The Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP; ) is a Syrian nationalist party operating in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine. It advocates the establishment of a Greater Syrian nation state spanning the Fertile Crescent, including present-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Palestine region (includes Israel and its occupied territories), Cyprus, Sinai of Egypt, Hatay and Cilicia of Turkey, based on geographical boundaries and the common history people within the boundaries share. It has also been active in the Syrian and Lebanese diaspora, for example in South America. Until the fall of the Assad regime it was an ally of the ruling Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, being the second-ranking party in the National Progressive Front.
Founded in Beirut in 1932 by the Lebanese intellectual Antoun Saadeh as an anticolonial political organization hostile to French colonial rule, the party played a significant role in Lebanese politics. It launched coups d'état attempts in 1949 and 1961, following which it was repressed in the country. SSNP was active in the fight against the Israeli military during the 1982 Lebanon War and subsequent Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon until 2000, while simultaneously supporting the Syrian occupation of Lebanon due to its beliefs in Syrian irredentism.
In Syria, SSNP operated as an ultranationalist movement until the 1950s; advocating armed uprising to establish a one-party state. It participated in the 1949 Syrian coup d'état, which overthrew the democratically elected government of Shukri al-Quwatli. SSNP continued to engage in violent activities throughout the country; and was banned in 1955 after its assassination of a Syrian Ba'athist military officer Adnan al-Malki. Despite its ban, the party remained organized, and by the late 1990s had allied itself with the Palestine Liberation Organisation and the Lebanese Communist Party, despite the ideological differences between them. The SSNP was legalized in Syria in 2005, and joined the Syrian Ba'ath Party-led National Progressive Front. From 2012 to 6 May 2014, the party was part of the Popular Front for Change and Liberation. The party took the side of the Ba'athist government during the Syrian Civil War, where almost 12,000 fighters of its armed branch, the Eagles of the Whirlwind, fought alongside the Syrian Arab Armed Forces against the Syrian opposition and the Islamic State. Following the fall of the Assad regime, it was banned by the Syrian caretaker government, though it still operates openly in Lebanon as well as clandestinely in Syria.
Background Early Syrian nationalists In the mid-nineteenth century, Butrus al-Bustani was one of the first to assert the existence of a natural Syrian nation that should be accommodated in a reformed Ottoman Empire.Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983) 100–102 He belonged to the Nahda, thinkers influenced by the Arabic Literary Renaissance and the French RevolutionElizabeth Suzanne Kassab, Contemporary Arab Thought, Cultural Critique in Comparative Perspective (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 20–21 and who wished to shape the Tanzimat reforms, which were an attempt to introduce a constitutional monarchy with religious freedom to reverse the Ottoman state's creeping economic marginalisationPaul Salem, Bitter Legacy: Ideology and Politics in the Arab World (Syracuse University Press, 1994) and which would lead to the Young Turks and the Second Constitutional Era.
An influential follower of al-Bustani was the Belgian Jesuit historian, Henri Lammens, ordained as a priest in Beirut in 1893, who claimed that Greater Syria had since ancient times encompassed all the land between the Arab peninsula, Egypt, the Levantine corridor and the Taurus Mountains, including all the peoples within the Fertile Crescent.Asher Kaufman, "Henri Lammens and Syrian Nationalism," in Adel Beshara, The Origins of Syrian Nationhood: Histories, Pioneers and Identity.
This was also accompanied with the rise of a profoundly idealistic patriotism, largely resembling European romantic nationalism, idealizing the coming of a National Revival to the Levant, that would shake off the Ottoman past and propel back what many started to see again as the cradle of civilization into the modern world's front stage. In that aspect, the works of Kahlil Gibran who began expressing his belief in Syrian nationalism and patriotism are central. As Gibran said, "I believe in you, and I believe in your destiny. I believe that you are contributors to this new civilization.... I believe that it is in you to be good citizens. And what is it to be a good citizen?... It is to stand before the towers of New York and Washington, Chicago and San Francisco saying in your hearts, "I am the descendent of a people the built Damascus and Byblos, and Tyre and Sidon and Antioch, and I am here to build with you, and with a will."
History Foundation and early years
The SSNP was founded by Antun Saadeh, a Lebanese journalist and lecturer from a Greek Orthodox family who had lived in South America from 1919 to 1930 who secretly established the first nucleus of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party in November 1932, which operated underground for the first three years of its existence; in 1933, he started publishing the monthly journal Al-Majalla, which was distributed in the American University of Beirut and developed the party's ideology. In 1936, the party's open hostility to colonialism led to the French authorities banning the party and the imprisoning Saadeh for six months for creating a clandestine party, although an accusation of having been in contact with the German and Italian fascist movements was dropped after the Germans denied any relationship. During his time in prison Saadeh wrote The Genesis of Nations to lay out the SSNP's ideology. At that time, the Party joined ranks with other nationalist and patriotic forces including the National Bloc, whereas it began militating, in secret, for the overthrow of the Mandate. Nonetheless, the alliance between the SSNP and the National Bloc did not last long: The National Bloc refrained from engaging in actual militant activities against the French, deciding instead to cooperate with the High Commissioner. Many SSNP members also felt that the NB refused to cooperate with them because their founder was Christian.See: Youssef al-Debs, "In the Convoy of the Renaissance"
Saadeh emigrated again to Brazil in 1938 and afterwards to Argentina, only to return to Lebanon in 1947 following the country's independence from the French in 1943. On his way to Argentina, he visited Italy and Berlin, which increased the suspicions of the French that the SSNP might have been entertaining relations with the Axis. Coming back shortly to Lebanon in 1939, he was questioned by the French authorities who accused him of plotting with the Germans. The charge was dropped when no evidence of collaboration had been found and after that Saadeh declared that even the French rule to which he was vehemently opposed would be better than German or Italian rule. Having afterwards left for Argentina, Saadeh found out that the Argentinian branch of the SSNP newspaper had been voicing its outright support for Nazi Germany and to the Axis powers, which led Saadeh to issue a lengthy letter to the editor-in-chef, restating that the SSNP is not a National Socialist party and that no stance should be taken vis-à-vis the Allies or the Axis.Nordbrush, Nazism in Syria and Lebanon, 85–87
While the Kataeb was committed to the notion of Lebanon as a nation state defined as an entity presiding over the borders outlined first by the Sykes–Picot Agreement in 1916, and afterwards by the French administrative division of its mandate into six states including the state of Greater Lebanon, and had espoused a strong bond between the nation and the church as well as outright social ultraconservatism, the SSNP rejected these national claim on the basis that the borders outlining the newly created states were fictitious, resulting from colonialism, and do not reflect any historical and social realities. The party claimed that Greater Syria as defined by Saadeh represents the national ideal encompassing the historical people of Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, bound together by a clearly defined geography and a common historical, social and cultural development path away from all sectarianism.A. Saadeh. The Genesis of Nations. Translated and Reprinted. Dar Al-Fikr. Beirut, 2004When the Arabs lost the war in 1948, Saadeh propelled the Party into a fully confrontational stance: He deemed Arabism as a purely rhetorical gimmick, condemned the incompetence and hypocrisy of the Arab leaders, and asserted that the creation of the State of Israel and the expulsion of the Palestinians was the direct result of this incompetence.See: "The Rise of the Revolutionaries" in Patrick Seale, The Struggle for Arab Independence
On 4 July 1949, a year after the declaration of the establishment of the state of Israel and the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight (the Nakba), and a response to a series of aggressions perpetrated by the Kataeb-backed Lebanese government, the SSNP attempted its first revolution.
Following a violent crackdown by government forces, Saadeh travelled to Damascus to meet with Husni al-Za'im in an attempt to obtain his support for the revolution. A decision was taken by King Farouk, Riad el Solh and Husni al-Za'im to eliminate Antoun Saadeh, under the patronage of British Intelligence and the Mossad. As a result, Al-Za'im handed Saadeh over to Lebanese authorities, who had him executed on 8 July 1949. It was the shortest and most secretive trial given to a political offender.Adel beshara (2010). Outright Assassination: The Trial and Execution of Antun Sa'adeh, 1949. Ithaca Press. .
Saadeh's wife Juliette Elmir and their daughters were also handed over and were imprisoned at the Greek Orthodox Our Lady of Saidnaya Monastery. Shortly after her husband's death, Elmir was appointed al-Amina al-ula (First Keeper or First Trustee) of the SSNP and her home became the SSNP's headquarters under the leadership of George Abd Messih. The SSNP allowed women to participate in activism and politics, setting a trend for the social norms for women in politics in the Levant.
SSNP in Lebanon
From confrontation to accommodation After Saadeh was executed and its high-ranking leaders were arrested, the party remained underground until 1958 when it sided with the pro-Western president Camille Chamoun against the Arab nationalist rebels.
1961 coup d'état
On the last day of 1961, two SSNP members, company commanders in the Lebanese army, led an unsuccessful attempted lightning coup against Fouad Chehab, supported by some 200 civilian SSNP members. In the scholarly literature, the coup has been explained as stemming from the party's ideological preference for violence ("bullets over ballots"), its frustration at exclusion from the Lebanese state, and both political and military criticism of the rule of Fouad Chehab.
Advisors of Chehab who allegedly witnessed armed SSNP partisans gathering around the central areas of Beirut rushed to the presidential palace to inform Chehab of the insurrection. This resulted in a renewed proscription and the imprisonment and/or execution of many SSNP leaders.U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States Volume 17, Near East,1961–1963, (Washington, DC: GPO 1993), 383–384. Most of the party's known activists remained in prison or exile until a general amnesty in 1969. In 1969, the party re-aligned towards Arab nationalism.
Lebanese Civil War