Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Syria Region

Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Syria Region حزب البعث العربي الاشتراكي – قطر سوريا‎
Governing body	Central Command (2018–2024)[1]
Founded	7 April 1947
Dissolved	11 December 2024 (de facto) 29 January 2025 (de jure)
Newspaper	Al-Ba'ath[2] and Al-Thawra[3][4]
Student wing	National Union of Students Ba'ath Vanguards[5]
Youth wing	Revolutionary Youth Union[6]
Paramilitary wing	Ba'ath Brigades (2012–2018)[7][8]
Membership	1.2 million (2010 est.)[9]
Ideology	Neo-Ba'athism Assadism[10][11] Arab nationalism[12][13] Arab socialism[14][15] Authoritarian socialism[24] Left-wing nationalism[25][26][27] Militarism[28][29][30][31] Secularism[32] Syrian nationalism[33][34] Syrian irredentism[35] Anti-imperialism[36] Anti-Zionism[37] Historical: Revolutionary socialism[38][39] (1966–1970) Pan-Arabism (until 1970)[40]
Politics of Syria Political parties Elections

The Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Syria Region (

The party was founded on 7 April 1947 as the Arab Ba'ath Party through the merger of the Arab Ba'ath Movement led by Michel ʿAflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar and the Arab Ba'ath, led by Zaki al-Arsuzi. The party espoused Ba'athism, which is an ideology mixing Arab nationalist, pan-Arab, Arab socialist, and anti-imperialist interests. Ba'athism calls for the unification of the Arab world into a single state and quickly established branches in other Arab countries, although it would only hold power in Syria and Iraq. Since their ascent to power in 1963, neo-Ba'athist officers proceeded by stamping out the traditional civilian elites to construct a military dictatorship operating in totalitarian^[a] lines; wherein all state agencies, party organisations, public institutions, civil entities, media and health infrastructure are tightly dominated by the military establishment and the Mukhabarat (intelligence services).

The

Following the fall of Bashar al-Assad, on 11 December 2024 the party suspended all activities "until further notice" and transferred its assets to the Syrian transitional government, de facto dissolving itself.^[45] On 29 January 2025, the party was formally dissolved by the Syrian transitional government.^[46][47]

The assassination of Ba'athist colonel Adnan al-Malki by a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) in April 1955 allowed the Ba'ath Party and its allies to launch a crackdown, thus eliminating one rival.^[54] In 1957, the Ba'ath Party partnered with the Syrian Communist Party (SCP) to weaken the power of Syria's conservative parties.^[54] 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.^[54] 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.^[54] The Ba'ath leadership dissolved the party in 1958, gambling that the legalisation against certain parties would hurt the SCP more than it would the Ba'ath.^[54] A military coup in Damascus in 1961 brought the UAR to an end.^[55] Sixteen prominent politicians, including al-Hawrani and Salah al-Din al-Bitar – who later retracted his signature, signed a statement supporting the coup.^[56] The Ba'athists won several seats during the 1961 parliamentary election.^[55]

The military group preparing for the overthrow of the separatist regime in February 1963 was composed of independent Nasserite and other unionist, including Ba'athist officers.^[57] The re-emergence of the Ba'ath as a majority political force aided in the coup; without a political majority the coup would have remained a military take over .^[57] Ziyad al-Hariri controlled the sizable forces stationed at the Israeli Front, not far from Damascus, Muhammad as-Sufi commanded the key brigade stationes in Homs, and Ghassan Haddad, one of Hariri's independent partners, commanded the Desert Forces.^[58] Early in March it was decided the coup would be brought into action on 9 March. But on 5 March several of the officers wanted to delay the coup in hope of staging a bloodless coup.^[58] It was presumed that the Nasserites were preparing a coup of their own which effectively canceled the delay.^[58] The coup began at night and by the morning of 8 March it was evident that a new political era had begun in Syria.^[59]

The secession from the UAR was a time of crisis for the party; several groups, including Hawrani, left the Ba'ath Party.^[60] In 1962, Aflaq convened a congress which re-established the Syrian Regional Branch.^[61] The division in the original Ba'ath Party between the National Command led by Michel Aflaq and the "regionalists" in the Syrian Regional Branch stemmed from the break-up of the UAR.^[62] 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.^[62] Aflaq retained the support of the majority of the non-Syrian National Command members (13 at the time).^[63]

Following the success of the

After the 1967 Six-Day War, tensions between Jadid and Hafez al-Assad increased, and al-Assad and his associates were strengthened by their hold on the military. In late 1968,^[70] they began dismantling Jadid's support network, facing ineffectual resistance from the civilian branch of the party that remained under Jadid's control.^[71] This duality of power persisted until the Corrective Revolution of November 1970, when al-Assad ousted and imprisoned Atassi and Jadid.^[72] 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.^[72] Assad significantly modified his predecessor's radical socialist economic policies, encouraged several wealthy urban families to increase their activities in the private sector, and allowed limited foreign investment from Arab countries in the Persian Gulf region States.^[73]

By the late 1970s, the state apparatus of the Ba'ath regime under Assad had consolidated into an

Hafez's son

Following the fall of the Assad regime, the Ba'ath's Central Command published a statement on the party's newspaper Al-Ba'ath, announcing the party's intention to cooperate with the Syrian transitional government, which is currently being led by members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, in order to "defend the unity of the country, land, people, institutions and capabilities". It also called for reforms to provide for political pluralism and separation of powers.^[99] Two days later, an internal statement on December 11 was circulated among members and published on Al-Ba'ath which announced the suspension of all party activities "until further notice" and the handover of all vehicles and weapons belonging to the party to the Ministry of Interior as well as all party funds to the Ministry of Finance, with the property's proceeds going towards the Central Bank of Syria so as to be spent by the transitional government "according to the law"; the Al-Sham Private University was also announced to be placed under the supervision of the Ministry of Higher Education while all other party assets were to be transferred to the Ministry of Justice,^[100][45] including the former headquarters of the party, where it was turned into a settlement center for former members of the army and security forces who served under Assad.^[101][102]

On 20 January 2025, the building that housed the headquarters of a local branch of the party in Suwayda was transferred to a local branch of Damascus University by the Syrian transitional government.^[103][104]

On 29 January 2025, the party was formally dissolved by the newly declared president of the Syrian transitional government, Ahmed al-Sharaa, along with the 2012 constitution, the People's Assembly, the Syrian Arab Armed Forces, and the security services affiliated with the deposed regime.^[46]

The General Congress was supposed to be held every fourth year to elect members of the Central Command. Since 1980, its functions have been eclipsed by the Central Committee, which was empowered to elect the Central Command. By 1985's 8th Regional Congress, the Command Secretary was empowered to elect the Central Committee.^[105] The 8th Regional Congress would be the last congress held under Hafez al-Assad's rule.^[106] The next Regional Congress was held in June 2000 and elected Bashar al-Assad as Command Secretary and elected him as a candidate for the next presidential election.^[107]

Delegates to the General Congress were elected beforehand by the Central Command leadership. While all delegates came from the party's local organisation, they was forced to elect members presented by the leadership. However, some criticism was allowed. At the 8th Regional Congress, several delegates openly criticised the growing political corruption and the economic stagnation in Syria. They could also discuss important problems to the Central Command, which in turn could deal with them.^[108]

The Central Command, according to the Syrian Constitution, had the power to nominate a candidate for president.^[109] While the constitution did not state that the Secretary of the Central Command is the President of Syria, the charter of the National Progressive Front (NPF), of which the Ba'ath Party was a member, stated that the President and the Central Command Secretary is the NPF President, but this was not stated in any legal document.^[109] The 1st Extraordinary Regional Congress held in 1964 decided that the Secretary of the Central Command would also be head of state.^[110] The Central Command was officially responsible to the General Congress.^[111]

The Central Committee (

In 1963, the Military Committee established the Military Organisation, which consisted of 12 branches resembling their civilian counterparts. The Military Organisation was led by a Central Committee, which represented the Military Committee. These new institutions were established to stop the civilian faction meddling in the affairs of the Military Committee. The Military Organisation met with the other branches through the Military Committee, which was represented at the Regional and National Congresses and Commands. The Military Organisation was a very secretive body. Members were sworn not to divulge any information about the organisation to officers who were not members in order to strengthen the Military Committee's hold on the military. In June 1964, it was decided that no new members would be admitted to the organisation. The Military Committee was built on a democratic framework, and a Military Organization Congress was held to elect the members of the Military Committee. Only one congress was ever held.^[115]

The lack of a democratic framework led to internal divisions within the Military Organisation among the rank-and-file.

Ali Diab is the current head of the Ba'ath Party's Central Party School.[118]

The party had 19 branches in Syria: one in each of the thirteen provinces, one in Damascus, one in Aleppo and one at each of the country's four universities. In most cases the governor of a province, police chief, mayor and other local dignitaries comprised the Branch Command. The Branch Command Secretary and other executive positions were filled by full-time party employees.^[112]

Since 1970, membership of the Ba'ath Party in Syria expanded dramatically. In 1971, the party had 65,938 members; ten years later it stood at 374,332 and by mid-1992 it was 1,008,243. By mid-1992, over 14 percent of Syrians aged over 14 were members of the party. In 2003, the party membership stood at 1.8 million people, which is 18 percent of the population.[119] The increase in membership was not smooth. In 1985 a party organisational report stated that thousand of members had been expelled before the 7th Regional Congress held in 1980 because of indiscipline. The report also mentioned the increased tendency of opportunism among party members.^[119] Between 1980 and 1984, 133,850 supporter-members and 3,242 full members were expelled from the party.^[120]

The increase in members has led official propaganda, and leading members of the party and state, to say that the people and the party are inseparable.

The original Ba'ath headed by

Neo-Ba'athism advocates the creation of a "vanguard" of leftist revolutionaries committed to build an

This view was challenged by General

Since the end of the

Assad personality cult was portrayed as integral to the prosperity and security of the nation; with Hafez al-Assad being depicted as the father figure of the Syrian nation. Ceremonies and slogans of loyalty, praise and adulation of Assads were a daily part of schools, party centres, government offices, public spaces and the military. Official state propaganda attributed Assad with supernatural abilities combined by repetitive usage of symbolism that discouraged wider society from arenas for political activism. Upon the death of Hafez al-Assad in 2000, his successor Bashar al-Assad was depicted as a reformist and youthful hope. Hafez's inner circle elite was replaced by a far more restricted faction of elites closer to Bashar, often referred to as the "New Guard". Major posts in the armed forces were awarded to Alawite loyalists, family relatives and many non-Alawite elites that served under Hafez were expelled. Another important shift was the end of the Ba'th party's practical significance; with it being reduced to a formal structure for affirming fealty to Bashar and support for his revamped crackdowns on the newly established independent civil society groups, political activists and reformist voices that arose during the Damascus Spring in the 2000s.^{[131][132][133][134]}

Describing the nature of Assadist ideological propaganda in her work Ambiguities of Domination,

Like

During the rule of Salah Jadid, neo-Ba'athist ideologues openly denounced religion as a source of what they considered as the backwardness of the Arabs.

With the outbreak of the

Arab nation. The recent slogan of 'Bashar, Allah, Suriyya wa-bas' (Bashar, God, and Syria – that's it) possibly best epitomises how close the regime has come to creating a Syrian public religion in its own right. Whether the outward performance of 'regime rituals' was actually fully internalised or secretly mocked, it had to be practised and obeyed."^[147]

Status

Part of a series on
Ba'athism
Organizations Arab Ba'ath 1940–1947 Arab Ba'ath Movement 1940–1947 Ba'ath Party 1947–1966 Baath Party (pro-Iraqi) 1968–2003 Baath Party (pro-Syrian) 1966–2024
Variants Neo-Ba'athism 1966–2024 Saddamism 1979–2003
People Zaki al-Arsuzi Michel Aflaq Salah al-Din al-Bitar Abdullah Rimawi Wahib al-Ghanim Fuad al-Rikabi Salah Jadid Hafez al-Assad Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr Saddam Hussein Bashar al-Assad Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri
Literature On the Way of Resurrection The Battle for One Destiny The Genius of Arabic in Its Tongue
History Ba'athist Iraq Attempted assassination of Abdul-Karim Qasim Ramadan Revolution November 1963 coup d'état 17 July Revolution 1979 Ba'ath Party Purge Iran–Iraq War Gulf War UN sanctions Iraq War De-Ba'athification Ba'athist Syria Syrian Committee to Help Iraq 1963 / 1966 coup d'états Syrian invasion of Jordan Corrective Revolution Intervention in Lebanon Syrian occupation of Lebanon Syrian civil war Fall of the Assad regime
Regional organizations Algeria pro-Iraq pro-Syria Bahrain pro-Iraq pro-Syria Egypt pro-Iraq pro-Syria Iraq pro-Iraq pro-Syria Jordan pro-Iraq pro-Syria Kuwait pro-Iraq Lebanon pro-Iraq pro-Syria Libya pro-Iraq Mauritania pro-Iraq pro-Syria Palestine pro-Iraq pro-Syria Sudan pro-Iraq pro-Syria Syria pro-Iraq pro-Syria Tunisia pro-Iraq pro-Syria Yemen pro-Iraq pro-Syria
Splinter groups Arab Socialist Revolutionary Ba'ath Party 1960–1962/63 Socialist Lebanon 1965–1970 Arab Revolutionary Workers Party 1966–present Democratic Socialist Arab Ba'ath Party 1970–present Sudanese Ba'ath Party 2002–present
Armed groups Arab Liberation Front Al-Awda Al-Abud Network Jeish Muhammad Rejectionists Snake Party Supreme Command for Jihad and Liberation Naqshbandi Army General Military Council for Iraqi Revolutionaries Free Iraqi Army
Related topics Arab nationalism Arab socialism Assadist–Saddamist conflict Nasserism Pan-Arabism Waḥda, Ḥurriyya, Ishtirākiyya
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At the time of Bashar al-Assad's election in the party's June 2000 Regional Congress, which was fifteen years after the last such congress, Subhi Hadidi, a Syrian dissident, commented "The Ba'ath is in complete disarray. ... It's like a dead body. It's no longer a party in any normal sense of the word."[148] Hanna Batatu wrote, "Under Assad the character of the Ba'ath changed ... Whatever independence of opinion its members enjoyed in the past was now curtailed, a premium being placed on conformity and internal discipline. The party became in effect another instrument by which the regime sought to control the community at large or to rally it behind its policies. The party's cadres turned more and more into bureaucrats and careerists, and were no longer vibrantly alive ideologically as in the 1950s and 1960s, unconditional fidelity to Assad having ultimately overridden fidelity to old beliefs."^[149]

According to Volker Perthes, the Ba'ath Party was transformed under Assad; Perthes wrote, "It was further inflated such as to neutralise those who had supported the overthrown leftist leadership, it was de-ideologised; and it was restructured so as to fit into the authoritarian format of Assad's system, lose its avant-garde character and became an instrument for generating mass support and political control. It was also to become the regime's main patronage network."^[113]

The Ba'ath Party was turned into a patronage network closely intertwined with the bureaucracy, and soon became virtually indistinguishable from the state, while membership rules were liberalized. In 1987, the party had 50,000 members in Syria, with another 200,000 candidate members on probation.^[150] The party lost its independence from the state and was turned into a tool of the Assad government, which remained based essentially in the security forces. Other parties that accepted the basic orientation of the government were permitted to operate again. The National Progressive Front was established in 1972 as a coalition of these legal parties, which were only permitted to act as junior partners to the Ba'ath, with very little room for independent organisation.^[151]

Despite its social and political subservience to

Assad family's tight control over the state, served to organize supporters and mobilize mass-rallies for social legitimacy. Despite affirmation of multiple parties in the 2012 constitution; no real opposition was allowed to operate in practice. All candidates to the People's Assembly and local councils were from the National Progressive Front (NPF), a Ba'athist-led alliance firmly committed to the government. After 2018, the Ba'ath party expanded its political dominance and fielded more candidates in regional and national electoral processes, at the expense of other parties in the NPF. Internally, the party was strictly monitored by the High Command and regional Ba'athist leaders suspected of insufficient loyalty were expelled as "grey members" (al-Ramadiyyin).^[152][153]

As of 2022, the Ba'athists continued to dominate the regional councils, civil services, parliament, army and Mukhabarat. Vast majority of legalized trade unions, students associations also belonged to the Ba'ath party. More than a third of government employees in rural regions were Baath members; whereas in urban areas about half the officers were Baathists. Baath party institutions were vital to establish bureaucratic functioning in the government-controlled regions. Other parties of the National Progressive Front were minority in size.^[154]

Anthem

Arabic script	Arabic transliteration	English translation
يا شبـاب العرب هيـا وانطـلق يا موكبـي وارفـع الصوت قويـاً عاش بعــــث العـرب نحــــــن فـلاح وعامــل وشـــبــاب لا يلـــين نحــــــن جنـدي مقــاتـل نحن صوت الكادحين من جذور الأرض جئنا مـن صميم الألـــــــم بالضحــــايـا ما بخلنـــا بالعطـــاء الأكــــــرم خنــــدق الثوار واحـــد أو يقـال الظــلم زال صــامد يا بعــث صـامد أنت في ساح النضــال وحــــــد الأحـرار هيــا وحــــد الشعب العظـيم وامــض يا بعــث قويـاً للغـــد الحــــر الـكريــــم	ya šabāba-l'arbi hayyā wanṭaliq yā mawkibī warfa'i-ṣṣawta qawiyān 'aša Ba'athu-l'arabi naḥnu fallaḥu wa'āmil washabābu-lla yalīn naḥnu jundi yun muqātil naḥnu sawtu-lkādaḥin min juðūri-l'Arḍi ji.nā min samimi-l-alami bī-ḍḍaḥāyā mā bakhilnā bi-l'aṭā il'akrami khandaqu-ththuwwāri wāḥid .aw yuqāla-ẓẓulmu zāl ṣāmidun ya Ba'athu ṣāmid .anta fī sāḥi-nniḍāl waḥidi-l.aḥrara hayyā waḥidi-shsha'aba-l'aẓīm wāmḍi yā Ba'athu qawiyyān lilġadi-lḥurri-lkarīm	Arab youth, raise and march to fight your enemies, Raise your voice: "Long live the Arab Ba'ath!" We are farmers, workers and persistent youth, We are soldiers, we are the voice of labourers, We came from roots of this land and pain from hearts, We weren't misers in giving sacrifice nobly. All revolutionaries into the trenches, there's still injustice, The Ba'ath will never surrender and stop struggling. Go Ba'ath. Unite all revolutionaries, unite all great people, Go strong for tomorrow in freedom and dignity.
Lyrics: Suleiman al-Issa[155]

Election results

Presidential elections

Election	Party candidate	Votes	%	Result
1971	Hafez al-Assad	1,919,609	99.2%	Elected Y
1978		3,975,729	99.9%	Elected Y
1985		6,200,428	100%	Elected Y
1991		6,726,843	99.99%	Elected Y
1999		8,960,011	100%	Elected Y
2000	Bashar al-Assad	8,689,871	99.7%	Elected Y
2007		11,199,445	99.82%	Elected Y
2014		10,319,723	88.7%	Elected Y
2021		13,540,860	95.1%	Elected Y

Syrian People's Assembly elections

Election	Party leader	Seats	+/–
1949		1 / 114	1
1953		0 / 82	1
1954	Akram al-Hawrani	22 / 140	22
1961	Nureddin al-Atassi	20 / 140	2
1973	Hafez al-Assad	122 / 250	102
1977		125 / 250	3
1981		127 / 250	2
1986		130 / 250	3
1990		134 / 250	4
1994		135 / 250	1
1998		135 / 250	0
2003	Bashar al-Assad	167 / 250	32
2007		169 / 250	2
2012		168 / 250	1
2016		172 / 250	4
2020		167 / 250	5
2024		169 / 250	2

References