Syria’s Baath party dissolved: What happens next?

Syria’s former governing party, the Baath, is no more.

The opposition factions marched into Damascus on December 8 to overthrow the party, which had been in power for decades. The party’s dissolution announcement on Wednesday only served as a formalization of the process.

The authorities also officially disbanded all armed factions, with the intention of integrating former opposition forces into a new governing structure.

Among the group’s disbanded was Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the group led by Syria’s de facto ruler, Ahmed al-Sharaa, who took on an undetermined temporary role as the country’s president on Wednesday.

Members of Syria’s transitional government have been making announcements for weeks that HTS and other organizations will be disbanded, so this is no surprise. However, after more than five decades of one-party rule, the Syrian Baath party’s dissolution is a significant symbolic moment.

What have Syria’s new leaders announced?

Syria’s de facto leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, was officially named president for a transitional phase and the country’s constitution, adopted in 2012, was suspended.

The country’s various armed factions, which marched on Damascus and deposed the old regime were dissolved, with the intention to absorb them into official state institutions.

“All military factions are dissolved … and integrated into state institutions”, the state news agency, SANA reported Hassan Abdel Ghani, a spokesperson for the new government, as saying. He announced “the dissolution of the defunct regime’s army” and notorious security agencies, as well as the long-ruling Baath party.

What is the Baath Party?

The Arab Socialist Baath Party – to give the party its full name – was founded by two Syrians, Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar, in 1947 as a pan-Arab nationalist and socialist party. This pan-Arab regional party’s Syrian branch included one component, but it later became a military dictatorship with a focus on Syria. Under Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi branch also dissolved into a military junta.

In Syria, the Baathists took control of the country in a coup in 1963, the same year that the party took control of Iraq. A party wing led by Salah Jadid and Hafez al-Assad, who were then a Baathist general and the party’s father, staged an internal coup d’etat to overthrow Aflaq and al-Bitar in 1966.

Al-Assad senior staged yet another coup in 1970 to retake complete control of the opposition, which he had led until his passing in 2000. His son, Bashar, stepped up and led the party until December 8, 2024, when he fled to Moscow in the early hours of the morning after a lightning strike by the Syrian opposition had swept the country.

What does Syria’s dissolution of the Baath party mean?

In Syria, it was widely believed that the Baath party’s dissolution was necessary.

Radwan Ziadeh, senior analyst at the Arab Center Washington DC, a research organisation, said these announcements signalled the “transition of power into civilian hands”.

Because the party had little chance of surviving in post-revolution Syria, the party had a close relationship with the previous regime. It was also seen as a fundamental pillar of a ruling party that tolerated little dissent, imprisoned opponents, and executed hundreds of thousands. Indeed, in the early hours of December 8, after al-Assad fled to Moscow, Syrians raided Baath party offices and trampled party flags.

“There is no future for them considering their bloodstained record”, Elia Ayoub, researcher and author of the Hauntologies newsletter, said.

Why did HTS also dissolve?

The al-Assad regime’s factions split into various groups after the uprising in the Arab Spring of 2011.

An al-Qaeda offshoot of Jabhat al-Nusra eventually changed its name to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

It established authority over Syria’s northeast, where it applied its conservative rule from its base in Idlib.

In late 2024, it led the operation to retake Syria’s major cities – Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Damascus – from the al-Assad regime. After the regime fell, al-Sharaa became Syria’s de facto ruler, meeting with foreign emissaries and notables.

HTS established an interim government made up primarily of local government officials from the local government it had led in Idlib under the leadership of al-Sharaa.

The organization had, however, for a while that would allow for the formation of a new government.

The new administration’s mid- to long-term goal is to form a state with its own institutions. The stated goal is to combine the military, border control, general security, and rebel factions into a legitimate security service that includes the police force.

What is the formation date for the new federal and state institutions?

Not a firm one.

Al-Sharaa had previously pledged to manage Syria’s political transition, including fostering an inclusive government, organizing elections, and other initiatives. He has stated that elections could take as long as four years.

What happens next?

A temporary legislative council will be established to oversee the transitional period of the nation until a new constitution is approved. The new council’s members have not yet been made public.

Impatience is rising among some Syrians. Syrian civil society has expressed criticism of the new administration’s inability to reach out to the country’s numerous thousands of people who have vanished under al-Assad’s regime.

According to Ayoub, “There is still no real plan, and up until now, they don’t appear to have any plans for serious accountability for]al-Assad and regime crimes.”

Because many hundreds of thousands, if not more, will be left in limbo about what happened to loved ones, the lack of accountability in terms of not doing too much or, in some cases, obstructing the process of finding evidence when it comes]to issues of accountability, such as]mass graves are concerning.

What has been the response to this action?

Mixed.

There are concerns about representation and setting a firm date for the emergence of a new state, despite the expectation that many Syrians and observers have for the dissolution of HTS and the Baath party.

Military figures dominated the crowd at the announcement on Wednesday, which was overwhelmingly attended by military personnel. Some observers still criticized the lack of transparency or any democratic process, despite the fact that few would have been surprised that al-Sharaa was given the presidency during the transitional period.

The government of HTS has taken a number of actions since its coming into power, including strengthening and consolidating its hold on the state and its institutions, and creating a new authoritarian state with a neoliberal economic outlook.

With no known unifying foe in al-Assad, there are still questions about how al-Sharaa and the interim administration will unite a diverse group of armed groups.

Among the major factions that still have not agreed to join al-Sharaa’s new project are the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who have been fighting the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) in northern Syria.

Despite the challenging 14-year transition Syria has endured since the Arab Spring of 2011, analysts say, there still room for improvement.

Source: Aljazeera