Thursday, April 10, 2003

Syria’s and Iraq’s regimes are based on Baathism, a variant of Nasser’s brand of secular-Arab nationalism. Baathism has failed. Since it is pan-Arab, it holds that all Arabs should unite into one Arab state. This quest undermined the legitimacy and retarded the development of both Iraq and Syria as nation-states. Underneath facades of unity enforced by state repression, their politics are still defined primarily by tribalism, sectarianism, and gang/clan-like competition. It is unlikely that any institutions created by tyrannical secular-Arab nationalist leaders, particularly the army, will escape being torn apart. The leaders of both Syria and Iraq seek to overcome the consequences of this internal failure by engaging in relentless external efforts to control the region.

Saddam grew up as a cadre in the highly ideological and dogmatic Baath party structure. His speeches, from the time he entered government in 1968 until today, have had a consistent ideological, pseudo-intellectual character, even if in the past decade a layer of Islamist rhetoric has been added. From his first declarations to his last, he has always presented the Arabs as the master race, whose history and accomplishments are glorious. He has always had a mystical belief in self-purification through violence, the notion that the soul is elevated through warfare and killing. And most important, he has always been committed to the life of relentless struggle, of ever-widening wars and confrontations, of perpetual revolution, which undermines all objective truth, all stability, all possibility of rest and peace. He has believed all this in the name of some final and transcendent conquest for himself and the Arab nation.

Since the destruction of the embodiment of the driving force of Islam, the Khilafah, Muslims have been searching for a way to reverse their decline. Unfortunately sometimes the search is in the wrong place. In the Arab world, Baathism, which stands for resurrection, was put forward to replace the Deen of Islam as the driving force for unity, change and progress. The Baathist party evolved in Syria in the1940 s from the merger of three Arab nationalist parties, Zaki Arsuzi' al-Baath al-Arabi, Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din Bitar's Harakat al-Baath al- Arabi, and Akram Hawrani's Arab Socialist Party. It later spread to the rest of the Arab world to places like Iraq. The central concept of Baathism was Arab nationalism with a coating of socialism. It was a plan for uniting all Arabic-speaking peoples into one powerful Arab nation with the motto of "One Arab Nation, One Immortal Mission". Prominence was given to the Arabic language, even Islamic achievements were recast as Arab success stories.

When the champion of socialism, the Communist bloc, disintegrated Baathism became a spent force with little energy left. However, its Arab nationalist aspect continued to display signs of life. Some Middle Eastern leaders have tried to cast the impending US war on Iraq in an Arab nationalist light, portraying it as an aggression against a fellow Arab brother. Since Saddam Hussein stood to lose everything, he was quick to take advantage of this.

posted by Shaun Kenney | 4/10/2003 07:12:00 PM | 0 comments

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