Salah al-Din al-Bitar
Salah al-Din al-Bitar (Arabic: صلاح الدين البيطار, romanized: Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn al-Bīṭār; 1 January 1912 – 21 July 1980) was a Syrian politician who co-founded the Baʿath Party with Michel Aflaq in the early 1940s. As students in Paris in the early 1930s, the two formulated a doctrine that combined aspects of nationalism and socialism. Bitar later served as prime minister in several early Ba'athist governments in Syria but became alienated from the party as it grew more radical. In 1966 he fled the country, lived mostly in Europe and remained politically active until he was assassinated in Paris in 1980 by unidentified hitmen linked to the regime of Hafez al-Assad.[1][2][3][4]
Salah al-Din al-Bitar
Mahmoud Fawzi (UAR)
1 January 1912
Damascus, Ottoman Syria, Ottoman Empire
Early years[edit]
According to historian Hanna Batatu, Bitar was born in the Midan area of Damascus in 1912; he was the son of a reasonably well-off Sunni Muslim grain merchant. His family were religious, and many of his recent ancestors had been ulama and preachers in the district's mosques. Bitar grew up in a conservative family atmosphere and attended a Muslim elementary school before receiving his secondary education in Maktab Anbar. He was exposed to the political vicissitudes of the time, as Midan played a leading role in the Great Syrian Revolution of 1925 against France—then the mandatory power in Syria. The district was heavily bombarded with considerable loss of life and physical damage.[5]
Bitar traveled to France in 1929 to study in the Sorbonne. There he became acquainted with Michel Aflaq, also the son of a Midan grain merchant who was from a Christian Orthodox family. They were both interested in the political and intellectual movements of the time, and began applying nationalist and Marxist ideas to the situation of their homeland.[6] Bitar returned to Syria in 1934, and took a job teaching physics and mathematics at the Tajhiz al-Ula, where Aflaq was already a teacher.
Assassination and legacy[edit]
Members of the party's other fractions fled; Bitar and other members of the party's historic leadership were captured and detained in a government guest house.[51] When the new government launched a purge in August that year, Bitar escaped and fled to Beirut.[52]
In 1978, Bitar was pardoned by President Hafez al-Assad, who came to power in 1970. Bitar returned briefly to Damascus; he was not reconciled with Assad and shortly, after a meeting with Assad ended without an agreement, Bitar launched a press campaign against the Syrian government from his exile in Paris, attacking it in a new magazine which he entitled al-Ihyaa al-Arabi, in an echo of the name he and Aflaq had adopted almost forty years before. He was also rumored to be in contact with Syrian opposition figures in Baghdad.[53]
On 21 July 1980, Bitar was shot dead in Paris. That morning, he received a telephone call to meet a journalist at the office of al-Ihiyyaa al-Arabi in Avenue Hoche. As he was exiting the elevator to enter his office, his assassin fired two shots to the back of his head. The identity of his killer was never discovered, but it was reported[54][55] that Assad ordered the assassination. At the time, Bitar had reported to local authorities in France that he had received death threats by mail and telephone. He took personal measures by limiting his movements.
At the time of the assassination, Bitar held a diplomatic passport issued by South Yemen.[56]
He was portrayed by Stanley Townsend in the 2019 OCS/Netflix miniseries The Spy.[57]
His writings include:[58]