This paper will trace the process of the radicalization and ruralization of the Ba`th party in the 1960s. the main sources will be primary sources based on various memoirs of ex-Ba`thists as well as the research of Raymond Hinnebusch, `Aref Dalila, Nasir Nasir, Hanna Batatu, and Steven Heydemann, The Ba`th party is best understood as a coalition of social and ideological currents, united by their opposition to the status quo during the pre-union (UAR) period between Syria and Egypt: the union (1958-1961) created a split between the old guard (who favored the union) and the rest of the party, and the conservative “Separatist Movement” (1961-1963) created another split between the hard-line regionalists (i.e., the rural base) and everyone else. By the time the regionalists (themselves an amalgam of rural minorities) wrested power in 1966, the `Alawi element dominated that fringe, but it still included some non-minoritarian elements. At the end of the 1960s, the Ba`th leadership was less urban and more rural, less Sunni and more minoritarian, less diversely minoritarian and more `Alawi. Initially, the radical leadership’s drive in the 1960s had been the need for establishing a mechanism of loyalty in the absence of strong institutions and in the presence of a strong urban opposition. Sectarian identity was used to mobilize support for political goals, i.e., as a means not an end, although the coincidence of class, regional, and sectarian divisions made it difficult to isolate the causes. Such communal mechanism would have to be buttressed by structural and strategic rationality. `Alawis, though divided among themselves on political as well as personal grounds, and though they did not rule in the name of or for the benefit of that community, were seen by excluded groups as `Alawis nonetheless, and thus found sectarian-based alliances rational. However, most analysts assert that the conflict was primarily over issues, including the different views of how radical the Ba`thi revolution should be and how it should deal with the urban opposition. Nonetheless, to rely solely on the rural/minoritarian factor would have spelled political suicide for the regime.