In the 1966 Syrian coup d'état (21–23 February) the government of the Syrian Arab Republic was overthrown and replaced. The ruling National Command of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party were removed from power by a union of the party's Military Committee and the Syrian Regional Branch, under the leadership of Salah Jadid.
The coup was precipitated by a heightening in the power struggle between the party's old guard, represented by Michel Aflaq, Salah al-Din al-Bitar, and Munif al-Razzaz, and the radical leftist factions adhering to a Neo-Ba'athist position. On 21 February, supporters of the old guard in the army ordered the transfer of their rivals. Two days later, the Military Committee, backing the radical leftist factions, launched a coup that involved violent fighting in Aleppo, Damascus, Deir ez-Zor, and Latakia. As a result of the coup, the party's historical founders fled the country and spent the rest of their lives in exile.
The Ba'athist military committee's seizure of power and subsequent purges marked the total ideological transformation of the Syrian Ba'ath party into a militarist neo-Ba'athist organization, independent of the National Command of the original Ba'ath party. Salah Jadid established the most radical administration in modern Syrian history. The coup created a permanent schism between the Syrian and Iraqi regional branches of the Ba'ath Party and their respective National Commands, with many senior Syrian Ba'athists defecting to Iraq. Salah Jadid's government would subsequently be overthrown in the 1970 Syrian coup d'etat, which brought his military rival Hafez al-Assad to power. Despite this, the Assad regime and Ba'athist Iraq continued its propaganda campaigns against each other and the Ba'athist schism persisted.
Background
Consolidation of power
After the success of the 1963 Syrian coup d'état, officially the 8th of March Revolution, a power struggle erupted between the Nasserites in the National Council for the Revolutionary Command and the Ba'ath Party. The Nasserites sought to reestablish the United Arab Republic, the former federation encompassing Egypt and Syria from 1958 to 1961, on Gamal Abdel Nasser's terms, but the Ba'athists were skeptical of a new union with Nasser and wanted a loose federation where the Ba'ath Party could rule Syria alone without interference. The Nasserites mobilised large street demonstrations in favour of a union. It took time before the Ba'ath Party knew how to respond to the issue, since the majority of Syrian Arab Nationalists were not adherents to Ba'athism, but of Nasserism and Nasser in general.
Instead of trying to win the support of the populace, the Ba'athists moved to consolidate their control over the Syrian military. Several hundred Nasserites and conservatives were purged from the military, and Ba'athists were recruited to fill senior positions. Most of the newly recruited Ba'athist officers came from the countryside or from a low social class. These Ba'athist officers replaced the chiefly "urban Sunni upper-middle and middle class" officer corps, and replaced it with an officer corps with a rural background who more often the "kinsmen of the leading minority officer". These changes led to the decimation of Sunni control over the military establishment.
The cost of clamping down on the protests was a loss of legitimacy, and the emergence of Amin al-Hafiz as the first Ba'athist military strongman. In 1965, Amin al-Hafiz imposed the socialist policies adopted in the 6th National Congress; fully nationalizing Syrian industry, vast segments of private sector and established a centralized command economy. The traditional elite, consisting of the upper classes, who had been overthrown from political power by the Ba'athists, felt threatened by the Ba'ath Party's socialist policies. The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria was a historical rival of the Syrian Regional Branch, and it felt threatened by the party's secularist nature. Akram al-Hawrani and his supporters and the Syrian Communist Party opposed the one-party system which the Ba'ath Party was establishing.
The majority of Sunni Muslims were Arab nationalists, but not Ba'athist, making them feel alienated. The party was chiefly dominated by minority groups such as Alawites, Druzes, and Isma'ilis, and people from the countryside in general; this created an urban–rural conflict based predominantly on ethnic differences. With its coming to power, the Ba'ath Party was threatened by the predominantly anti-Ba'athist sentiment in urban politics – probably the only reason why the Ba'athists managed to stay in power was the rather weakly organised and fragmented opposition it faced.
Conflict with the Aflaqists
Cohesive internal unity had all but collapsed after the 1963 seizure of power; Michel Aflaq, Salah al-Din al-Bitar, and their followers wanted to implement "classic" Ba'athism in the sense that they wanted to establish a loose union with Nasser's Egypt, implement a moderate form of socialism, and to have a one-party state which respected the rights of the individual, tolerating freedom of speech and freedom of thought. However, the Aflaqites (or Aflaqists) were quickly forced into the background, and at the 6th National Ba'ath Party Congress, the Military Committee and their supporters succeeding in adopting a new ideological document known as Muntalaqat and creating a new form of Ba'athism strongly influenced by Marxism–Leninism. This new form of Ba'athism laid emphasis on "revolution in one country" rather than to unifying the Arab world. At the same time, the 6th National Congress implemented a resolution which stressed the implementation of a socialist revolution in Syria. Under this form of socialism, the economy as a whole would adhere to state planning and the commanding heights of the economy and foreign trade were to be nationalized. They believed these policies would end exploitation of labour, that capitalism would disappear, and in agriculture they envisioned a plan were land was given "to he who works it". However, private enterprise would still exist in retail trade, construction, tourism, and small industry in general. These changes and more would refashion the Ba'ath Party into a Leninist party.
In the aftermath of the 1964 riot in Hama and other cities, the radicals were on the retreat and the Aflaqites regained control for a brief period. Bitar formed a new government which halted the nationalisation process, reaffirm respect for civil liberties and private property. However, these policy changes did not win sufficient support, and the population at large still opposed Ba'ath Party rule. The upper classes continued to disinvest capital and smuggle capital out of the country, and the only foreseeable solution to this loss of capital was continuing with nationalisation.
Syrian Ba'ath party's left-wing argued that the bourgeoisie would never be won over unless they were given total control over the economy as they had before. It was this power struggle between the moderate Aflaqites who dominated the National Command of the Ba'ath Party and the radicals who dominated the Syrian Regional Command of the Ba'ath Party which led to the 1966 coup d'état. Between 1963 and 1966, neo-Ba'athist radicals, who controlled the Ba'athist military committee, began steadily amassing power and influence within the Syrian regional branch of the Ba'ath party.
Power struggle
Before the crushing of the riots of 1964, a power struggle started within the Military Committee between Minister of Defence Muhammad Umran, and Salah Jadid. Umran, the committee's most senior member, wanted reconciliation with the rioters and an end to confrontation with the middle class, in contrast, Jadid believed the solution was to coerce and repress the protesters so as to save the 8th of March Revolution. This was the first open schism within the Military Committee, and would prove decisive in coming events. With Hafez al-Assad's support, the Military Committee initiated a violent counter-attack on the rioters This decision led to Umran's downfall. He responded by revealing the Military Committee's plan of taking over the Ba'ath Party to the party's National Command. Aflaq, the Secretary General of the National Command, responded to the information by ordering the dissolution of the Syrian Regional Command. He was forced to withdraw his request because the party's rank-and-file rose in protest. When an old guard Ba'athist tauntingly asked Aflaq "how big a role his party still played in government", Aflaq replied "About one-thousandth of one percent". Umran's revelations to the National Command led to his exile, and with the National Command impotent, the Military Committee, through its control of the Syrian Regional Command, initiated an attack on the bourgeoisie and initiated a nationalisation drive which extended state ownership to electricity generation, oil distribution, cotton ginning, and to an estimated 70 percent of foreign trade.
After Umran's downfall, the National Command and the Military Committee continued their respective struggle for control of the Ba'ath Party. While the National Command invoked party rules and regulations against the Military Committee, it was clear from the beginning that the initiative lay with the Military Committee. The reason for the Military Committee's success was its alliance with the Regionalists, a group of branches which had not adhered to Aflaq's 1958 orders to dissolve the Syrian Regional Branch. The Regionalists disliked Aflaq and opposed his leadership. Assad called the Regionalists the "true cells of the party".
The power contest between the allied Military Committee and the Regionalists against the National Command was fought out within the party structure. However, the Military Committee and the Regionalists managed to turn the party structure on its head. At the 2nd Regional Congress (held in March 1965), it was decided to endorse the principle that the Regional Secretary of the Regional Command would be the ex officio head of state, and the Regional Command acquired the power to appoint the prime minister, the cabinet, the chief of staff, and the top military commanders. This change curtailed the powers of the National Command, who thenceforth had very little say in Syrian internal affairs. In response, at the 8th National Congress (April 1965) Aflaq had originally planned to launch an attack on the Military Committee and the Regionalists, but was persuaded not to by fellow National Command members – most notably by a Lebanese member, Jibran Majdalani, and a Saudi member, Ali Ghannam – because it could lead to the removal of the party's civilian leadership, as had occurred in the Iraqi Regional Branch. Because of this decision, Aflaq was voted from office as secretary general, to be succeeded by fellow National Command member Munif al-Razzaz. Razzaz was a Syrian-born Jordanian who was not rooted enough in party politics to solve the crisis, even if under his command several joint meetings of the National and Regional Commands took place. Not longer after Aflaq's loss of office, Hafiz, the Secretary of the Regional Command, changed his allegiance to support the National Command. While Hafiz was the de jure leader of Syria (he held the offices of Regional Command secretary, Chairman of the Presidential Council, prime minister and commander-in-chief), it was Jadid, the Assistant Secretary General of the Regional Command, who was the de facto leader of Syria.
The coup
Arrangements devised in 1963 between Aflaq and the Military Committee led to a very close mutual involvement of the military and civilian sectors of the regime, so that by the end of 1965 the politics of the Syrian army had become almost identical to the politics of the Ba'th Party. The principal military protagonist of the period Hafiz, Jadid, and Umran were no longer on military service and their power depended on their intermediary supporters in the army and in the party. In November 1965, the National Command issued a resolution which stated it was forbidden for the Regional Command to transfer or dismiss military officers without the consent of the National Command. After hearing of the resolution, Jadid rebelled immediately, and ordered Colonel Mustafa Tlas to arrest the commanders of the Homs garrison and his deputy, both supporters of National Command. In response, Razzaz called for an emergency session of the National Command which decreed the Regional Command dissolved, and made Bitar Prime Minister. Hafiz was made chairman of a new Presidential Council and Shibli al-Aysami his deputy. Umran was recalled from exile and reappointed to the office of Minister of Defence and commander-in-chief, and Mansur al-Atrash was appointed chairman of a new and expanded National Revolutionary Council. Jadid and his supporters responded by making war on the National Command. Assad, who neither liked nor had sympathy for the Aflaqites, did not support a showdown through the use of force. In response to the coming coup, Assad, along with Naji Jamil, Husayn Mulhim and Yusuf Sayigh, left for London.