning of Assad’s images evoked memories of the same fate that befell Saddam’s portraits. While the contexts differ greatly—Assad’s fall was not delivered by U.S. tanks, as was the case with Saddam—the demise of the Ba’ath Party in Syria parallels that in Iraq, a testament to the shared nature of the Ba’athist regimes in both nations.
The Syrian and Iraqi Ba’ath parties share a common origin, dating back 77 years to 1947, when Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din Bitar founded the Ba’ath Party. The party would go on to rule Iraq and Syria for decades, extending its influence to neighboring countries like Lebanon. However, the unity of the Ba’ath Party splintered in 1966, when leftist Ba’athists in Syria overthrew Aflaq and Bitar, ousting them from leadership along with Iraqi Ba’ath leaders Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr and his cousin Saddam Hussein. In response, al-Bakr and Saddam established a new regional Ba’ath leadership in Baghdad with Aflaq’s support. This marked the critical division of the party into two factions: the Syrian Ba’ath and the Iraqi Ba’ath.
This schism, as Hazem Saghieh explains in his book The Syrian Ba’ath: A Brief History, served as “the culmination and crowning of a process of separation between two regimes in two independent countries. The rise of certain social classes to power in Syria and Iraq eliminated the need for a unifying locomotive and the ideological claims that had initially propelled them to authority.”
The Ba’ath regimes in both Iraq and Syria ruled through brutality, repression, and authoritarian control. Their ideologies bred only dictatorship and systemic oppression. Elections were theatrical exercises of staged “democracy,” with Syria’s Hafez al-Assad and later his son Bashar regularly winning over 97 percent of the vote. Saddam Hussein went even further, audaciously declaring a 100 percent victory in one election.
The Iraqi Ba’ath ruled from 1968 until 2003, with Saddam in power for 24 of those 35 years. Meanwhile, the Syrian Ba’ath took control in 1963 through a coup, which was followed by another in 1966 and ultimately by Hafez al-Assad’s “Corrective Movement” in 1970. Hafez ruled for 30 years before passing power to Bashar in 2000. In total, the Assads’ Ba’athist regime reigned over Syria for 54 years, an era that weighed heavily on the Syrian people.
Both Iraq and Syria only escaped Ba’athist rule through violent upheaval. In Iraq, it took a major U.S.-led invasion in 2003 to oust Saddam, preceded by years of economic sanctions following the Gulf War. Syria’s struggle was even longer, beginning with the uprising on March 15, 2011, and culminating in the early hours of December 8, 2024, when Bashar al-Assad fled the country, marking the definitive end of Ba’athist rule in both nations.
Assad’s fall also signals the likely demise of the Syrian Ba’ath Party’s farcical presence in Lebanon. Currently headed by Ali Hejazi, who derives his influence from Hezbollah, the Lebanese branch once wielded significant power during Syria’s occupation of Lebanon.
While Iraq fell into the trap of “de-Ba’athification,” one of the most catastrophic policies enacted by U.S. civilian administrator Paul Bremer, the hope for Syria today lies in the wisdom of the Syrian revolutionaries who have overthrown Assad. The task ahead is to preserve the state’s institutions, hold major perpetrators accountable, and integrate Ba’athists into a new framework. This approach aims to transition Syria from the nightmare of Ba’athist rule to a more stable and secure future for its people, who are yearning for freedom and unquestionably deserving of it.
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