The purpose of this paper is to present a brief account of the political changes in Syria since the Baa'th first came into power in 1963 and the development of inner-politics from the beginning period of the Baa'th regime to the present. It is also designed to offer an interpretation of these developments to help explain the kaleidoscopic character of the changing relationships among power-centers.
In particular, this paper attempts to elucidate the following points: Firstly, in a major intra-party split that took place in February 1966, the moderate wing of the Baa'th party was purged by radicals; this political coup signaled the party's further turn to the Left in policy. These changes only further alienated conservative and pious Islamic opinion. However, the regime's mounting clashes with the West and Israel have temporarily disoriented Muslim opinion.
Secondly, after General Hafiz al Asad's rise to power in 1971, the question arises as to how he managed to revise Syria's domestic and foreign policies. By late 1976, however, the regime's policies were faltering and domestic grievances were accumulating; relations between the Baa'th and urban centers of opposition again began to sour, a disaffection that gradually built up into the anti-regime explosions of 1970-80.
The regime's intervention in Lebanon—in paticular, its drive against the Palestinians and the Sunni Left—required it to suppress domestic opposition, thus weakening its own support base, and antagonizing segments of Sunni opinion, which viewed it as an Alawite suppression of Sunnis in favor of Christians. Most dangerous of all, the intervention seriously exacerbated sectarian cleavages in the army. By the late 1970s, the regime's foreign policy increasingly appeared to have reached a dead end.
Finally, the political Islam, the main alternative. to the Baa'th, is now trying to undermine the regime led by the Alawites. If a realignment of political forces, pitting the whole Sunni community on the basis of sectarian solidarity, in alliance with all other disaffected elements, against the numerically much inferior Alawites entrenched in the regime can be attained, the Syrian political scene will change completely its impact affecting the politics of the Fertile Crescent. But this would require breaking the cross-sectarian coalition at the center of the Baa'th state; destroying military discipline and party solidarity; and detaching the peasant, worker, and employee elements at the Baa'th base.
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