Tuesday, October 02, 2007

I used to think that the best insider accounts of the lousy Ba`th Party was the memoirs of Sami Al-Jundi and Hani Fukayki. I have been reading the memoirs of Faysal Al-Hurani and it also has a lot of information and insights about the intrigue within that lousy party, and about the role and machinations of Michel `Aflaq. `Aflaq was not as modest as people thought. When he used to be attacked by the leftist faction (Yasin Al-Hafidh and others) for not producing any theoretical work, and for writing those dreamy notions about "Ba`thism as love", he would counter: Those writings that you mock reached power in two Arab countries. And what models of power they were, o `Aflaq. (I forgot that somebody was trying to arrange for me to interview `Aflaq's son in Paris; so I may now forget about it, I guess).