Word: baathist
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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High Leaders. When the Baathists seized power in March 1963, they seemed little different from their many predecessors; in 18 years of independence, Syria has had 15 coups, eight of them successful and almost all bloodless. But last July, when there was an uprising by rebels supporting Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, the difference be came clear. Baathist Strongman Hafez smashed the revolt and slew 27 Nasserite leaders - the first such mass execu tion in modern Syrian history. Warned Hafez: "Let them think twice before trying again. And if they try, let them be ready...
...unrest spread, a 15-year-old schoolboy in a classroom in Hama (pop. 110,000) erased the Baathist slogan, "One Single Arab Nation with an Immortal Mission," and wrote instead, "The Atheist Baath Is Against God!" The boy was sentenced to a year's hard labor, and his classmates went on strike. The sheiks and mullahs of Hama's 65 mosques denounced Baathist oppression, and surging Moslem mobs filled the streets. The police opened fire and the battle of Hama began...
...apparently made his point. An emergency meeting of the Baath high command decided upon a plague-on-both-your-houses gesture: Shabib, Jawad and five aides were hustled into another plane and sent into exile too-in Beirut. Strangely silent in the uproar was the one non-Baathist in a position of power, Iraq's President Abdul Salam Aref, who was reportedly under palace arrest...
...Paris he argued politics with other Afro-Asian students, read Marx, Nietzsche and Jefferson. He says, "I quickly found Marxism inadequate, based on materialism without human and spiritual values, without national consciousness. Nations are only large families, and the Arab family needs more than Marx. Thus we evolved the Baathist doctrine of socialism mingled with nationalism and the human spirit...
Ever since the ruling Baath Party in Syria and Iraq fell out with Gamal Abdel Nasser, damping hopes of a new Arab federation, the Baathists have loudly maintained that there was still room for cooperation with Egypt's strongman. Last week their thin façade split crashingly apart. On the very day originally set for a plebiscite in the three countries to form a tripartite nation, the Baathist high command denounced Nasser by name and called on Egyptians to rise up against...