Before These Memoirs - Part 28: Seventeen Lawyers Withdraw From Defending the Aleppo Coup Officers Over Court Abuses

Thursday, 16 August

The General Union of Arab Bar Associations called for a conference to be held in the city of Gaza, "to defend the rights of the detained unionist lawyers."

By this it meant the Syrian unionist lawyers the secessionist regime had arrested under the provisions of the emergency powers law, a law both Nazim al-Qudsi and Bashir al-Azma had once opposed, but which they have since come to admire, since it gags their own opponents' mouths and terrifies anyone tempted to resist the era, or so much as voice an unfavorable opinion of it.

Yet King Hussein's government barred the Jordanian delegation from traveling to Gaza.

Likewise, General Qasim's own government prevented the head of the Iraqi Bar Association, Abdel Razzaq Shabib, from leaving Baghdad.

It is certain the Syrian government will "advise" against taking part in this (politically infected) conference as well.

This gave the Damascus newspapers, which take their orders from al-Samman, commander of the internal security forces, an occasion to unload whatever filth they carried within them against union and against Abdel Nasser, only to turn back on us afterward, as is their own habit, tearing at us with their own sharp fangs.

Even the newspaper Al-Baath, edited by Salah al-Bitar, took part in cursing the dictator and dictatorship, as a preamble to an article of its own speaking of the necessity of "union with Egypt." Today marks the fourth day I have not left the house. Intelligence "advised" us to exercise caution, for fear some Nasserist agent might assassinate us, in keeping with the terrifying subversive plot they claim to have uncovered.

Some of the newspaper headlines today were genuinely alarming.

Al-Sada al-Aam headlined its front page as follows:

"A Nasserist plot to assassinate Nasserist elements."

Al-Manar published, in large black type on its front page: "A conspiracy to trigger the greatest strife Syria has ever known: a Nasserist plot to assassinate prominent Nasserist figures."

Here is a passage from what Al-Manar wrote today:

"Yesterday morning, the responsible authorities uncovered fresh nests of sabotage, preparing to trigger the greatest strife Syria has ever known. For the first time, security men have managed to seize an entire conspiracy, in all its details, its plans, and its men. To avoid obstructing the course of the investigation, we will confine ourselves for now to hinting that, having failed to stir up unrest through their own subversive nests, Cairo's own rulers have begun considering a new method, one that would pit the people against one another, by repeating what happened in Lebanon in 1958, when the Nasserist plot orchestrated the Lebanese uprising, following the murder of the late journalist Nassib al-Matni.

What we have learned is that this 'terrifying plot' calls for the assassination of a number of figures known for their Nasserist sympathies.

A list has been drawn up bearing the names of three of them. Following the assassination, a massive propaganda campaign would then demand vengeance for them, exactly as happened in Lebanon in 1958."

Issam al-Attar's own campaign against the government affected the nerves of its head and of some of his ministers so deeply that they expressed a wish to resign, and announced this wish publicly. Yet they "chose instead the interest of the homeland, which would sorely miss their own merits," and decided to reverse what they had announced only the day before, regarding their own wish to give up power.

One newspaper column reported that Khaled al-Azm had "wept," as it put it, watching the "National Front" fall apart before his own eyes.

Yet he, God rest his soul, has no objection at all to shouldering this same burden once more, should he be called upon to take up the duties of head of government again.

What service could ever compare to a service such as this!

Friday the 17th

Why do so many drivers pay no attention to the dangers they expose themselves to through recklessness and speed? Technical studies agree that 80 percent of traffic accidents arise from driving at excessive speed. One such study finds that if two cars collide, one heading one way and the other returning along the same road, a single death may occur in each car if both are traveling at 70 kilometers an hour, two deaths in each car at 80 kilometers an hour, and every passenger in both cars may die if the speed reaches 90 kilometers an hour.

Yet recklessness, a form of sheer indifference, all too often causes tragic accidents. We ourselves, riding in a friend's car on the road to Dummar, very nearly fell victim to two lines of oncoming traffic, when our own driver decided to "loop around and turn back" without paying any attention to what was around him, putting himself squarely in death's own grip, caught between the wheels of two large vehicles, one heading one way, the other the opposite, each trailed by a long line of touring cars, some of their own drivers driving as though possessed.

God wrote our own safety that day, but only by a miracle.

We returned home asking ourselves: what did our friend gain, and what did we gain, from "saving" the three minutes he should have spent waiting patiently, before committing his own folly?

Today, seventeen lawyers withdrew from the defense of those accused in the killing of four officers during the failed coup movement led by Jasim Alwan and Louai al-Atassi in Aleppo.

They submitted a memorandum to the military court, presided over by the civilian judge Ahmad al-Rashed, whose text I read in the newspaper Al-Baath, stating that they could not faithfully carry out the duty of defending the accused, since agents planted by intelligence at the courthouse door hurled insults at them, assaulted them, and threatened them.

They also took issue with certain unlawful practices by the court itself, the worst of them being administering an oath to the accused "to speak the truth," a practice that had vanished from the world of legal procedure at least two centuries earlier, and which is considered grounds for nullifying the proceedings.

In his weekly column in Al-Ahram, Mohamed Hassanein Heikal affirmed, on the occasion of the Syrian complaint against Egypt, that "the Egypt of the people, the Egypt of the revolution, is not the same as official Egypt.

And if the rulers of Damascus dream that this complaint will serve as an occasion for us to appease them, enabling them to strike at the Syrian people, they are mistaken in their own delusions. We will never abandon the Northern Region."

I asked myself, along with some of my own brothers, why this provocation continues, at a time when certain rulers of Damascus show some "readiness" to discuss a carefully studied union. Is this not the surest path toward a negotiated union, far preferable to one imposed by the force of coups? But what use is reproach, when the eye sees clearly but the hand falls short?

Saturday the 18th

The newspaper Al-Sada al-Aam reported that the current ministry would resign, and that the new government would be formed by Dr. Izzat Trabulsi, who works in banking, sought after eagerly by financial institutions for his own well-known financial and legal expertise, matched by an integrity and honesty beyond any doubt or question.

Izzat is an old friend, with whom I once worked, he as Governor of the Syrian Central Bank, I as Minister of Finance. I myself made real efforts to persuade him to take up this governorship, after Hassan Jabbara had been removed from the post.

Beyond all these professional qualities, Izzat is known for a modesty befitting a true scholar, and among us, back when we were students at the Sorbonne, he enjoyed such a fragrant national reputation that we once elected him president of our own Arab student association.

If the report of his being asked to form the ministry proves true, it must surely signal some move within the government toward a real opening.

Yet he will certainly collide with the secret apparatuses, no longer secret to anyone.

In fairness, the dreadful reality this country now lives through, and the humiliation al-Azma's own government flounders in, with the President of the Republic himself at its very front, speak of a state of decay and collapse we have never known before.

The newspaper Al-Baath captured this reality in today's issue as follows: "The editors of the press, every single newspaper, have managed, through their own particular skill, to uncover a great conspiracy, one 'the watchful eyes' had themselves seized upon, and even though each correspondent worked separately, the wording of the story came out identical across every one of these papers.

Every day, the people hear, on the radio and in the newspapers, of conspiracies, unrest, and arrests, yet they never encounter a single concrete fact behind these conspiracies and this unrest. All they ever hear of are the arrests themselves.

The story broadcast last Wednesday combined a sensationalist style with an open threat of assassinating unionist figures in the name of 'Nasserism.' Fabrication, and the manufacturing of tension and provocation, have become the very method by which the secessionist front survives, holds itself together, and nests at all, since normal circumstances would allow its own falsehood and conspiracy to be exposed for what they are.

Those who once cleared Chamoun (the former President of the Lebanese Republic) of Nassib al-Matni's blood (the Lebanese Maronite journalist who opposed Chamoun) will not be able to hide their own crimes forever, crimes that have now progressed to laying the groundwork for a plan its own architects will carry out unless they are stopped.

We hold the government, and its head in particular, responsible, and demand the formation of an investigative committee to expose whoever fabricated this story and their own operational plans.

The atmosphere is murky and feverish, and citizens no longer feel safe in either their lives or their own dignity.

And the state's own apparatuses bear a great deal of the responsibility for this."

We read this article with real relish, for it captured the wretched state the country had sunk into with the utmost precision. When I reproached the President of the Republic, in a meeting with him, over this atmosphere charged with danger and assaults on human dignity and the right to free expression, and over the President's own duty to protect the constitution and public security, he answered, as though lost in some world of bewildered despair: "Why doesn't the Prime Minister protect you?"

I held myself together despite my own fury, and recall telling him: God, and I myself, Your Excellency, protect this soul of mine.

The next day, an obscure writer none of us had ever heard of before, a certain Jibrael al-Farra, answered Al-Baath's article with one of his own, published in the newspaper Al-Sada al-Aam, which had by then become, by every measure of its own writing, thoroughly "Houranist secessionist." In it, God forgive his mouth, he wrote, "Nasser, and it is you who are the true conspirators." "It is difficult to convince a people that needs proof that daylight itself exists. I therefore address this urgent appeal to the government and the army:

Since you have already taken every precaution to resist Nasserist infiltration, why do you turn a blind eye to this very Nasserist nest, the newspaper Al-Baath, and why do you show such tolerance toward those running it?

The people call on you to 'shut your mouths,' or else their own reckoning will not be long delayed, and their own punishment will show no mercy. You once stood at the very forefront of those celebrating the fate of Nuri al-Said and his own party of agents in Baghdad, so come to your own senses, and know that the holiest punishments of all are those the people themselves carry out, in the public squares and in the streets."

No one has ever written before with such shamelessness, malice, and hypocrisy.

A question comes to mind:

Where is the public prosecution, in the face of obscenities such as these, which fall squarely under the penal code, with their own author fearing no accountability whatsoever?

Monday the 20th

Our colleague Ratib al-Husami met with Dr. al-Qudsi today at the Republican Palace, to learn his own opinion of what the newspapers and security apparatuses were doing, inciting attacks against us, "inventing" fabricated plots as a pretext for committing murders and assaults, then claiming Abdel Nasser's own supporters were responsible for carrying them out, before launching sweeping media campaigns to cover their own crimes, meant to frighten the unionists and entrench the secession, which has itself begun trembling and tottering.

"The President" told Ratib: "The news of the Nasserist plot to assassinate you is not fabricated at all, and it reached us through several Syrian embassies. I believe that exposing this plot so widely has itself helped foil it and expose Abdel Nasser's own apparatus." He asked him to discuss the matter with "the two brothers" AbdulWahab and Ali, so that we might propose whatever measures and precautions we thought necessary to protect us and secure our own safety, and set Thursday as the day for us to give him our answer.

We discussed the matter among ourselves, and settled on the view that "His Excellency" was seeking either to entangle us in intelligence's own suspect schemes, or to wear down our own morale, so as to clear the field entirely for the secessionist gentlemen.

What caught our attention in the President's own conversation with Ratib was his question: how do you see the path to the country's own stability? And before Ratib could answer, the President said, there can be no doubt that there is no stability without an understanding with Abdel Nasser, but how will you reach this understanding with him? He affirmed, quite categorically, that the statement Prime Minister al-Azma had broadcast had been made in full understanding with him, and that he and his government had been entirely serious about what it contained. He told him that "King Hassan II's own mediation" had failed.

We ourselves had heard nothing at all of this mediation al-Qudsi speaks of.

Ratib proposed that one of us travel to Cairo, to learn the true atmosphere within Abdel Nasser's own circle, and al-Qudsi said: "Keep this quiet for now, until I've come to an understanding with the group," the group being, of course, the command officers.

He likes to "put every matter before them," as though he were nothing more than a clerk in their own office.

The standout news of the day, though, was what our colleague, the lawyer Adnan al-Majarkash, a member of our own secret Front leadership, told us. A "senior officer" in the military command had summoned him, asking him to convey to us the necessity of "calming the internal situation" for fifteen days, until this command could carry out the measures it planned to take.

Its officers had decided to reach an agreement with Abdel Nasser on "a conditional union," and to overturn "this rotten stew" in Syria, meaning "the secessionist arrangement" itself.

As a prelude to this step, Brigadier General Hashem Hashem Agha was removed from the head of general intelligence and transferred to command the military division at the Republican Palace. A senior official told us the military command had pressed the President hard to carry out the Homs conference's own resolutions.

Lieutenant General Abdel Karim Zahreddine wrote the following of the ministry of this period:[1]

"Infighting began within the ministry between the socialists and the Muslim Brotherhood, and this infighting spilled over into popular circles, which split against themselves, each faction lying in wait for the other. The Communists began organizing their own ranks, followed by the Muslim Brotherhood, the socialists, the Arab Nationalists, the Nasserists, and others alike.

Party factions within the army began stirring as well, keeping pace with their own popular and civilian organizations. As for Dr. Bashir al-Azma, he went off on a mission to America lasting no less than three or four months, and did not return until conditions had already deteriorated to the point of threatening to explode." "His Excellency" went off to enjoy himself at the state's own expense, while the state itself burned.

Every citizen senses that the regime is crumbling from within.

Among the signs of this collapse are these frenzied campaigns traded back and forth between the Muslim Brotherhood and their Communist "comrades."

This new development on the political scene at least let us catch our own breath, as the regime's own supporters forgot their "warm feelings" toward us for a little while.

Our own frustration reached such a point that it drove us to contact Mr. Mohamed al-Ghosairy, representative of the Algerian revolution in Damascus, to pave the way for us to travel to Algeria and take part in building it, as professors and administrators, without any material compensation whatsoever, until sanity returned to Syria's own political logic.

But he had traveled to Chtaura, to attend the Arab League Council session held there, to study the Syrian complaint against Egypt.

Tuesday the 21st

Khaled al-Azm spoke to some of his own friends, one of whom relayed the conversation to me, saying he had met with the President of the Republic yesterday, in the presence of Maarouf al-Dawalibi, Jalal al-Sayyid, and Bashir al-Azma.

This meeting took place at the President's own invitation. Al-Azm said: "The session ended on a good note."

Yet he spoke of Nazim al-Qudsi in terms neither fitting nor polite. The one who relayed this conversation to me, himself Deputy Speaker of the secessionist chamber of deputies, assures me that Khaled al-Azm said: "I was quite harsh with him, with al-Qudsi, and gave him a real earful over his own constant wavering, for this dog understands no other language."

May God bless your own presidency, Abu Sa'd, and the loyal companions who walk this path beside you! How little you needed any of it, when your own friend Rushdi advised you against accepting it in the first place.

It is true that ambition humbles even the proudest of men's necks. What emerged from this session was that those present had reached agreement on two matters:

1. Restoring the chamber of deputies, though no one quite knows whether it remains merely suspended or fully dissolved.

2. Bashir al-Azma's own resignation, and entrusting Khaled al-Azm with forming the new ministry.

My own belief is that the President would never willingly accept Khaled al-Azm, toward whom he has long harbored a deep-seated dislike. Perhaps he calculated that Khaled al-Azm might serve as some small check on Akram al-Hourani. But one wolf can never rein in another.

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Endnotes:

[1] My Memoirs of the Secession, p. 330.