On 8 December 2024, to the great joy of most Syrians, the ruthless regime of Bashar al-Asad came to an end. It is time to reflect on the 54-year-long rule of the Asads.
Nikolaos van Dam*
On 8 December 2024, to the great joy of most Syrians, the ruthless regime of Bashar al-Asad came to an end. It is time to reflect on the 54-year-long rule of the Asads.
Secular Arab Nationalism
It all began with idealism when Hafiz al-Asad (a member of Syria’s Alawite minority) joined the Arab Socialist Ba’th Party in the late 1940s. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the Arab nationalist unity ideals promoted by Michel ‘Aflaq, a Greek Orthodox Christian, who was one of the party’s founders. A defining feature of Ba’th ideology was its secular character: all Arabs were seen as equals, regardless of religion.
This made the Ba’th Party particularly appealing to members of Arab religious minorities such as Alawites, Druze, Isma’ilis, and Christians. In addition, the party’s socialist ideals especially attracted Arabs from poorer rural areas, where many minorities were also concentrated.
The Coup of the Secret Ba’thist Military Committee (1963)
The first successful Arab nationalist unification project, also supported by the Syrian Ba’th Party, was realized in 1958 with the establishment of the United Arab Republic (UAR)—a union between Egypt and Syria. It lasted only until 1961, because the experiment turned out to be deeply disappointing to many Syrians due to the overwhelmingly dominant role of President Nasser and the Egyptians, who relegated the Syrians to a clearly secondary position.
In response, a group of Syrian military officers brought the union to an end by staging a coup in 1961, ushering in a period of Syrian history known as the “Separatist Period” (1961–1963).
During this time, the parliamentary system and the traditional conservative political elite that had ruled Syria prior to the union were reinstated. Nonetheless, their authority was overshadowed by a group of Sunni military officers from Damascus who wielded real power behind the scenes.
This restoration of the old order was strongly opposed by the leftist Ba‘thists, whose military officers seized power in a coup on 8 March 1963, thereby overthrowing the conservative establishment.
Following the Ba‘thist takeover, Syria’s multiparty system was effectively dismantled. Only a handful of ideologically compatible or strategically useful parties were allowed to operate under strict supervision. Genuine political pluralism was eliminated, and Ba‘thist authoritarianism became the cornerstone of Syrian governance.
Before the Egyptian-Syrian union (1958-1961), Ba’thist officers had played a role as well, albeit a more marginal one—though not so marginal, however, that Egyptian President Nasser, during the period of the Egyptian-Syrian union, did consider it safer to exile a number of Syrian Ba’thist officers to Egypt, in order to prevent them from undermining his authority in Syria. This exile, however, would prove to be of crucial importance for Syria’s subsequent history.
During their exile in Egypt, these Ba’thist officers formed a secret Military Committee, which in 1963 succeeded in taking power in Syria. The main members of this committee were three Alawite officers: Muhammad ‘Umran, Salah Jadid, and Hafiz al-Asad. There were also Druze, Isma‘ili, and Sunni officers involved, but they did not hold leadership positions. While all of them played prominent roles at various stages, internal power struggles led to one being eliminated after the other—along with their entire military support bases.
This power struggle continued until 1970, by which time all of Hafiz al-Asad’s rivals had been sidelined, making him Syria’s absolute ruler. With that, the Military Committee’s originally intended principle of collective leadership had completely collapsed—just as this principle had never functioned effectively in other Arab countries either.
After Hafiz al-Asad seized power, a cult of personality developed around him—referred to as Asadiyah or ‘Asadism’—and around a hundred books were published in his honour. Leadership cults were, and still are, a fairly common phenomenon in the Arab world.
Sectarianism, Clientelism, Cronyism, and Corruption
Immediately after the Ba’thist military officers carried out their coup in 1963, ‘Umran, Jadid, and al-Asad began purging the army of their (mostly Sunni) rivals, replacing them with relatives, friends, and acquaintances from their own native regions. They believed they could best rely on personal connections. This opened the door to all forms of clientelism, cronyism, and corruption.
Power took precedence over principles—and this has remained the case ever since. On the other hand, without power, one cannot implement ideological principles. But the desperate clinging to their monopoly on power ultimately prevented the Ba’thist leaders from undertaking any meaningful reforms without jeopardizing their own position. This stance ultimately contributed to their downfall on 8 December 2024, after 61 years of authoritarian rule.
The Role of Arabic-Speaking Religious Minorities
Shortly after the 1963 coup, numerous relatives, friends, and acquaintances were brought into the civilian sector as well. The prominent Ba’thist Sami al-Jundi wrote the following about this development in his memoirs:
From the moment the Ba’th Party appeared on the scene, caravans of villagers began leaving the plains and the [Alawite and Druze] mountains to head for Damascus. The alarming letter Qaf [so characteristic of the Arabic dialects spoken by Alawites, Druze, and other rural communities] began to dominate the streets, coffeehouses, and ministry waiting rooms. In order to provide jobs for these newcomers to the city, it became necessary to dismiss others.
All of this led to profound social changes in Syria that turned society upside down: Sunni city dwellers no longer held the leading positions, let alone the Sunni bourgeoisie. Their places were largely taken by villagers and people from the countryside, many of them from Arabic-speaking religious minorities—first and foremost Alawites. From then on, these groups dominated public life, and individuals from lower social classes began to overshadow the traditional elites. Many seized the opportunity to enrich themselves.
However, this did not mean that those who had remained in the Alawite mountains and rural areas were also privileged. On the contrary, they were largely neglected and continued to live in relative poverty.
*Nikolaos van Dam is the former Dutch ambassador to Indonesia, Germany, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Egypt, and Iraq, as well as former Special Envoy for Syria. He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Syria (4th ed. 2017), Destroying a Nation: The Civil War in Syria (2017) and My Diplomatic Journeys in the Arab and Islamic World (forthcoming, 2025). Website: http://nikolaosvandam.academia.edu