Akram al-Hawrani

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Akram al-Hawrani : biography

1912 – 1996

Exile and death

After the Ba’thist- and Nasserist-led pro-reunification coup of March 1963, al-Hawrani went into exile in Lebanon. As a radical military-backed Ba`th faction purged other political groups in Syria, he was decided to remain in opposition outside the country, and would never return. The Arab Socialist Party split into competing factions, some of which aligned with the Ba`th, some of which opposed it, but Hawrani’s own influence dwindled. He spent the rest of his life between Lebanon, Iraq, France and Jordan, where he died in 1996, an important name in Syrian history but by then with little to no influence over modern politics. His memoirs were published posthumously in Cairo in 2000.

Notes

The Arab Ba’th Socialist Party

Al-Hawrani was a member of the Baath Party national command, meaning its pan-Arab leadership, from its establishment in 1954 until 1959. Along with the other Ba’thists and members of most of Syria’s political forces, he played a prominent role in the agitation and political mobilization that forced al-Shishakli to give up power in early 1954. He was speaker of the Syrian parliament from 1957 to February 1958, and in that position forced the cancellation of the planned November 1957 municipal elections after failing to receive a guarantee that the Ba’th would be awarded 51% of the available seats. This has been described as the point where the Ba’th party "turned their backs… on party politics altogether."Mufti, p. 89.

The United Arab Republic

When a 1961 military coup in Syria led to the dissolution of the UAR, al-Hawrani publicly supported it and signed a statement in favor of the secession (as did Bitar, but he later withdrew his signature). The Ba`th Party split into several competing factions, but as the national command decided in favour of reunification, al-Hawrani left it. He was officially expelled in June 1962, whereafter he and his loyalists re-established the Arab Socialist Party. However, popular support for unity hampered its growth and it was strong only in his original stronghold of Hama. In September 1962 he joined the "secessionist" (infisali) cabinet formed by Khalid al-Azm, drawing strong criticism from the Ba`th and Nasserist movements.