Interrogation of Saddam Hussein age of 20, Saddam Hussein joined the nascent Ba'ath Party, which was founded on a socialist form of Pan-Arabism. After participating in an unsuccessful 1959 assassination attempt on then Prime Minister of Iraq Abd al-Karim Qasim, Saddam became a fugitive, and eventually fled to Syria and then Egypt. Following the Ba'athists overthrow of the prime minister in the February 1963 Iraqi coup d'état, and the counter-coup half a year later, Saddam was jailed in Iraq from 1964 to 1966. The Ba'ath party returned to power after another successful coup in 1968. General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, a relative of Saddam Hussein,
Arab socialism a united Arab society. In short, he called for revolutionary struggle. While Aflaq did believe class conflict existed, he believed it to be subordinate to nationalism. Munif al-Razzaz, a Jordanian Ba'athist, wrote the Ba'athist classic "Why Socialism Now?" in 1957. In it he takes a "very different" approach on interpreting the meaning of socialism from Aflaq. As he wrote, "Socialism is a way of life, not just an economic order. It extends to all aspects of life—economics, politics, training, education, social life, health, morals, literature, science, history, and others, both great and small." In contrast to official party writings which