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Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party

In 1968, the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party came to power during a military coup. The word Ba’ath means renaissance or rebirth in Arabic. The Iraqi regime has rewritten the history of this event to portray the coup as a revolution. In 1968, the Ba’ath Party instituted a provisional constitution that established a Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) to promulgate laws until a National Assembly could be elected and select the head of state (the president) with a two-thirds majority. The Secretary-General of the Iraq Command of the Ba’ath Party became chairman of the RCC, thereby placing the Ba’ath Party in control of Iraq. Through a variety of intrigues, Saddam Hussein became head of the Ba’ath Party and was appointed president by the RCC on 16 July 1979. He since exercised nearly exclusive power in Iraq.

Saddam Hussein was last elected unanimously as secretary-general of the Iraq Command of the Ba’ath Party at the Party Congress on 17 May 2001. This “election” provided him the formal legitimacy to remain chairman of the RCC and president of Iraq, even though his “election” was never in doubt.

Oscar Clarke argued "One might also recognise in the Baathist picture of the world some features which correspond with the National Socialists of Germany. The Al-Muthanna Club was an Iraqi pan-Arab precursor to the Baathists, active throughout the 1930s. One member, Yunis al-Sabawi, translated Mein Kampf into Arabic, whilst, under the guidance of Fritz Grobba, the German ambassador, the group developed a Hitler Youth style organisation, the Al-Futuwwa, of which Saddam Hussein was a member."

As World War II approached, Nazi Germany attempted to capitalize on the anti-British sentiments in Iraq and to woo Baghdad to the Axis cause. Surely, the Nazi leaders thought, Muslims would see that the Germans were their blood brothers: loyal, iron-willed, and most important, convinced that Jews were the evil that most plagued the world. Himmler in a January 1944 speech called Islam “a practical and attractive religion for soldiers,” with its promise of paradise and beautiful women for brave martyrs after their death. “This is the kind of language a soldier understands,” Himmler gushed.

In 1939 Iraq severed diplomatic relations with Germany — as it was obliged to do because of treaty obligations with Britain. In 1940, however, the Iraqi nationalist and ardent anglophobe Rashid Ali succeeded Nuri as Said as prime minister. The new prime minister was reluctant to break completely with the Axis powers, and he proposed restrictions on British troop movements in Iraq.

Shortly after seizing power in 1941, Rashid Ali appointed an ultranationalist civilian cabinet, which gave only conditional consent to British requests in April 1941 for troop landings in Iraq. The British quickly retaliated by landing forces at Basra. The Germans, however, were preoccupied with campaigns in Crete and with preparations for the invasion of the Soviet Union, and they could spare little assistance to Iraq. Rashid Ali fled to Berlin, where he spent the war broadcasting Nazi propaganda in Arabic. Baathism, the original idea in 1943, was not unwilling to ally with the Axis.

The Ba’ath Party was founded in Damascus in 1943 by Michel Aflaq, a Lebanese Christian and Salah al Din Bitar, a Syrian intellectual. Together, they were thrilled by the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party. Their intent was to promote secularism, socialism, and pan-Arab unionism. The Baath party had a strong resemblance to the Nazi party, as it was ultimately based on a faith in racial superiority. The revolution was not just a political event; it was a mystical, never-ending process of struggle, ascent, and salvation.

The Baath movement in one country was considered merely an aspect of, or a phase leading to, "a unified democratic socialist Arab nation." That nation, when it materialized, would be under a single, unified Arab national leadership. Theoretically, therefore, success or failure at the regional level would have a corresponding effect on the movement toward that Arab nation. Moreover, the critical test of legitimacy for any Baath regime would necessarily be whether or not the regime's policies and actions were compatible with the basic aims of the revolution — aims epitomized in the principles of "unity, freedom, and socialism.

Students returning from studies in Syria and Lebanon, as well as by Palestinian refugees, reportedly introduced this ideology to Iraq. During much of the 1950s and 1960s, the Ba’ath Party operated in Iraq as a secret political organization. In 1952, the Iraqi wing of the party, formally known as the Iraq Regional Command, was officially created.

To achieve power within the various Arab countries Ba’athists had to operate clandestinely as one of many secretive opposition movements dealing with government counterintelligence units and their own splinter groups. The requirement for the Ba’ath Party to carry out its activities in secret until it seized power for the second time in 1968 remained a central part of Ba’ath organizational culture throughout the organization’s existence. During its underground years, the Ba’ath became increasingly hierarchical, secretive, and accustomed to violence as a political tool.

The Ba’ath Party was invited to join the Iraqi government installed after the 1958 coup that removed Iraq’s monarchy, but it gained real power in 1963 after infiltrating the military and conducting a coup. A nationalist coup removed the Ba’athists from power on 18 November 1963. After splitting with the Syrian wing of the party in 1966 and renewing its influence within the Iraqi Army, the Ba’ath Party reemerged in 1968 to conduct a coup and firmly seize control of Iraq.

In 1966 a major schism within the Baath movement had resulted in the creation of two rival National Commands, one based in Damascus and the other in Baghdad. Both commands claim to be the legitimate authority for the Baath, but since 1966 they have been mutually antagonistic. Michel Aflaq, one of the original cofounders of the Baath Party, was the secretary general of the Baghdad-based National Command, and Saddam Husayn was the vice-chairman. In practice, the Syrian Regional Command, under Hafiz al Assad, controlled the Damascus-based National Command of the Baath Party, while the Iraqi Regional Command controlled the Baghdad-based National Command.

The Iraq Command of the Ba’ath Party ran all party activities in Iraq. The Iraq Command consists of party chiefs for the various provincial organizations and other senior members responsible for specific duties such as foreign and worker relations and military affairs. The secretary-general of the Iraq Command of the Ba’ath Party is the chairman of the RCC and Iraq’s president.

As of early 1988, the Baath Party claimed about 10 percent of the population, a total of 1.5 million supporters and sympathizers; of this total, full party members, or cadres, were estimated at only 30,000, or 0.2 percent. The cadres were the nucleus of party organization, and they functioned as leaders, motivators, teachers, administrators, and watchdogs. Generally, party recruitment procedures emphasized selectivity rather than quantity, and those who desired to join the party had to pass successfully through several apprentice-like stages before being accepted into full membership. The Baath' s elitist approach derived from the principle that the party's effectiveness could only be measured by its demonstrable ability to mobilize and to lead the people, and not by "size, number, or form."

Participation in the party was virtually a requisite for social mobility. The basic organizational unit of the Baath was the party cell or circle (halaqah). Composed of between three and seven members, cells functioned at the neighborhood or the village level, where members met to discuss and to carry out party directives. A minimum of two and a maximum of seven cells formed a party division (firqah). Divisions operated in urban quarters, larger villages, offices, factories, schools, and other organizations. Division units were spread throughout the bureaucracy and the military, where they functioned as the ears and eyes of the party. Two to five divisions formed a section (shabah). A section operated at the level of a large city quarter, a town, or a rural district.

Above the section was the branch (fira), which was composed of at least two sections and which operated at the provincial level. There were twenty-one Baath Party branches in Iraq, one in each of the eighteen provinces and three in Baghdad. The union of all the branches formed the party's congress, which elected the Regional Command. The Regional Command was both the core of party leadership and the top decision-making body.

As Saddam Hussein consolidated his rule over Iraq, he consistently viewed the Ba’ath Party as an instrument of dictatorial power and social mobilization. He did not take its ideology and values seriously as principles for leadership, and individuals at the highest levels were noted for their public and ostentatiously blind loyalty to the President.

While many members of the top leadership were Sunni, this was not an absolute requirement. Proven Saddam loyalists included Shi’ites, Kurds, and various sects of Christians. If Saddam believed a subordinate was a proven and committed loyalist, he did not particularly care what that person’s sect or ethnicity was. On the other hand, Saddam often viewed his own family and Sunni Arabs from the Tikrit area as having a head start on loyalty.

On the eve of the 2003 US-led invasion, Saddam’s Iraq was a one of the most rigid totalitarian states in the world, with a privileged elite composed of military leaders and Ba’ath Party members, virtually all of whom were terrified of the leader. The Ba’ath Party had at least two million members at that time, with some estimates reaching 2.5 million. To put this number in context, the population of Iraq according to a US Government 2002 estimate was a shade over 24,000,000, of whom about 4,000,000 were Sunni Arabs [along with the same number of Sunni Kurds, with most of the remainder being Shia Arabs]. This might suggest that most adult Sunni Arab males were members of the Ba'ath.

Joining the Ba’ath Party in Saddam’s Iraq was a rational decision for anyone seeking to feed their family and live in conditions other than squalor and poverty. The greatest and most direct system of rewards and punishment had been put into place for rewarding loyalty to the government and the party. In Iraq, a non-Ba’athist primary school teacher would usually be paid the equivalent of U.S. $4 per month, while a Ba’athist in the same position, doing the same work, would be paid around $200 per month. The best and most numerous jobs in Iraq are found in the government and in state-controlled enterprises such as the oil industry. In Iraq, as in most Middle Eastern countries, there is not a strong private sector with a wide variety of good jobs.