Michel Aflaq

Michel Aflaq (Arabic: ميشيل عفلق Mīšīl `Aflāq, born 1910, died June 23, 1989) was the ideological founder of Ba’athism, a form of secular Arab nationalism.

The Ba'th Party (also spelled Baath or Ba'ath; Arabic: حزب البعث العربي الاشتراكي) was founded in 1945 as a left-wing, secular Arab nationalist political party. It has also been called the Arab Socialist Party. It functioned as a pan-Arab party with branches in different Arab countries, but was strongest in Syria and Iraq, coming into power in both countries in 1963. In 1966 the Syrian and Iraqi parties split into two rival organizations. Both Ba'ath parties retained the same name and maintain parallel structures in the Arab world.

When the Ba'th Party came to power in Syria March 8, 1963 it gained and held a monopoly on political power. That same year, the Ba'thists gained control of Iraq and ran the country on two separate occasions, briefly in 1963 and then for a longer period lasting from July, 1968 until 2003. After the de facto deposition of President Saddam Hussein's Ba'thist regime in the course of the 2003 Iraq war, the invading United States Army banned the Iraqi Ba'th Party in June, 2003.

The Arabic word Ba'th means "resurrection" as in the party's founder Michel Aflaq's published works On The Way Of Resurrection. Ba'thist beliefs combine Arab Socialism, nationalism, and Pan-Arabism. The mostly secular ideology often contrasts with that of other Arab governments in the Middle East, which sometimes tend to have leanings towards Islamism and theocracy.

Early Life

Born in Damascus to a middle class Greek Orthodox Christian family, Aflaq was first educated in the westernized schools of French mandate Syria, where he was considered a "brilliant student." He then went to university at the Sorbonne in Paris, where he first developed his Arab nationalist ideals, eventually attempting to combine socialism with the vision of a Pan-Arab nation. In his political pursuits, Aflaq became committed to Arab unity and the freeing of the Middle East from Western colonialism.

Career

Upon returning to the Middle East, Aflaq became a school teacher and was active in political circles. In September 1940, after France's defeat in World War II, Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar set up the nucleus of what was later to become the Ba’ath Party. The first conference of the Ba’ath Party (in full, the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party), was to be in 1947.

In 1949, Aflaq served as Syria's education minister for a short period. In 1952, he left Syria, escaping from the new regime, returning two years later in 1954. Aflaq went on to play an important role in the achievement of the unity between Syria and Egypt in 1958.

It was reportedly at this time that Aflaq first came into contact with the young Iraqi Ba’thist Saddam Hussein who had fled to Syria after participating in a failed assassination attempt on Iraqi Prime Minister Abd al-Karim Qasim. Aflaq is said to have formed a close relationship with Hussein and to have assisted him in his promotion to full party member. Although Aflaq's later claimed that he did not meet Hussein until after 1963 .

Despite being co-founder of the Ba'ath party, Michel Aflaq had little connection to the government that took power in Syria under that name in 1963. Eventually, the government and he had a falling out and he was forced to flee to Iraq where another Ba’ath Party had taken power. While this party also failed to follow most of ‘Aflaq's teachings, he became a symbol for the regime of Saddam Hussein that Iraq was in fact the true Ba’athist country. In Iraq he was given a token position as head of the party and his objections to the regime were silenced and ignored.

In his writings Aflaq had been stridently in favor of free speech and other human rights and aid for the lower classes. He stated that the Arab nationalist state that would be created should be a democracy. These ideals were never put in place by the regimes that used his ideology. Most scholars see the Assad regime in Syria and Saddam's regime in Iraq to have only employed Aflaq's ideology as a pretense for dictatorship. John Devlin in his "The Baath Party: Rise and Metamorphosis" outlines how the parties became dominated by minority groups who came to dominate their society. Elizabeth Picard takes a somewhat different approach, arguing both Assad and Hussein used Ba’athism as a guise to set up what were in fact military dictatorships.

Death and Legacy

Upon his death in 1989 he was given a state funeral. The government of Iraq claimed that on his death he converted to Islam. A tomb was built for him in Baghdad designed by Chadagee and, according to propaganda that was part of the Iraqi dictator’s continuing policy of using Aflaq’s name to promote his own political purposes, paid for by Hussein personally. The tomb, widely regarded as a work of great artistic merit, was located on the western grounds of the Ba'ath Party Pan-Arab Headquarters, at the intersection of al-Kindi Street and the Qādisiyyah Expressway overpass. That area is today at the far western end of the grounds of United States military Base Union III in Baghdad's Green Zone. Although there were rumors and accusations that his tomb was destroyed during the war, some say the burial chamber and building above it were left completely untouched. Its blue-tiled dome can be seen peeking above the concrete T-walls surrounding the Camp's perimeter.

Quotes

• "A day will come when the nationalists will find themselves the only defenders of Islam. They will have to give a special meaning to it if they want the Arab nation to have a good reason for survival." (In memory of the Arab Prophet, 1 April, 1943)

• "The connection of Islam to Arabism is not, therefore, similar to that of any religion to any nationalism. The Arab Christians, when their nationalism is fully awakened and when they restore their genuine character, will recognize that Islam for them is nationalist education in which they have to be absorbed in order to understand and love it to the extent that they become concerned about Islam as about the most precious thing in their Arabism. If the actual reality is still far from this wish, the new generation of Arab Christians has a task which it should perform with daring and detachment, sacrificing for it their pride and benefits, for there is nothing that equals Arabism and the honor of belonging to it." (In memory of the Arab Prophet – April, 1943)

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Kedourie, Sylvia. Arab nationalism an anthology. Berkeley: University of California Press 1976. ISBN 9780520030435
• Reich, Bernard. Political leaders of the contemporary Middle East and North Africa a biographical dictionary. New York: Greenwood Press 1990. ISBN 9780313262135
• Schaffer, David. Iraq. San Diego: Greenhaven Press 2004. ISBN 9780737716610

External links

• Quotes from Michel Aflaq - English Translation Retrieved October 18, 2007.
• Pictures of Aflaq's Tomb in Baghdad Retrieved October 18, 2007.
• The five volumes of Michel Aflaq's "On The Way Of Resurrection" (Fi Sabil al Baath)in Arabic Retrieved October 18, 2007.

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