 LEFTERIS PITARAKIS / Associated Press Mud covers a statue of Saddam Hussein at the Saddam Center of Art in Baghdad. Saddam, who had long been a Baath Party leader, seized control of the party and Iraq in 1979. |
Posted on 08/08/2003 10:05:24 PM PDT by optimistically_conservative
By CAMERON McWHIRTER
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer
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Baath Party guerrillas attack American troops in Iraq almost daily. U.S. administrator for Iraq L. Paul Bremmer has sworn to "extirpate Baathists and Baathism from Iraq forever."
Meanwhile, most Americans are left with the question: What is Baathism?
At one time, Baathism was a movement espousing lofty ideals of Arab brotherhood and equality, with a goal of uniting all Arabs into one powerful, secular state. But, like other "isms" of the 20th century, Baathism was twisted and corrupted by tyrants. By the time U.S. troops invaded Iraq, Baathism had degenerated into a vehicle of control for dictators, its founding principles long since abandoned.
"This party embodies all the things that went wrong in the Middle East," said Juan Cole, an historian at the University of Michigan who has written extensively about modern Islamic movements. "It was started by ideologues, but by the '90s, it was a mafia kind of thing."
In the 1950s and 1960s, Baathism had supporters in Syria, where it was founded, as well as Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen and other parts of the Middle East. Today, the only nation where a Baath Party still holds power is Syria, and it long ago ceased trying to spread Baathism to other countries.
Whatever the future holds for the turbulent Middle East, scholars agree that it won't include Baathism.
Origins in Syria
The ideology grew out of discussions among intellectuals in the cafes of Damascus, the capital of French-occupied Syria, in the late 1930s. Two schoolteachers, Michel Aflaq, a Christian, and Salah al-Din Bitar, a Muslim, formed a movement that they called Baath, Arabic for "rebirth." The movement attracted students and others interested in overthrowing the French colonial government.
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The principal tenet of Baathism was unifying all Arabs into one nation. The founders believed that the various colonial states in the Middle East had been imposed in part to divide Arabs and weaken them.
"The basic idea of Baathism, which was pan-Arabism, made a lot of sense," said Cole at Michigan. "If I was an Arab, I would be pan-Arabist. Imagine if there was a 'United States of Arabs.' It would be a huge powerhouse. The problem is that it's a conclusion that one comes to in the abstraction. When you try to implement it, you run into problems."
Ole Holsti, a political science professor at Duke University and an expert on the Middle East, said Baathism downplayed Islam and offered what he called "Islam-lite" to supporters. Baathists argued that the Arab people chiefly were not united by religion, but by language, culture and history.
"Islam had its place, yes, but there was a clear understanding that the Baathists were going to have a secular regime," he said.
Alan Godlas, associate professor of religion at the University of Georgia and expert on Islamic and Arabic movements, said the Baathist vision was to create a unified democratic Arab state, with state control of the entire economy. "The intention was not to form dictatorships," Godlas said.
Internal squabbles
The first Baath political party was organized in Syria in 1943. By 1946, after the French left Syria, the Baath Party grew into a major player in the country's politics.
In fierce competition for supporters with the communist party, the Baath set up a tightly controlled party structure, similar to the communist concept of "cells," small groups of devoted followers.
But from its beginnings, the party suffered from internal squabbles. Baathist nationalists thought the party should take over one country and work on socialist reforms there before uniting with other states. Baathist regionalists, though, argued the countries should unite first, then work on reforms. This bickering eventually tore the movement apart.
In 1963, the Baath Party took control of Syria. As the party consolidated power, a large faction of the leadership -- led by military officers -- were nationalists. A civilian regionalist faction, led by movement founders Aflaq and Bitar, argued that the Baathists now must export their "revolution" to other Arab states.
Gaining power in Iraq
Baathist parties already operated in neighboring states, including Iraq, where a young party cadre, Saddam Hussein, was climbing up the ranks.
In 1966, a split among Syrian Baathists led the military faction to exile Aflaq and Bitar. They both denounced Syrian Baathism as a betrayal of their movement.
In 1968 a coup in Iraq brought the Baathists to power there, with the help of the military. Initially, Aflaq and Bitar hoped Iraq would follow their lead of spreading Baathist revolution, but soon party leaders focused on rooting out internal enemies. Saddam was in the top leadership from the beginning, but did not seize total control of the party and the country until 1979.
In Syria, dictator Hafez Assad had taken control of the party and the government in 1970. He ruled until his death in 2000, when his son, Bashar Assad, took over.
Georgetown University Professor Steve Heydemann, an expert in Middle East politics and the author of a book on the Syrian Baath Party, said the parties in both countries were vehicles for ambitious and ruthless men to set up dictatorships.
For decades, the Baathist leadership in Syria and Iraq bickered constantly. Feeble attempts at uniting, or even cooperating, failed.
"The pan-Arab idea as a political ideology has foundered on all these difficulties of actually getting the Arabs to get along," said Cole. "It's a pretty sad commentary that Baathists took over both Iraq and Syria and they still couldn't get together. Instead, the daggers came out."
By the 1980s, Baathism was little more than a label used by the two regimes.
Aflaq, who lived in Baghdad under the auspices of Saddam for most of the later part of his life, became a powerless figurehead in Saddam's regime. He died in 1989.
The other co-founder of the movement, Bitar, had been assassinated while in exile in Paris in 1980. A few weeks before his death, he declared that neither the rulers in Syria or Iraq had the right to call themselves Baathists.
"Baathism led really to nothing except to the dictatorships of Assad and Saddam Hussein," said Godlas at UGA. "Baathism is now essentially over. . . . It's dead."
Baathism has always been socialism in Arab robes.
This is hidden in the text of the article but it finally comes out: But from its beginnings, the party suffered from internal squabbles. Baathist nationalists thought the party should take over one country and work on socialist reforms there before uniting with other states. Baathist regionalists, though, argued the countries should unite first, then work on reforms. This bickering eventually tore the movement apart
National Socialism, by the way, is what the acronym NAZI stood for....Technically, the word NAZI was the acronym for the National Socialist German Worker's Party
<snicker>
Let's see... French-schooled intellectuals gave us the Baathists, Pol Pot, Ayatollah Khomeini, Ho Chi Minh. Anyone else?
Alan Godlas, associate professor of religion at the University of Georgia and expert on Islamic and Arabic movements
I would bet money on two things:
His name is pronounced "godless".
It's not his real name. ;D
This article is a damn lie. No description of Ba'athism could possibly be complete without mentioning its Nazi roots.
Ba'athism is not an "ideology of peace," it has its roots in Nazi ideology. Passing it off as secular pan-Arabism is like passing off Naziism as secular pan-Aryanism. I don't think Godwin's law applies here, because Ba'athism really is descended from Naziism, I'm not just throwing out the word "Nazi" here as hyperbole.
Yes, especially because Ba'athism is not Sweden-style socialism, it's German-style National Socialism, in which the entire economy is meant to be nationalized. It's not short-work-week-high-taxes-high-unemployment socialism, it's dictatorship socialism.
I think it demands a strongman/oligarchy. It is not supposed to exist in a democratic form.
People did not matter as individuals, only in a collective and abstract sense as "the People". The State "represented" the People by repressing individuals who either had or hadn't stepped out of line. It was better if the citizenry came to see the State as a capricious and all-powerful god who must be appeased at all costs. That made it easier for the State to represent the People.
Saddam was "representing the People" when he kept donated medicines locked away in warehouses. It was better for The People if the sanctions were lifted than if their diseases were cured; therefore, the death and suffering of innocents was for the common good, and completely justified under Ba'athist ideology.
Dunno for sure, but I'd bet there are a few limb hacking African dictators in the mix as well.
This is my understanding as well, although I'd bet it was Italian facism that caught the attention of pan-Arabists initially. Italy had never been a true nation since the Roman Empire. Mussolini and the fascists were able to create a nation out of what had been for hundreds of years a squabbling assemblege of fiefdoms. This is exactly what the pan-Arabists wanted to accomplish, and they decided fascism was just the ticket. Problem is -- despite the failure of fascism, and other forms of socialism, in both Europe and the Middle East -- they never have managed to quite shake this conviction.
In the early 1930s, Aflaq and Bitar returned to Damascus, where they played at being radical intellectuals. They did some teaching, contributed to magazines, and prowled around the cafe's preaching revolution. Once back in Syria, Aflaq rejected all Western thought and for the rest of his life denied that Western ideas could have any relevance to the higher civilization of the Arabs.
In 1940, Aflaq established a study circle in Damascus called the Movement of Arab Renaissance, which in 1947 transmogrified into the Baath party, Baath meaning resurrection or renaissance. Aflaq and Bitar ran unsuccessfully for parliament three times each, but they began to win a following among educated, mostly lower-middle-class men in Syria and to a lesser extent in Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon. By the mid-1950s, the Baath party had become a major force in Syria, thanks in part to its merger with the Arab Socialist party, and Aflaq became secretary general and chief ideologist. Intense, ascetic, and by some accounts effete, he was not cut out for politics. In 1966, he lost an intraparty power struggle and left for Lebanon, then Brazil.
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