The Topsy-Turvy Ba'ath Parties of Iraq and Syria [View all]
The Ba'ath Party was an Arab political party advocating the formation of a single Arab socialist nation. It's greatest effects were in Iraq and Syria where men under the Ba'ath umbrella managed to become dictatorial leaders.
Sunni Arab Saddam Hussein took over Iraq in the 1960s and ruled largely Shia and Kurd Iraq for a long time.
Ba'aths also took power in Syria in the 1960s. Shia Arab (Alawite, specifically) Hafiz al-Assad of the “nationalist” wing of the Syrian Ba'ath Party bested the "progressive" wing (also Alawite led, as noted in a reply below) and took power in 1970 over that largely Sunni nation.
Just an interesting footnote—that the two big Ba'ath strong-men were both from religious minorities in their respective nations. Not hard to see why both would leave civil war in their wake, I guess. (A reply below seems to feel this unexceptional comment is pro US empire rather than a statement of the fricking obvious. "In their wake" means what it means. The weakening or fall of an ethnic or religious minority dictator pretty much anywhere is a dynamic prone to sectarian strife.)
The problem is that the whole world started going fundamentalist throughout the 1970s and the sectarian tensions in both Syria and Iraq grew and grew... the opposite of the secular Ba'ath plan. In the 1960s-1970s religion was not as huge a deal in the Arab world as it is today. Even the PLO was pretty much a communist organization.
If only they could have traded places... seriously, though, that wouldn't have worked either. Iraq and Syria were supposed to become one big Ba'ath nation, but there were just too many differences between the two regimes. (And nations.)
= new reply since forum marked as read