The Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party was a socialist political party founded on 7 April 1947 by Michel Aflaq, Salah al-Din al-Bitar, and Zaki al-Arsuzi. The party advocated pan-Arabism and Arab nationalism, and it called for the unification of the Arab World into one secular state; the party was influenced by classical fascism. It held power in both Iraq and Syria while some minor branches operated in other countries, and it was a powerful movement until its 1966 split between the right-wing fascist Iraqi Regional Branch and the left-wing socialist Syrian Regional Branch. Since then, the Ba'ath Party has been divided into two parties that both created dictators such as Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Hafez al-Assad in Syria, and the two countries remain enemies. Ba'athism is no longer a coherent ideology, as Iraqi Ba'athism and Syrian Ba'athism vary greatly; while Syria attempted to completely secularize the country, Iraq enforced Islamist laws during the 1990s in attempts to win the support of the growing Islamist movement.
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