Salah Jadid
While the Ba'ath Party had attained power, it experienced problems with internal infighting. The Military Committee, which was a tiny minority of the already small Ba'ath Party membership, was forced to rule by force. The Ba'ath Party, which had only 2,500 members by mid-1963, lacked a popular base. Hanna Batatu called the period from 1963 to 1970 the "Transitional Ba'ath"; she wrote that the "Old Ba'ath" was removed and was replaced with the "Neo Ba'ath" led by Salah Jadid and Hafez al-Assad in 1966.