The Baath Regime and Its Collapse

While Syria lived for nearly four centuries under Ottoman rule, it came under the French Mandate in 1923. It gained independence as one of the founding members of the United Nations on October 25, 1945, though the French remained in Syria until April 1946.

A period of turbulence unfolded until 1971. Although Syria formed the United Arab Republic with Egypt in 1958, the union dissolved in 1961. That rupture became the opening chapter of an authoritarian era—one anchored in single-party rule—that would last until 2024.

In November 1970, Defense Minister General Hafez al-Assad carried out a coup. In March 1971, he declared himself President, inaugurating the Assad era, which continued until his death in 2000. From that point onward, the Syrian Baath Party governed Syria under a one-party regime.

The French withdrew after instituting arrangements that would later generate profound structural problems: they divided the country into six zones on the basis of religion or sect. Yet the military, political, and bureaucratic elite were largely recruited from the Alawites, who constituted roughly 11 percent of the population. A comparable pattern—though in the opposite direction—also emerged in Baath-ruled Iraq, where the British constructed a governing order centered on Sunni Arabs, around 20 percent of the population. The striking fact is that neither the Alawites in Syria nor the Sunnis in Iraq objected to this inequitable architecture, nor did they appear to anticipate how such arrangements could incubate chronic instability and conflict.

In 2014, the United States organized the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)—roughly 75 percent of which consisted of Arab tribal elements—as a counter-ISIS instrument. By 2026, as the SDF entered a phase of fragmentation under the de facto dominance of the PYD/PKK, the Kurdish side did not concede that it was neither natural nor just for one faction to control nearly one-third of Syria’s territory, along with critical oil and water resources, the Tishrin Dam, and highly productive agricultural zones. Across these three cases, a common political reality emerges: when the British extended patronage and disproportionate ownership to Sunni elites in Iraq, when the French empowered Alawite elites in Syria, and when the United States conferred strategic leverage on the SDF, neither Arabs (Sunni or Alawite) nor Kurds raised principled objections. Instead, each sought to convert a moment of advantage into a durable status and a set of de facto entitlements. Yet the underlying driver of disputes and violence is precisely the unjust distribution of resources and status—in a word, injustice.

Syria and Iraq shared another important feature: Baathist ideology. Baathism—whose intellectual architect was the Christian thinker Michel Aflaq—rested on Arab nationalism. Aflaq famously argued that “Every Arab must become a Muhammad, because Muhammad brought Arabs onto the stage of history.” Both Baath parties represented some of the most radical secularism in the region. In Syria, the two principles of “secularism” and “socialism” were explicitly codified, and Syrian Baathists’ international orientation was toward the Soviet Union. Soviet patronage mattered not only in Syria; even in Egypt—despite Gamal Abdel Nasser’s proximity to the “Third World” or the Non-Aligned Movement (alongside India’s Nehru and Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito)—Moscow remained the preferred strategic bloc.

In Islamic political history, minority rule by a particular social grouping—defined by distinctive sociological attributes—has sometimes been described as mulūk al-ṭawāʾif (rule by competing factions). In such a model, the dominant sociological bloc uses the coercive and administrative instruments of the captured state apparatus to impose, through top-down and bloc-like social engineering, a single ideology, identity, and collective ideal. The tendency of such regimes to drift toward dictatorship—and even totalitarianism—derives from the internal logic of the system they choose.

Baathists attempted to adapt traditional group domination to the modern nation-state. This attempt became one of the principal sources of persistent crises. On close inspection, Kemalism can be read—under Turkey’s specific conditions—as a localized variant of Baathism. The key difference is that, despite their secular-socialist content, the authoritarian regimes in Iraq, Syria, and Egypt did not try to overhaul multiple legal customs within civil society. In short, Iraq, Syria, and Egypt were dictatorships, but their systems were not fully totalitarian. Even today, in line with the Ottoman customary tradition, civil/personal-status law for Muslims and Christians—and even for adherents of the Hanafi and Shafi‘i schools—continues to be administered according to religion and sect. In Turkey, by contrast, Kemalism has been authoritarian and—where it possessed capacity—carried explicitly totalizing ambitions. It is not uncommon even now to find political actors who nostalgically long for the single-party Kemalist period (1923–1950).

Despite meaningful differences among the region’s regimes, shared characteristics are also unavoidable, precisely because “national” systems often converge in their institutional DNA. These include: (1) governance that is fundamentally grounded in family or clique dominance; (2) pervasive nepotism, corruption, and bribery; (3) basic rights and freedoms stripped of genuine moral and legal substance; (4) rulers and ruling structures that are dependent on one external power or another; and (5) a hegemonic national ideology sustained by empty meta-discourse, mass-debilitating propaganda, and a cult of personality. In such systems, the primary purpose of education becomes the substitution of ideology for religion. In Turkey, for instance, two ministries explicitly bear the term “national”: the Ministry of National Defense and the Ministry of National Education. (6) Finally, legitimacy is sustained by keeping alive a grandiose objective that exceeds the country’s real capabilities (a “Red Apple”–style horizon), alongside an invented enemy threat and the demonization of domestic opponents. Thus, Syria’s political mythology has been anchored in the ideal of “Greater Syria” across Bilād al-Shām (Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan), in anti-Israel sentiment, and in the Palestinian cause. Baathists’ participation in the “Rejection Front” or the “Axis of Resistance” was also tied to this Greater Syria imaginary. Saddam Hussein’s barely concealed ambition was leadership of the Arab world; once he enjoyed generous Arab and Western backing against Iran, he concluded that the moment had arrived and moved into Iraq. Nasser, for his part, never doubted Egypt’s claim to regional leadership. Predictably, if Baathists carried a Greater Syria ideal encompassing Bilād al-Shām, then right-wing conservatives and crypto-nationalist Islamists in Turkey would develop their own visions of a “Greater Turkey” or a “Restored Ottoman” project.

Syria, while under Russian protection at the macro-strategic level, also enjoyed Iranian support. The foundations of Syrian–Iranian alignment—often misunderstood in Turkey—did not arise from an “ontological” unity of sectarian identity; it was not a straightforward Shi‘i–Alawite congruence. A doctrinal and historical examination shows that many Shi‘i authorities have treated Alawism as heterodox, at best classifying it among extremist sects (ghulāt). Alawites, in turn, emphasize that their beliefs diverge substantially from doctrinal Twelver Shi‘ism. The Syria–Iran partnership, therefore, should be interpreted through other variables—above all, reciprocal advantage under realist calculations. Grand national projects, even when backed by real coercive capacity, compete and seek dominance; neither neo-Ottomanist ambition nor Arab nationalist Baathism succeeded in eliminating the other.

Today, with the partial exceptions of Iran, Iraq to some extent, Yemen under Ansar Allah, and Algeria, nearly all regional states appear to be consolidating under an American security umbrella. Until 2025, Syria alone remained firmly in Russia’s camp. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the “Imam’s Line” (Khaṭṭ al-Imām)—whose basic principles were articulated by Ayatollah Khomeini—positioned Iran against the United States. This, at least at an abstract level, softened Syria’s radical hostility toward Iran during the Shah’s era. Once the Iran–Iraq War began, Iran could not sustain warfighting with the Shah-era arsenal alone and sought new arms supply channels. Libya and Syria stepped in. Libya, part of the Rejection Front, recognized that Iran had chosen Israel as the principal arena of confrontation with the United States; Qaddafi began providing arms, though not for long. Syria, however, continued to transfer to Iran weapons it obtained from the Soviet Union, producing a contingent, interest-driven rapprochement between the two states.

A second factor drawing Syria closer to Iran was the Muslim Brotherhood’s attempted armed uprising in 1982. Unlike Brotherhood branches elsewhere, the Syrian Brotherhood—shaped by the political-cadre culture associated with the Committee of Union and Progress—launched its revolt at such a critical moment that it could have meant Iran’s rapid defeat by Saddam. Hafez al-Assad crushed the uprising with extraordinary brutality. In the process, it became dramatically clear how incoherent—and perhaps manipulated—the Brotherhood’s putsch had been. For while Syrian Islamists rose against Baath repression, they ignored Saddam’s Baathist brutality, even praising him. Figures such as Sa‘id Hawwa drew distinctions between the two Baath regimes and adopted a posture of hostility toward Khomeini—an outcome that produced profound disappointment.

Those who attempted—through the Brotherhood’s reckless uprising—to force Syria into a different camp succeeded again in 2011: the Arab Spring that began in Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere ignited a Syrian civil war that would last thirteen years. In December 2024, following a global and regional operation in which the Muslim Brotherhood no longer played any meaningful role, Baath rule ended. Syria ceased to be a pivotal state within the Rejection Front / Axis of Resistance and shifted into the American and Israeli camp.

In my reading, the background strategic driver behind today’s developments in Syria is Israel’s plan to consolidate full, de facto control over Palestine. All other events are being shaped—and manipulated—according to this strategic objective. Israel, for the moment, appears to have moved significantly closer to its target. The Kurdish issue—already fraught with serious internal contradictions—is being instrumentalized as a tool in this broader project. Kurds, Iranians, Turks, and Arabs function as pawns in a realist chessboard for the United States, Europe, and Israel. The suffering of regional societies and the injustices they endure matter only insofar as they serve—and can be leveraged within—the overarching military and geopolitical strategies of America and Israel.