The Neo-Ba'th Party of Syria

The Ba'th party whose full name was 'The Party of Arab Renaissance', was established and developed in Syria during the forties as a party of the urban petit-bourgeois intelligentsia. Its founders were Michel Aflak and Salah-ad-Din-al-Beitar, and its motto was 'one Arab nation with an eternal mission'. Its ideology was based on a doctrine formulated in the party platform adopted at the first convention in I947. Essentially, this doctrine was a blend of nationalist pan-Arab radicalism with a moderate social programme agrarian reform and partial nationalization without infringing individual property rights, and with a neutralist policy towards the global struggle between the communist and western blocs. In order to emphasize the aspiration for unity, the party was from the start organized not on a regional Syrian basis but on an all-Arab one. Branches were set up in various Arab countries, and from I954 these were led by the all-Arab party leadership whose headquarters were, for the most part, in Damascus. Although its main support came from the Sunnite and Christian intelligentsia in Damascus, it set up branches in the provincial towns and in the areas populated by the two large communities of the Alawis in the north and Druzes in the south, as well as among the peasants and workers. Special attention was paid to army officers. In the early I95os the Ba'th party merged with Akram al-Haurani's Arab Socialist Party, whose stronghold was its place of origin, the central Syrian city of Hama, and the united party was called the Arab Socialist Ba'th Party. The rise of the party in the fifties was the main factor prompting the Syrian parliament to decide in principle on a federal union with Egypt (I956). Faced with the threat, real or imaginary, of a communist takeover at the end of I957, the party leaders decided to implement the principle immediately. President Nasser's terms were as follows: a full union not a federative one and the aboli

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