The Ba'ath party was created in 1947 in Syria. Its platform was pan-Arab social, economic, cultural and political unity — and it soon established regional wings in other Arab countries such as Iraq and Yemen. The party was popular enough to see members elected to the Syrian parliament, which played a role in the formation of the UAR, a 1958 political union of Egypt and Syria. The UAR lasted no more than a few years, and it all went downhill from there. Less than two decades after its foundation, the Ba'ath party had split into bitterly-opposed Syrian and Iraqi rival branches. Why and how did a successful party whose claimed raison d'être was pan-Arab unity so quickly ended up compromising the very unity it sought to uphold?