2003 Iraq and 2024 Syria both found themselves in a state of sectarian-national division following the fall of Ba’ath Party rule. While national division was expected after the reign of a party with a discriminatory Arab nationalist ideology—marked by significant chauvinistic intolerance—what is striking (and requires deep study beyond daily political discourse) is the extent of the sectarian divisions left behind by the Ba’athists in two countries that were not characterized by such strife when the Ba’athists first seized power. In 1968, Iraqi Communists were stronger than Shiite Islamists, and in the 1950s and 60s, Khalid Bakdash, the Secretary-General of the Syrian Communist Party, possessed a social reach far greater than that of Dr. Mustafa al-Sibai, the General Supervisor of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria.
This shift can be attributed to those who held the “steering wheel” of power—the military-security duo. In Baghdad, these figures came from the Sunni minority; similarly, in Damascus, individuals from the Alawite sect, also a minority, took control of the military and security apparatus. These two sectors effectively constitute the “Authority” that decides and shapes politics, the economy, administration, and culture, even if the formal structure of power in both countries appeared cross-sectarian. However, the Alawite sectarian composition within the military and security forces held the keys to power throughout the period from March 8, 1963, to December 8, 2024. Likewise, the Sunni sectarian composition held the keys to power in Iraq’s military and security sectors from July 17, 1968, to April 9, 2003. In practice, whoever controls the military and security controls the state in countries like Syria in 1963 and Iraq in 1968; those operating in the fields of politics, economy, administration, and culture are not in the locomotive of the train of power, but rather in its carriages.
In this context, the dates of February 23, 1966, and November 16, 1970, in Syria demonstrate that power belongs to those who control the military and security, rather than the “Party” or “politicians.” Furthermore, the examples of Riad Seif and Rami Makhlouf illustrate the limits of the power held by “industrialists” and “businessmen” when confronted by those wielding military-security authority.
The rule of these two minorities in Ba’athist Baghdad and Damascus produced interests, benefits, and privileges in the realms of economy, high-ranking positions, and government jobs. While Syrian Ba’athists, throughout their rule, were careful to ensure wide economic participation for the Damascene elite during Hafez al-Assad’s era and the Aleppine elite during Bashar’s, the benefits in government appointments (and the social structure of military and security personnel) led the majority of Sunnis in Iraq and Alawites in Syria to continue standing by Saddam Hussein—from the moment his rule faced crisis until the day of his fall (1991–2003)—and by Bashar al-Assad from his moment of crisis until the fall (2011–2024).
The sectarian condition witnessed in post-Saddam Baghdad and post-Assad Damascus is a cumulative result of the periods of Ba’athist rule in both countries. However, it is also the product of the direction taken by those who succeeded them. This successor authority did not merely seek to replace those in power and its carriages, but aimed to erase everyone who sat at the previous table of power. This included the dissolution of the military and security institutions and the near-total replacement of the administrative apparatus. This effectively meant replacing one social base of power with another in Baghdad and Damascus, pushing the previous social base of the two regimes into a state of marginalization.
This cumulative sectarian state was not only a result of sectarian discrimination in the centers of power and administration or the monopoly of decision-making by military and security officials; it was also the result of a record of massive state violence against armed movements. This includes the actions of Iraqi Shiite Islamists in 1991 and Syrian Sunni Islamists in the periods of 1979–1982 and 2012–2020. This state violence involved the destruction of cities, widespread killing of civilians, and the detention of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands—not to mention the displacement and exile of vast segments of the population both internally and abroad.
Observation of Iraqi parliamentary election records from 2005 to 2025 shows that Shiite Islamist parties and movements hold the dominant share within the Iraqi Shiite heartland. These elections are a sincere expression of a social milieu representing the majority of Iraq’s population. They reflect not only new interests and benefits but also a continuous, two-decade-long expressive attachment to parties and movements that do not hide their sectarian identity—many of which are linked to the Iranian “Wilayat al-Faqih.” This serves as a reaction (not yet transcended) to a Sunni sectarian rule under a Ba’athist guise, led by individuals from the provinces of Tikrit and Anbar and the city of Mosul.
At the same time, we saw how the “aggrieved party” shifted from the Ba’athism of Michel Aflaq toward Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. However, the defeat of Al-Qaeda and ISIS led the Iraqi Sunni milieu to recently pivot toward new moderate phenomena that adapt to the “political process,” such as the example of Mohammed al-Halbousi. The armed, violent rebellion of Iraq’s Sunnis following Saddam’s fall was not the only instance of a minority rebelling after the collapse of a regime they viewed as their representative. We saw this in Ethiopia in 2020, when members of the Tigray ethnic minority rebelled after having dominated power and controlled its levers since the fall of the Marxist military ruler Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991 until the arrival of the current Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in 2018. Yet, it was a failed rebellion, much like the Sunni rebellion in post-Saddam Iraq, and it remains to be seen if it will lead to a moderate shift among the Tigray people similar to the al-Halbousi phenomenon.
As a synthesis: The case of the city of Hama, which was an electoral base for the Ba’ath Party in the 1954 parliamentary elections and then became the center of Islamic opposition to its rule in 1964, 1973, 1979, 1980, 1981, and 1982, serves as an illustrative example. Similarly, the Sadr City suburb east of Baghdad was a social base for the Communist Party in the 1960s and 70s—inhabited by the poor who came from the south to work as laborers and craftsmen—before becoming a social base for the Dawa Party in the 1980s. Since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s rule, it has remained the formidable stronghold of the Sadrist Movement.
