ABSTRACT
The March 1963 coup brought to power a diverse coalition of forces united only by their opposition to the “separatist regime”: the various Ba‘thi factions, including the military committee, Colonel Ziyad al-Hariri and his “independents,” and various Nasirite officers. Liberal regimes in countries like Syria were held to reflect the status quo distribution of social power and the feudal, tribal and communal struggle, while keeping the masses backward and passive; they were hence an unfit instrument for carrying out radical change. Thus the very conditions under which the regime was born made it exceptionally vulnerable to intra-elite factional conflict. In the spring of 1967, merchants, ulama’, and other religious protesters took to the streets in major anti-regime disturbances against radical secularism, deeply embarrassing a regime which could ill afford to stir up broad-based Islamic hostility. In the aftermath of the October war, the Asad regime pursued two potentially contradictory policies, military build-up and economic liberalization, which further altered the state.
