Michel Aflaq (1910-23 June 1989) was Secretary-General of the National Command of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party from February 1968 to 23 June 1989, preceding Saddam Hussein. A Christian Syrian, Aflaq came up with the philosophy of Ba'athism, which advocated Arab nationalism, socialism, and secularism, and his movement came to rule over both Iraq and Syria. After the 1966 coup in Syria, he moved to Iraq, and he led their branch of the party until his death in 1989.
Biography[]
Aflaq in 1964
Michel Aflaq was born in 1910 in Damascus, Ottoman Empire to a family of Greek Orthodox Christians, and he studied at the Sorbonne university in Paris alongside Salah al-Din al-Bitar, and upon his return to Syria in 1932, he entered communist politics. In 1942, Aflaq and al-Bitar founded the Arab Ba'ath Movement, and in 1947 the group merged with Zaki al-Arsuzi's followers to form the Ba'ath Party. In 1954, he was elected as the leader of the Ba'ath Party, but Gamal Abdel Nasser saw the Ba'athists as a threat and forced Aflaq to dissolve the party without the consent of the party. As other Ba'athists rose to prominence following the 1963 Syrian coup d'etat, Aflaq resigned as Secretary-General of the party in 1965, but in 1968 he became the Secretary-General of the Iraqi Regional Branch of the Ba'ath Party when Saddam Hussein took him in with several other Syrian dissident leaders. Aflaq was treated like royalty in Iraq, but he held no de facto power, with Saddam being the real leader of the Ba'ath Party in the country. He died in Paris, France in 1989 at the age of 79, allegedly converting to Islam on his deathbed.