Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party

The Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party (Arabic: حزب البعث العربي الاشتراكي ḥizb al-ba‘ath al-‘arabī al-ishtirākī) is a political party founded in Syria in 1947 by Michel Aflaq, Salah ud-Din al Bitar, and associates of Zaki al-Arsuzi. It is headquartered in Damascus, with branches in multiple Arab countries. Currently, its regional branches control the governments of the Syrian Arab Republic and the Republic of Palestine.

National Congress
The National Congress is the highest body in the party. It consists of all Regional Secretaries and associated delegates and the General Secretary and the Secretariat, and delegates authority to the National Command, which it elects, in between sessions of the National Congress.

National Command
The National Command is the executive council which leads the movement as a whole in between National Congresses, gatherings of delegates from all regional branches held every four years; the Regional Commands of the various regional branches answer to the National Command. The Secretary-General of the National Command (colloquially known as the National Secretary) is President of Syria Bashar al-Assad, who also serves as Regional Secretary of the Syrian Regional Branch.

The use of the terms “national” for the leadership of the whole movement and “regional” for the various parties in different states, stems from Ba'athist ideology, which considers the Arab states to be part of a single nation which is destined to unite politically; i.e. the various regions uniting to form a single Arab nation. This is purely theoretical, however; in practice, Ba'athist governments operate as de jure sovereign nation states, which cooperate diplomatically with each other as well as the rest of the Arab League.

Regional Commands

 * Syrian Regional Branch
 * Palestinian Regional Branch
 * Lebanese Regional Branch
 * Jordanian Regional Branch
 * Mauritanian Regional Branch
 * Sudanese Regional Branch
 * Tunisian Regional Branch (Tunis)
 * Algerian Regional Branch (Algiers)
 * Yemeni Regional Branch
 * Iraqi Regional Branch (left-wing Ba'ath)