Now Syria’s long-ruling Baath party is collapsing, too

DAMASCUS, Syria — A few days after insurgents in Syria overthrew President Bashar Assad, his ruling Baath party announced it was freezing its activities, marking a stunning change in fortunes for the political group that had ruled for more than six decades.

Many members of the party’s leadership have gone into hiding and some have fled the country. In a symbolic move, Syria’s new rulers have turned the former party headquarters in Damascus into a center where former members of the army and security forces line up to register their names and hand over their weapons.

Calls are on the rise to officially dissolve the Arab Socialist Baath Party that had ruled Syria since 1963.

Many Syrians — including former party members — say its rule damaged relations with other Arab countries and aided in the spread of corruption that brought the war-torn nation to its knees.

“The party should not only be dissolved, it should go to hell,” said Mohammed Hussein Ali, 64, who worked for a state oil company and was a party member for decades until he quit at the start of Syria’s anti-government uprising in 2011 that turned into civil war. He never left the country and said he is happy the Baath rule is over.

An official with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, the group that overthrew Assad, said no official decision has been made on what to do with the Baath party.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter, noted that HTS leader Ahmad al-Sharaa has said that officials who committed crimes against the Syrian people over the past decades will be brought to justice and hinted that they include party members.

The Baath party, whose aim was to unify Arab states in one nation, was founded by two Syrian Arab nationalists, Michel Aflaq and Salaheddine Bitar, in 1947 and at one point ruled two Arab countries, Iraq and Syria.

In Syria, the Baath party became inextricably associated with the Assad family, which took power in 1970. For decades, the family used the party and its pan-Arab ideology to control the country. Many senior military jobs were held by members of the family’s minority Alawite sect, and party membership was used as a cover to give it a nationalist rather than a sectarian nature.