The Second Year of the Union - Part 5: The Aleppo-Damascus Airport Dispute and the Death of Hassan Jabara

Wednesday the 22nd

The American ambassador returned my invitation with one of his own, held at his country's general consulate in Damascus, the most notable guest on our side being Mr. Khalil al-Kallas, the "Baathist" Minister of Economy, the "bitter" guest of the state hosting the dinner.

Among what the ambassador said of himself was that he had known the East since 1924, when he first came as a professor to Robert College in Istanbul, and that, even now, he had spent enough years in the service to exhaust his own capacity for work. He was thinking of resigning from the Foreign Service to find himself private work, to help secure life's material necessities, "since my pension isn't enough," and had his eye on a position with one of the private trading companies.

This dinner was distinguished by its turn toward politics, given the atmosphere of the occasion.

Secretary of State Dulles had resigned from his post just days before, and Mr. Herter had been appointed in his place. The newspapers wrote that Ambassador Hare would be appointed his own assistant for Middle Eastern affairs.

I asked him whether this news was true. He said: "I'll be traveling soon to Washington on ordinary leave, and I'll surely have the chance to visit the State Department while I'm there."

I told him: "You're known as a friend of the Arabs. Is that really how you feel?" He answered calmly: "You can believe that. You can believe that. I'm a personal friend of Abdel Nasser's. He criticizes me quite openly, but I love him, and he loves me. I really am your friend."

He hinted at his own efforts to secure economic aid for us.

I remarked on this: "Even though, officially, I'd rather not discuss politics with you, I am still an Arab citizen, and I have every right to express my own general views. If economic aid is how you're trying to win our favor, you should know it's aid stripped of any real value. We do not trust treacherous Israel, which could turn on us at any moment, and so your advice does us no good. We have no choice but to arm ourselves with the means of self-defense, which is exactly why our budget is so strained by the cost of weapons. Were it not for the support Israel receives from the West, we would have spent that money on development and on raising the standard of the needy classes of our own people, who are truly groaning under the weight of national defense budgets."

The ambassador did not let the opportunity slip past him. Speaking good French, he said: "Among the United Nations' own resolutions was also the partition of Palestine and the establishment of an economic union between Arabs and Jews. Are you prepared to accept this economic union?" How remarkable, that he too should place himself in the service of Israel.

Naturally, I did not answer him, since the answer touched on the very heart of the state's own highest policy, a matter I had no authority to speak on.

An American remains an American, a Zionist, as a general rule, or at the very least a dutiful bureaucrat, carrying out, with perfect precision and loyalty, his own country's policy, steeped in Zionist poison.

Friday, 24 April

Prince Hassan, Crown Prince of Morocco, arrived in Damascus today.

His father, Mohammed V, enjoyed a fine reputation across the Arab world, having refused to submit to the will of the French High Commissioner (the Resident-General), for which the French government decided to exile him to the island of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, appointing Ben Arafa Sultan in his place, though he soon resigned after a resistance fighter attacked him and very nearly killed him.

We received him at the airport, accompanied by Ambassador Abdelkhalek Torres and Dr. As'ad Mahassen, our own ambassador in Rabat.

General Jamal al-Faisal held a grand evening reception for him at Azm Palace, its lights shimmering on the water of a pool adorned with every kind of flower, while the girls of the Douha private school delighted everyone with their exquisite Andalusian dances.

We bid him farewell amid every mark of honor.

Yet what we later heard of him, when he led his own military forces to put down a revolt in northern Morocco, was that he showed the utmost cruelty toward those who fell "prisoner" into his hands, said even to have burned some of them alive in an oven.

Today (1995) he is King of Morocco, the man behind the "good offices" reconciling the "frontline states" with Israel, though we can find no reasonable explanation for such "enthusiasm."

30 April

At a session held at the Presidential Palace, chaired by Abdel Latif Boghdadi, with Mr. Akram al-Hourani and Mr. Zakaria Mohieddin present, a heated exchange broke out between myself and Nureddin Kahhaleh, head of the Executive Council and Minister of Communications, over the construction of an international airport in Syria. Expert reports had shown that an international airport built near Damascus would not be practical, given the relatively high mountains to its west, which make takeoffs and landings difficult, requiring aircraft to circle Damascus several times to lose altitude, posing a certain danger to the planes and adding significantly to fuel costs.

The reports also showed that Aleppo was an excellent location for such an airport, first because of the flatness of its land, allowing an airport to be built just a few kilometers away, second because it lies directly on the flight path between Europe and the Middle and Far East, and third because of its relative distance from Israel and the danger of an attack on the airport.

I held firmly to what served the state's own material and security interests, and insisted the airport be built in Aleppo. Nureddin Kahhaleh, however, held just as firmly to building it in Damascus, as the capital, a strong argument without doubt, though unconvincing on financial and technical grounds.

Boghdadi ended the discussion by ruling that two international airports had to be built, one in the capital and the other in Aleppo. Calm returned to our brother Kahhaleh's face, which had turned crimson red after I told him, in response to his argument that the capital simply had to have an international airport: "Well, there's already a magnificent airport in the 'capital,' Cairo, if it's really 'the capital' that needs one."

2 May

The government held a dinner reception at the Oriental Club, in honor of the deputy mayor of West Berlin, a man named Frany Emerhen (as given in the source). We had a pleasant discussion with him. He sought to convince his listeners that Berlin, Germany's capital, ought not to be divided into a capitalist west and a communist east, and went on to speak of international law's own rejection of dividing any country into two parts, and of the Arabs' duty to support the Germans in ridding themselves of this shameful "division."

I put a question to him: "Then why do you support the partition of Palestine, when you well know it is a single Arab country, with complete and clearly defined features of its own?" He answered without so much as blinking: "That's one matter, and this is another."

We had expected nothing better than this crude answer from him. And why, Mr. Deputy Mayor, does your own conscience rebel against the division of Berlin, yet stir not at all when you granted Israel the very means of its own existence, under the name of "reparations" to the Jews for Nazi injustices, so that they could plant their feet firmly in a homeland you so generously handed them to occupy?

He answered heatedly: "We're here to discuss Berlin. I'm not permitted to take up any other subject." How crude a thing it truly is, and utterly against nature's own taste, for hot and cold to meet on a single surface, and cruder still, to judge by two different measures.

3 May

Today's guest of the Republic was Mr. Adham Khaled, Deputy Prime Minister of Indonesia, accompanied by a number of members of parliament. I received him at the airport, together with the head of the Executive Council.

He was given special honors, and the government invited him and his companions to a dinner held in their honor in the garden of the Presidential Palace.

I can attest that they were the very picture of courtesy and tact.

You speak with them, and they speak back, as though whispering, so that you can scarcely hear their voice at all.

We feel a deep gratitude toward them, for they stood, and still stand, beside the Arab cause in every international forum, Palestine above all.

In this, they act out of Islamic sentiment. Their own leader, Ahmed Sukarno, was one of the founders of the non-aligned movement, established in 1955 at the Bandung Conference (one of Indonesia's own beautiful cities).

Among the most prominent founders of this movement were Gamal Abdel Nasser, Zhou Enlai (China's foreign minister, of aristocratic birth and upbringing before he embraced communism), the Yugoslav Marshal Tito, India's Jawaharlal Nehru, and Ghana's Nkrumah, from Africa.

The Death of the Late Hassan Jabara

Hassan Jabara, the central Minister of the Treasury, died today at his office in Cairo, a veteran and seasoned technical minister, unaffiliated with any political movement, always chosen to hold a financial post in successive governments.

Whenever he was not in the cabinet, he could be found heading the Economic Institution, or serving as director of the oil company.

When we decided, in 1955, to establish the Central Bank, we searched for a capable governor to run it, a matter falling within my own authority as Minister of Finance.

Two candidates stood before us: Hassan Jabara, and Dr. Ezzat al-Tarabulsi, who then held the highest post within the newly established bank's own structure. I knew Ezzat well, since he had been my fellow student at the University of Paris, an intelligent, honest man, with a deep theoretical grasp of financial matters.

To settle my own conscience on the matter, I went to visit Hassan Jabara at his office at the oil company, near the Hejaz railway station. When I asked him whether he would accept the governorship of the Central Bank, were it offered to him, he showed some hesitation at first, then softened his stance and grew more inclined to accept. He asked me about the monthly salary, and I told him, honestly, that I had given the matter no thought at all, then ventured: "Four thousand lira," double the Minister of Finance's own salary and allowances. But he found the salary too modest, and remarked that, for himself or for anyone else, it ought to be no less than six thousand.

I took my leave of him, hardly believing what I had heard about the salary, promising to bring the matter before the Council of Ministers.

In the discussion that followed in that Council, the scale tipped in Dr. al-Tarabulsi's favor. To spare myself the embarrassment of facing Mr. Jabara directly, I postponed a final decision until I had left the country for America, at which point the Council of Ministers decided to appoint al-Tarabulsi, on the nomination of our brother Rashad Barmada, who had stood in for me during my absence. Even so, I visited Mr. Jabara upon my return, to offer him my own apology.

I sensed he was not at ease with this, though he showed me he understood the circumstances behind political decisions within coalition governments.

The President later granted his widow, by a subsequent decision, an exceptional pension of 78 Egyptian pounds and 125 milliemes.

I had an appointment with him in Cairo, to finalize the ordinary and development budgets, but he came back to us instead in the hold of a plane arriving from Cairo. He was given an official funeral, and I delivered his eulogy on the government's behalf, at one of the Shia mosques in the Bab Sharqi quarter of Damascus.

We carried him to his final resting place, borne on the shoulders of the mourners.

Every son born of woman, however long his safety lasts,

is one day carried upon a bent bier.

The following day, the President entrusted the reins of the central Treasury to Dr. Abdel Moneim El-Kaissouni, the central Minister of Economy.

My own acquaintance with El-Kaissouni went back to 1955, when I attended the conference of Arab finance and economy ministers in Cairo, he heading the Egyptian delegation, I the Syrian one.

On that same trip, I had my first meeting with President Gamal Abdel Nasser, to whom I delivered a message from President al-Quwatli that day, and he spoke with me of Arab and international politics. From that meeting, I carried away the finest impression of an enthusiastic Arab leader, one who had done much to lift the veil from the true Arab face of the Nile Valley, a face the era of the "Pashas" had stained with the dyes of subservience to foreign masters.

Tuesday, 12 May

An urgent telegram reached me from Dr. El-Kaissouni, inviting me to travel to Cairo, to agree on the method for drawing up the budget.

I do not know what method he could possibly mean. Our own ministry's own budget apparatus had been at work drawing up a balanced budget for several months already. I sent El-Kaissouni a telegram informing him I would arrive the next day.

Wednesday the 13th

We left Damascus this morning for Cairo. I brought with me my office manager Kamal al-Khouri, Dr. Abdul Salam Kanaan, director of the finance department, and Dr. Bashir Taama.

El-Kaissouni's office manager received us at the airport, and informed us he was unwell and hoped to postpone the meeting to Saturday.

This gave me the chance to spend time with my brother Dr. As'ad, minister plenipotentiary at the Foreign Ministry, and his three daughters, Nuha, Mayada, and Ghada.

On Thursday, I visited the central Syrian ministers, Ahmad Abdel Karim, Amin al-Nafouri, and Salah al-Din al-Bitar, in their offices at the Heliopolis Hotel in Cairo, which had become the seat of the central government.

And what was my impression?

They were "ministers" in name only, each with an office consisting of a single room, with "staff" in an adjoining room numbering fewer than the fingers of one hand per minister, spending their days with no work at all, wandering from office to office.

They were unanimous in agreeing that the central government experiment was a failure. Ask them why it had failed, and they would answer: "We don't do anything."

For this reason, news of their disputes among themselves kept reaching us in Damascus.

Each faction criticized the other, sometimes harshly.

"Idleness" had brought yesterday's enemies together, agreeing now in their complaints about their own circumstances, while disagreeing among themselves over exactly what they had disagreed about before the Union.

But now, with nothing in their hands to threaten with, no armed units behind them, no one took them seriously any longer.

I told them plainly that their gnawing at one another was no longer any secret, and that word of it had already spread from the ministry's own halls out into the street.

Had the central cabinet been limited to the ministries of foreign affairs, defense, and economy, no friction would ever have arisen between central ministers with nothing to do and executive ministers bearing the heavy burdens of their own ministries, who had to embody the face of the new state with boldness, independence, and the courage to make their own decisions. But this central cabinet had been created, it seemed clear, to uproot the senior officers from their own roots, removing them from the armed forces, the very condition Abdel Nasser had set, one they had accepted quite willingly, in the heat of their own enthusiasm. Once the "intoxication" faded and sobriety returned to them, they found themselves suddenly "unneeded," after having once cut off and connected, threatened and warned, as they pleased.

I bear witness before God that no one but Abdel Nasser could ever have uprooted them. My memory carried me back to a dinner reception held one day in 1956, when the "National Gathering," bringing together Khalid al-Azm, Khalid Bakdash, Mamoun al-Kuzbari, Sabri al-Asali, Akram al-Hourani, and Salah al-Din al-Bitar, dominated political life as a mosaic facade for these officers feuding among themselves over power. These officers entered in their military uniforms, gleaming stars on their shoulders, and the guests began whispering their names to one another:

Hindenburg, Keitel, and Rommel! Yet when the hour of "the real test" came, during the Suez battle just a year later, the Chief of the General Staff informed the Council of Ministers that our own army could not hold out for more than eight hours.

Our situation was saved only by Mahmoud Riad's arrival at the Presidential Palace, carrying a telegram from Field Marshal Amer, asking the Syrian government not to enter the war alongside Egypt, in fulfillment of the joint defense agreement, since the Egyptian army had decided to withdraw from Sinai. Some ministers breathed a sigh of relief, for they had, in truth, opposed our entering the war from the start, driven to this faint-hearted position by motives of their own, varying from one to another.

Only God knows what souls truly conceal.

I visited my Egyptian colleague Hassan Salah al-Din, the executive Minister of the Treasury, at his "grand" office, the first time I had ever met him.

He complained "of the late Jabara's lack of honesty" in relaying conversations. But the late Jabara had since passed away, and nothing remained due to him now but mercy.