The Arab Socialist Ba'th Party (also spelle Baath or Ba'ath; Arabic: حزب البعث العربي الاشتراكي) was founded in Damascus in the 1940s as the original secular Arab nationalist movement, to combat Western colonial rule. In Arabic, baath means renaissance or resurrection. It functioned as a pan-Arab party with branches in different Arab countries, but was strongest in Syria and Iraq, coming to power in both countries in 1963. In 1966 the Syrian and Iraqi parties split into rival organizations mainly for ideological reasons – the Qotri (or Regionalist) Syria-based party being aligned with the Soviet Union while the Qawmi (or Nationalist) Iraq-based party adopted a generally more centrist stance. Both Ba'ath parties retained the same name and maintain parallel structures in the Arab world.