Part 7
By Abu Umair al-Afghani
Before writing about Daesh, let us first look briefly at Iraq’s Ba’ath Party, because about 95 percent of Daesh’s leadership came from its ranks.
The Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party was founded in Damascus in 1947 by:
1. Michel Aflaq, a Christian Arab thinker.
2. Salah al-Din al-Bitar, a Sunni Arab and secular Muslim.
3. Zaki al-Arsuzi, an Arab nationalist thinker.
The word Ba’ath means resurrection or rebirth. By this, the founders meant that Arabs, regardless of their religion, sect, beliefs, or ideology, should unite as one nation. They openly called on people to set religion, sect, and belief aside and rally together under Arab nationalism to build a single great Arab nation. They generally divided people into Arabs and non-Arabs and argued that Arabs should form a strong nationalist bloc capable of freeing itself from Western domination and influence.
In their view, borders between Arab countries, divisions into separate states, ideological differences, and religious distinctions had done enormous harm to the Arab world.
The party seized power in Syria through the 1963 coup led by Hafez al-Assad, and in Iraq through the 1968 coup led by Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr and Saddam Hussein. Both governments remained in power for decades.
The Ba’ath Party generally held the following secular views on Islam:
1. Islam and politics should remain separate.
2. Islam should not be the law of the state.
3. Religion is a private matter for each individual.
4. Islamic thought and belief are a danger to Arab unity and a cause of disunity.
5. Islamism is a major threat.
6. Islamic thought and Islamist movements should be eliminated throughout the Arab world.
For this reason, the Ba’athists carried out the historic massacre of Muslim Brotherhood supporters in the Syrian city of Hama. Saddam Hussein similarly crushed virtually every Islamic movement in Iraq. Thousands of scholars were imprisoned or killed. The Ba’ath Party was deeply influenced by socialist thought and believed in collective ownership, equality, and treating religion as a purely private matter.
Because the Ba’athists believed religion belonged only in private life, that politics and religion should remain separate, and that religious thought itself was dangerous, they found themselves in direct confrontation with Islamist movements. That is why they spent decades suppressing Islamic thought and Islamist activists across Syria, seeking to eliminate them altogether.
It should also be noted that although the Ba’athists were heavily influenced by socialism, they were also hostile to both the West and capitalism.
Why did the West choose Ba’athists for the Daesh project?
A reader may naturally ask: if the Ba’athists opposed Western ideology, why would the West choose them for such a project?
The answer is that this is not a trait unique to the Ba’athists. Many socialists, secularists, and communists have shown a willingness to change their beliefs and political positions whenever it serves their interests. For most of them, power, office, wealth, and status have always been the real motivation. If those things are available in a different political environment, changing sides is not difficult.
Afghanistan itself provides many examples.
Afghan communist and secularist Anwar ul-Haq Ahadi was once considered a trusted figure of the Khalq faction and the Soviet-backed communist establishment, a movement under which thousands of Afghans were executed on charges of being American agents and puppets of capitalism. Yet he later became a minister in the American-backed republic.
Hanif Atmar, for whom listening to the BBC during the Soviet era was considered a crime, went on to serve as Interior Minister, head of the National Security Council, and one of the republic’s most senior officials.
Sarwar Danish served as a judge during the Khalqi period and sentenced many people for allegedly supporting Western ideas, with many Afghans executed under such charges. He later became Vice President under the Western-backed republic.
The same applies to many Khalqi and Parchami generals who spent the Soviet war denouncing America and the West while taking part in a conflict that killed more than a million Afghans and drove millions more into exile. Today many of those same figures live in Europe and America. Numerous former communists who once spent years fighting Western ideas now actively promote Western values and capitalism.
It was precisely this weakness that Western planners recognized: that many socialists and secularists are willing to change their loyalties in return for money, office, and influence. For that reason, they selected members of the Ba’ath Party to form the backbone of the Daesh project.
