Syrian Social Nationalist Party

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The Syrian Social Nationalist Party (or SSNP) (Arabic: الحزب السوري القومي الاجتماعي al-Hizb as-Sūrī al-Qawmī al-Ijtimā`ī), often referred to in French as Parti Populaire Syrien, is a nationalist political party in Syria and Lebanon. It advocates the establishment of a Greater Syrian national state, including present Syria, Lebanon, the Hatay Province of Turkey, Israel, the Palestinian territories, the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, Cyprus, Jordan, Iraq, and Kuwait. [1]

Founded in Beirut in 1932, the party has played a significant role in Lebanese politics at various points, notably being involved in attempted coups in 1949 and 1961. It was active in resistance against the Israeli occupation of Lebanon from 1982 on. It is now part of the pro-Syrian bloc, along with Amal and Hezbollah, and has popular support in Lebanon. In Syria, the SSNP became a major political force in the early 1950s, but was thoroughly repressed in 1955. It remained organised, and in 2005 was legalised and joined the Baath Party-led National Progressive Front. It is thought to be the largest legal party in Syria apart from the Baath, with perhaps 90,000 members.

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[edit] Foundation and early years

The SSNP was founded by Antun Saadeh, a journalist/philosopher from a Greek Orthodox family in the Mount Lebanon region. Saadeh had emigrated to South America in 1919 (via the USA where he stayed for about a year before continuing on to Brazil), at the age of fifteen, and in the years he lived there engaged in both Arabic-language journalism and Syrian nationalist political activity. On his return to Lebanon some ten years later he continued working as a journalist and also taught German in the American University of Beirut. In November 1932 he established the first nucleus of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party. The party operated underground for the first three years of its existence. After it began overt activity, it was the object of harsh repression by the French mandatory authorities. Saadeh himself was arrested several times, and in 1938 was forced to remain in South America after a visit he made there before the outbreak of World War II.[2]

The party he founded was organised with a hierarchical structure and a powerful leader. Its ideology was an entirely secular form of nationalism; indeed, it posited the complete separation of religion and politics as one of the two fundamental conditions for real national unity. The other condition was determined economic and social reform.[3]

Saadeh's concept of the nation was that it was shaped by geography, not by ethnic origins, language or religion, and this led him to conclude that the Arabs could not form one nation but many nations could be called Arab. Arab nationalist thinker Sati' al-Husri considered that Saadeh "misrepresented" Arab nationalism, incorrectly associating it with a Bedouin image of the Arab and with Muslim sectarianism. Palestinian historian Maher Charif sees Saadeh's theory as a response to the religious diversity of Syria, and points to his later extension of his vision of the Syrian nation to include Iraq, a country also noted for its religious diversity, as further evidence for this.[4] The party also accepted that due to "religious and political considerations", the separate existence of Lebanon was necessary for the time being.[5]

Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi gives a somewhat contrasting interpretation, pointing to the position of the Greek Orthodox community as a large minority in both Syria and Lebanon for whom "the concept of pan-Syrianism was more meaningful than the concept of Arabism" while at the same time they resented Maronite dominance in Lebanon. Saadeh, according to Salibi,

found a ready following among his co-religionists. His idea of secular pan-Syrianism also proved attractive to many Druzes and Shiites; to Christians other than the Greek Orthodox, including some Maronites who were disaffected by both Lebanism and Arabism; and also to many Sunnite Muslims who set a high value on secularism, and who felt that they had far more in common with their fellow Syrians of whatever religion or denomination than with fellow Sunnite or Muslim Arabs elsewhere. Here again, an idea of nationalism had emerged which had sufficient credit to make it valid. In the Lebanese context, however, it became ready cover for something more archaic, which was essentially Greek Orthodox particularism.[6]

From 1945 on, the party adopted a more nuanced stance regarding Arab nationalism, seeing Syrian unity as a potential first step towards an Arab union led by Syria.[7]

[edit] The SSNP in Lebanon, 1947-1975

Greater Syria, as claimed by SSNP
Greater Syria, as claimed by SSNP

Saadeh returned to Lebanon in 1947. In 1949, after the cancellation of legislative elections in Lebanon in which he had hoped for electoral success, the party attempted a coup d'état, which failed. In the face of a massive crackdown, Saadeh fled to Syria, but the Syrian military dictator Husni al-Za'im handed him over to the Lebanese authorities and he was executed.

The party was seen in these years as a right-wing, anti-Communist and pro-Western organisation.[8] During the Lebanese civil war of 1958 party members participated on the Government side, fighting against the Arab nationalist rebels in northern Lebanon and in Mount Lebanon.[9] The party was subsequently legalised.

In 1961 the party launched an abortive coup attempt in Lebanon, resulting in renewed proscription and the imprisonment of many of its leaders.[citation needed] In prison the SSNP militants read and discussed politics and reconsidered their ideology, coming under the influence of Marxism and other left-wing ideas.[citation needed] By the beginning of the 1970s, the party had undergone a considerable ideological transformation, and was seen as decidedly left-wing and no longer deeply inimical to Arab nationalism. These ideological turns, however, resulted in splits, and there are now two rival groups laying claim to Saadeh's mantle.[citation needed]

[edit] Civil war and Resistance

Proof of this new orientation came with the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War of 1975. SSNP militias fought alongside the nationalist and leftist forces, against the Phalangists and their right-wing allies. An important development followed with the renewal of contact between the party and its former bitter enemy, the Syrian Baath Party.[10]

After the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and subsequent rout of the leftist forces, a number of the leftist organisations regrouped to engage in resistance to the Israeli occupation. Along with the Lebanese Communist Party, the Communist Action Organization, and some smaller leftist groups, the SSNP played a prominent role in this. One of the best-known early actions of the resistance was the killing of two Israeli soldiers in the Wimpy Cafe on west Beirut's central Rue Hamra by party member Khalid Alwan. The party continues to commemorate this date. A party member, Habib Tanious Shartouni, was also responsible for the assassination of Lebanese president Bachir Gemayel in a bomb attack on 14 September 1982. In 1983 the party joined the National Salvation Front established to oppose the abortive accord with Israel signed by Gemayel's brother and successor Amine Gemayel. It remained active in the Lebanese resistance until Israel's withdrawal from the remaining occupied territories in 2000, although the role of all the secular groups was in later years almost entirely eclipsed by the more effective military performance and propaganda of the Shia group Hezbollah.

The SSNP took a pro-Syrian position in debate about Syria's role in Lebanon. Its popular support in Lebanon is now rather limited.

[edit] The SSNP in Syria

In Syria the SSNP grew to a position of considerable influence in the years following the country's independence in 1946, and was a major political force immediately after the restoration of democracy in 1954. It was a fierce rival of the Syrian Communist Party and of the radical pan-Arab Baath Party, the other main ideological parties of the period. In April 1955 Colonel Adnan al-Malki, a Baathist officer who was a very popular figure in the Syrian army, was assassinated by a party member. This provided the Communists and Baathists with the opportunity to eliminate their main ideological rival, and under pressure from them and their allies in the security forces the SSNP was practically wiped out as a political force in Syria.

The SSNP's stance during the Lebanese civil war was consistent with that of Syria, and that facilitated a rapprochement between the party and the Syrian government. During Hafez al-Assad's presidency, the party was increasingly tolerated. After the succession of his son Bashar in 2000, this process continued. In 2001, although still officially banned, the party was permitted to attend meetings of the Baath-led National Progressive Front coalition of legal parties as an observer. In Spring 2005 the party was legalised in Syria, as the first non-socialist and non-Arabist party. It is considered to be one of the largest political parties in the country, after the ruling Baath Party, with perhaps 90,000 members.[11]

[edit] Outside Lebanon and Syria

Apart from in Lebanon and Syria, the party also has a following among the large diasporas of these countries. It has overseas branches in a variety of countries, including Australia, the United States, Brazil, Argentina and several Western European countries. It is less popular in the rest of the Middle East, with a very small number of supporters in Jordan and the 'Palestinian Authority' areas, but practically no following in more peripheral parts of what it refers to as Greater Syria.

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Irwin, p. 24; ssnp.com "Our Syria has distinct natural boundaries…" (accessed 30 June 2006).
  2. ^ Charif, pp. 243-244n
  3. ^ Hourani, p. 326
  4. ^ Charif, p. 216
  5. ^ Hourani, p. 326
  6. ^ Salibi, pp. 54-55
  7. ^ Hourani, p. 326
  8. ^ Seale, p. 50
  9. ^ Article on pro-SSNP website on the party's role in the 1958 civil war accessed 19 January 2006.
  10. ^ Seale, p. 349
  11. ^ Asia Times article by Syrian political analyst Sami Moubayed. Accessed 19 January 2006

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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