Before These Memoirs - Part 8: Rebutting the Secessionists' Three Alleged Errors and Khaled al-Azm's Self-Contradicting Memoirs

Friday, 20 October

I sat at my desk at home, going back over my memories of the union era, as a citizen who had taken part in it and believed in it. I asked myself: did the union era truly contain errors serious enough to justify correcting them through secession?

After long reflection, I concluded that every government must inevitably fall into error, and that so long as people, rulers among them, are at work, error is to be expected. As the proverb says: only the stone that never moves never errs.

But what were these errors, exactly?

I can say with confidence that those who raised the banner of "errors" claimed:

1. That the union's system was dictatorial. This is a fact no one disputes. But do heaven, earth, and mankind not know that Abdel Nasser's own system had been a dictatorial one, established in Egypt since 1952? Moreover, Abdel Nasser had set two conditions in the union negotiations: first, that the army stay out of politics, a principle no one disputes except politicized officers; and second, that all political parties be dissolved and merged into the single crucible of the National Union, meaning, if the expression is allowed, rule by one single party?

Those who negotiated with him agreed to this: the officers and politicians then at the head of government, foremost among them President Shukri al-Quwatli, Prime Minister Sabri al-Asali, and Ministers Ma'mun al-Kuzbari and Khaled al-Azm, and the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Akram al-Hourani, and Salah al-Bitar, to name only the most prominent of those who would soon turn against the union and set about inventing tales and nonsense to tarnish its reputation, on the claim that it was a dictatorship.

2. When the union was established, some of these same politicians were among its leaders and pillars, exercising power in its name, men such as Professors Akram al-Hourani and Sabri al-Asali, the two Vice Presidents of the Republic, and Ministers Salah al-Bitar, Mustafa Hamdoun, Abdel Ghani Qanout, Amin al-Nafouri, Ahmad Abdel Karim, and Afif al-Bizri (the first commander of the army), among others.

They got along with the union like honey and butter, so long as they held power. But once they sensed that the President had found it in the state's interest to entrust them with other duties in the state's capital, it seemed to them that they had been stripped of their powers and left with nothing to occupy themselves, so much so that some of them took to solving crossword puzzles. The truth is that public opinion wanted a change of faces and circumstances, which is why the President decided to dispatch the Field Marshal to Syria with the powers of the President of the Republic, and the Field Marshal decided to close down the intelligence offices there, forbid the detention of anyone except by judicial order, and require the enforcement of final judicial rulings, after which, by the President's own order, it was decided to transfer al-Sarraj's intelligence officers to Cairo.

A clash then broke out with the Field Marshal, for whoever grows used to a thing dies clinging to it. They began resigning, in groups and singly, and became opponents of the "dictatorial" union.

3. As for the charge of Egyptian "domination," it was an accusation greatly exaggerated. For example, not a single Egyptian official came to work at the Ministry of Finance or its affiliated departments, because I never requested the secondment of anyone. The Egyptian officials seconded to work in Syria came at the request of the Syrian ministers themselves, who pressed for them urgently and insistently, so much so that the Minister of Health, Shawkat al-Qanawati, once told the Field Marshal that he would hand him the ministry's own keys unless he agreed to bring in a number of Egyptian doctors, even by military order, because the Syrian doctors refused to work in the remote regions.

4. "The great affair" burst into flame when the President decided to transfer a number of Syrians to Cairo, perhaps to signal to anyone who wished to understand that the two regions were one single country, and perhaps out of fear that the hands of discord might begin to stir in certain weak souls.

In Cairo, they were financially comfortable, since they drew two salaries, one from Syria and the other from Egypt.

So what did they have to complain of?

The Egyptian Vice President Mr. Abdel Latif al-Baghdadi wrote of the dispute between al-Sarraj and the Field Marshal,[1] which I referred to earlier, that "al-Sarraj refused to carry out the Field Marshal's orders, and likewise refused to transfer his men to Cairo, and they barricaded themselves inside the Ministry of Interior, and al-Sarraj said, in front of Ahmad al-Hunaidi and Ta'ma al-Awdallah, that he could pelt the Field Marshal with tomatoes," meaning that they wanted to remain states within the state.

5. It is quite possible that some Egyptian officials gave the impression of enjoying influence in the circles of the President or the Field Marshal, and secured for themselves a few petty gains, material or otherwise, but such cases remained few, given how few of them there were.

I have already pointed out the looting of Syrian funds by Egypt, and shown with irrefutable figures that it was in fact the Egyptian budget that came to the rescue of the Syrian treasury and provided it with generous subsidies during the years of the drought's hardship. And in truth, even granting these "errors" for the sake of argument, they were no more than blemishes, easily remedied. Whatever is said of the union's errors, it is beyond dispute that the union:

a. Liberated the farmer, resolving to free him from the feudal lord's yoke, issuing the Agrarian Relations Law that protected the farmer's material rights and forbade evicting him from the land he worked, followed by the Agrarian Reform Law that raised the farmer from the rank of a slave to the rank of a free human being.

b. Granted the worker a right to a fair wage and an equitable share in the factory's profits and its board of management, indeed making him a representative of the people within the nationalized companies and the public sector as a whole.

c. Removed the army from politics, dedicating it instead to defending the safety of the homeland and training itself to stand against the Zionists, when before the union it had been nothing but warring tribes and clans, each lying in wait for the other.

d. Gave the Arabs international prestige and standing, for Israel found itself caught between the jaws of a pincer, crouching before a state whose population outnumbered the Israelis' own more than tenfold.

e. Assisted Iraq on the day of its revolution and stood beside it, and assisted the countries of the Arab Maghreb, Algeria above all, which is why Guy Mollet, Prime Minister of France, said in a moment of anger that the road to victory in Algeria ran through Cairo.

f. Stirred within the conscience of the Egyptian people an Arab pride that the advocates of Pharaonism had been working to numb, so that Arab nationalism gained a powerful momentum from Egypt's own strength, its great population, and the abundance of its scholars and intellectuals.

As for Abdel Nasser, he led the union with tremendous self-confidence, laurel wreaths already resting upon his head from the 1956 Suez war, the abrogation of the British treaty, and the return of the canal to its rightful owners, and before all of that, the overthrow of the corrupt monarchy, a canal Egypt still lives today on the wealth of, a canal the Egyptians themselves dug with their own blood. I may not be exaggerating, and this in any case is my own conviction, when I claim that the union came as a heavy burden upon Egypt and Abdel Nasser's own system, a burden he bore with great courage, restoring calm to our army's nerves and saving the country from the domination of its politicized officers over civilian rule, a rule they had corrupted through interference that knew neither bounds nor limits.

If we were to weigh the union's merits against its faults, the scale would tip heavily in favor of the former.

Should I then say that the merger union was hasty, if I am not to call it an outright error? Perhaps. But I myself do not say so, as a matter of principle or national conviction.

Yet I do not begrudge others the right to say it, for this claim may hold some grain of truth.

Originally, the Chamber of Deputies had stood behind federation. Then the officers arrived, and in their wake the governments of al-Quwatli, al-Asali, al-Azm, and al-Kuzbari came rushing toward a merger union instead, which the Chamber approved unanimously, amid cheers and applause.

No one broke from this unanimity except Khaled Bakdash, leader of the Communist Party.

I would like to quote here what Mr. Ahmad Hamroush wrote,[2] to close these reflections:

"Abdel Hakim Amer, by virtue of his own good nature, was not the kind of military man capable of bringing about a revolutionary change within the ranks of the army. He surrounded himself with a number of officers who grew comfortable with power and corruption, and who took advantage of his good nature, drifting toward the soft life so easily available in Syria." (!)

"Among the Syrian officers, too, were a number of opportunists who followed cheap paths toward those perched at the summit, and by this conduct gave the worst and most false impression of Arab officers and of the Arab people."

I would also like to cite a Syrian researcher, the former officer Awni Farsakh, on this sensitive subject, who wrote as follows:[3]

"The failure to properly prepare the Egyptian officers seconded to serve in the First Army in Syria, psychologically and politically, was a powerful cause of resentment among the Syrian officers, who were accustomed to interfering in politics.

The Egyptian officers, by contrast, belonged to a disciplined and orderly army. Military rank in the Syrian army did not carry the same weight it did in the Egyptian army, so that it could happen that a colonel would be a member of a party cell whose own secretary was a mere lieutenant. Nor were the Egyptian officers seconded to Syria chosen on the basis of competence, for many of them arrived through connections."

And if the Syrian officers thought of keeping their distance from politics, most of them being unpoliticized by nature, some politicians would creep into their souls the way disease creeps into the body's organs, dressing up for them "the finer rewards of political work" should they support them in bringing their own "principles" to success through a military coup, a coup that would serve them well whether it succeeded or failed. For either they would become commanders of the army, in the event of success, or they would be sent as ambassadors to Moscow, Paris, or London, or at the very least as military attachés.

And when these politicians later "retired," they would take to attacking the army's interference in politics, disowning their own dark past of entanglement with the officers.

Alongside Professor al-Hourani were other politicians who grew comfortable "recruiting" officers. I will not speak here of the Communists, the Syrian Nationalists, or the socialist Baathists, but I would like to dwell instead on a seasoned politician, Mr. Khaled al-Azm, who loved power and pursued it by every possible means of reaching it.

If we page through the third volume of his own memoirs, we find a sad contradiction in what he says about his relations with the officers.

On page 121 he says:

"As was our usual custom, we would gather at my house once or more a week for a political meeting attended by al-Asali, al-Hourani, al-Kayali (Fakher), al-Bitar, the five heads of the army's political bureaus, and Khaled Bakdash.

These meetings represented the ruling bloc within the National Bloc and the army. We would study the political scene and gauge the general mood."

He says on page 171: "As for Khaled al-Azm (when the union came about), they got rid of him and his supporters within the army."

And on page 210 he says:

"In 1954 we formed a front with Akram al-Hourani and As'ad Harun of the National Party, supported by the Chief of the General Staff, Shawkat Shuqayr."

Yet he says on page 206:

"The truth is that I was uneasy about everything that was happening, such as the army's interference in public affairs."

And he says on page 209:

"I told those present that I knew none of the officers, since I had no dealings with them, in keeping with my own policy of not interfering in the army's affairs."

And he says on page 211:

"There is no doubt that the army's interference in the state's politics, and its domination of power, led to consequences, among which I would mention:

1. The instability that has prevailed in Syria ever since Husni al-Za'im's coup in 1949.

2. The disappearance of the government's prestige and the state's authority.

3. The shrinking number of officers as a result of the discharges carried out (because of the coups)."

This politician, and men like him, were the very ones who corrupted the army, who ran alongside the union's own procession, who then walked in its funeral, and who washed their hands of their own tragedies. I think what I have quoted from a book he wrote in his own hand is a lesson for anyone who wishes to read what such men themselves write about their own shameful roles in it.

Wednesday, 1 November

Until now, ever since our return from Cairo, our activity has been nothing more than evenings we spent together, a few of Abdel Nasser's former ministers: Nihad al-Qasim, Dr. Shawkat al-Qanawati, Ahmad al-Hajj Younes, myself, and our wives.

We would talk over whatever news reached us of the secessionists' activities and doings. We sensed that the seed of some kind of bloc was beginning to take shape on the scene out of these evenings, but what happened instead was that Dr. al-Qanawati, who was ill, told us frankly that he had never before worked in politics and did not now intend to, and that he had only taken the post of Minister of Health from his position as university president.

He therefore decided to withdraw from our gatherings, so as to spare himself, and us, any embarrassment.

As for Ahmad al-Hajj Younes, he told us nothing outright, but began missing our meetings, with or without excuse, until his ties with us were severed completely. We later learned that the former union minister, Thabet al-Arees, had returned to his post at the "secessionist" Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and had been appointed to a post as ambassador.

Had this been anyone but "Thabet," I would not have felt such sorrow over it.

Friday the 3rd

I have taken to gathering with some of the brothers, listening to their impressions, and deliberately stirring up discussion with certain people I deal with day to day, such as the grocer and the butcher.

I need no oath for people to believe me when I say that the great majority of those I speak with, across every social class, stand with the union and against the secession.

I have often heard or read that "the Damascenes" are secessionists by nature, since Damascus was no longer the capital. I can affirm that this is a disgraceful slander, unsupported by any majority in Damascus. What I heard from them was nothing but deep sorrow over the union.

They said what any reasonable person would say: that whatever errors occurred during the union, the remedy for them could never be secession.

This attachment to the union is influenced by a deep religious sentiment as well, drawn from the belief that Muslims are "the best nation brought forth for mankind, enjoining right and forbidding wrong." I happened by chance to meet Judge Adel Shaaban Sheesh, who stopped me in the street to tell me about a "mock trial" he had conducted of the Syrian people, to hold it to account for its support of the secession. He would summon one of the "accused" and sit before him, just as a judge sits before any defendant, questioning him, seeking clarification, comparing one testimony against another. He concluded, at the end of this "trial," that the people of Damascus and elsewhere were staunch unionists through and through, and that the secession was a detestable crime, and that the handful of renegades counted for nothing.

I bear witness before God and history that these were indeed my own impressions. But I do not doubt that there were secessionists too, people whose interests and benefits had been harmed, or people who preferred to ride the secessionist wave to secure quick gains for themselves. I do not claim that all people are alike, for there are the good and there are the weak, and it is this natural difference among people that separates the wheat from the chaff.

Sunday the 12th

Al-Kuzbari's council of ministers decided to announce general elections and a referendum on a provisional constitution, to be held on Friday the 1st of December.

The provisional constitution was published in the newspapers. It consists of only eight articles. The first question that comes to mind is this:

Why a provisional constitution, when the 1950 constitution stood ready, moderate and sound in its principles and its direction?

In any case, the articles of this provisional "constitution" were nothing more than rules for running the state during a temporary period, after which a permanent constitution was to be drawn up. We laughed a great deal at its first article, worded in language not free of hypocrisy: "The Syrian Arab Republic is an independent, sovereign state" (this being the very goal of the secession, now achieved for the puppets and for those pulling their strings from behind the curtain), "and it is part of the greater Arab homeland."

This wording, in truth, meant nothing at all to those who drafted it, except perhaps an attempt to shield themselves from the people's own biting criticism, which had branded them with the filthy stain of secession.

The remaining articles can be summarized as follows:

1. The people shall elect a parliamentary council for a term of four years.

2. This council shall undertake the drafting of a permanent constitution.

3. It shall then convert into a chamber of deputies.

4. A President of the Republic shall be elected for a term of five years.

5. The President of the Republic and the Council of Ministers shall exercise executive authority in accordance with the provisions of the constitution of 5 September 1950, until the new constitution is published.

Life had begun stirring once more in political circles, whose appetite had been whetted by the desire to return to the maneuvers and party games they had been deprived of for nearly four years.

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Endnotes:

[1] Akher Sa'a magazine (Egypt), issue of 24 February 1988.

[2] In his book Abdel Nasser and the Arabs, Volume 3 of The Story of the July 1952 Revolution, Madbouly Press, Cairo.

[3] In his book, p. 273 and following.