Michel ʿAflaq (1910-1989), a Greek Orthodox Christian born in Damascus, was a co-founder of the Arab Socialist Baʿth Party, branches of which eventually took over and ruled both Syria (1963-present) and Iraq (1968-2003). As arguably the most consequential co-founder of the Baʿth Party whose intellectual ideas underpinned its ideology, ʿAflaq has received relatively little scholarly attention, lacking an academic biography in Arabic, English, or any major European research language. After a falling out with the Syrian Baʿth Party and fighting between the Iraqi and Syrian branches, ʿAflaq moved to Baghdad in 1968, where he served the Iraqi Baʿth as the nominal head of the party and was revered as the “founding leader” (al-qā’id al-mu’assis) by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein until the former’s death in 1989. Earlier and more recent works have generally treated ʿAflaq’s time in Iraq as symbolic and inconsequential. Both these earlier and more recent works have not been informed by the important sources on ʿAflaq in the Baʿth Party and Iraqi state records made available to researchers as a result of the 2003 Iraq War. Captured audio recordings of Saddam’s meetings with his top officials have revealed that ʿAflaq and his fellow-Syrian deputy Elias Farah were respected participants in policy discussions. Because the Baʿth Party headquarters was located next to ʿAflaq’s mausoleum, the archives of the former contained personal papers and hours of video of ʿAflaq speaking on Iraqi state television and at internal party functions. This paper will discuss ʿAflaq, Farah, and their fellow Syrian colleague Shibli al-ʿAisamī in the service of the Iraqi Baʿthist state, drawing on both the internal records and their writings published by Saddam’s regime. It will also be informed by consultation of the membership files of lesser-known members of the Syrian Baʿth Party who followed in the footsteps of these prominent party intellectuals in migrating to Iraq and serving Saddam’s regime. All of these men were vocal proponents or adherents to Pan-Arab ideology, yet as a consequence of internal branch feuds and national rivalry between the Syrian and Iraqi branches of the Baʿth Party, ultimately lent their ideas and loyalty to a regime that increasingly defined Baʿthist Pan-Arabism in terms of Iraqi interests and the personality cult of Saddam Hussein. As such, the paper will engage with the themes of the panel and be situated at the intersection of top-down and bottom-up narratives of nationalism and belonging.