Articles, Radio Addresses, and Interviews Recorded at the Time in My Own Papers - Part 8: Rashed al-Qatini's Testimony on the 8 March 1963 Coup and Aflaq's Secret US Deal

The Testimony of Major General Rashed al-Qatini

In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful

Introduction

The eighteen months of the secession were the weakest period Syria's history had ever known.

The secession triumphed over the union while its own guardians were caught off guard, on the 28th of September 1961. Many of those who took part alongside al-Nahlawi in this act did not know beforehand that the true plan was to separate Syria from Egypt. Al-Nahlawi had convinced them the matter would amount to nothing more than certain reforms, whether within the army or within the state's own offices, restoring to the army its own Syrian character and to Damascus its own former glory. Once the secession's leaders succeeded in separating Syria from Egypt, and Abdel Nasser recognized Syria's own independence, and a government was formed under Ma'mun al-Kuzbari, the army's own internal structure began taking on a particular shape, as Abdel Karim al-Nahlawi insisted on appointing mostly men from Damascus to command the units, as well as to command sensitive regions and posts, stirring real resentment among those who felt wronged by it, resentment that soon grew into open, if hushed, complaint.

Al-Nahlawi set his mind on ridding himself of the two parties, having learned, since most of their members were in Egypt, that they had their own secret organization. He discussed the matter of removing them with General Zahreddine and Major General Namiq Kamal, neither of them party men themselves, and they agreed with him. The matter was then raised in a session of the Supreme Military Council, made up of some forty officers, most of whom agreed to transfer certain officers to civilian administrative posts. The list included around sixty officers, transferred to the ministries of economy, supply, agriculture, and elsewhere. Salah Jadid and Hafez al-Assad were assigned to the Directorate of Maritime Transport, and Muhammad Umran to the Ministry of Supply. The unionists objected to this move and walked out of the meeting, and many others signed on to their objection as well, men like Ziad al-Hariri and Ghassan Haddad, in early 1962. After the Baathists were transferred to civilian ministries, the resentment began taking the shape of quiet contacts and pointed questions: are you satisfied with what al-Nahlawi is doing? Did you approve of the discharge list? Did you, did you?... and so on.

Amin al-Hafiz was never known to be a party man, but he defended whatever he believed to be right, and used to stop by my own office at General Security, where I had been appointed around the 10th of October 1961, following the secession. Even before leaving to serve as military attaché in Argentina, he stopped by to bid me farewell, telling me that if I ever needed anything from the Baathists, I should reach out to Lieutenant Mahmoud Azzam and his own nephew, Adnan al-Hafiz, both of them air force officers. I knew he spent his evenings, every day, at a tavern on al-Abed Street with Azzam, drinking arak together. I wished him well.

Such was the state of affairs within the army during the secession's own first four months. Haidar al-Kuzbari was arrested through outright treachery, lured by Fakhri Omar to Mezzeh prison under the pretext of meeting his own friend Abdel Hamid al-Sarraj, only to be left there, whereupon the prison director took him instead to a cell prepared for his own interrogation, over allegations he had taken money from Sharif Nasser, commander of the Jordanian army.

Faisal Sirri al-Husseini was then arrested on the very same charge. Both al-Kuzbari and al-Husseini had friends within the army, who turned against al-Nahlawi over his own base treatment of friends, and I would hear comments from some of them on this very matter, to which I would answer: remember how he once treated Field Marshal Amer and the men who had protected him for three whole years...

At the same time, I would speak with General Zahreddine, Major General Namiq, and my own friend and academy classmate, the head of the intelligence branch, Muhammad Mansour, about al-Nahlawi's own conduct, and I once spoke to him directly, and another time to his own political-affairs secretary, Muwaffaq Assasa, about what was stirring within the army, though neither of them cared for what I had to say.

In February 1962, the workers of the Damascus Electricity Company went on strike demanding higher pay, and I was, at the time, director of General Security. I was tasked, together with Abdel Ghani Dahman, commander of the Damascus region, with resolving the matter. We could reach no agreement with the union, and so we gave the workers a choice between returning to work or being detained at Mezzeh military prison. We brought in five or six military transport trucks and put the choice to them, and the majority chose prison, marching out chanting slogans in praise of Nasser and unity.

General Zahreddine telephoned me the following day, near the end of Ramadan, and we met at his office at noon, along with Major General Namiq, Brigadier Mansour, Zuhair Aqeel, al-Nahlawi, and myself. I presented a security report, and Muhammad Mansour did the same, and Zahreddine asked for a solution. News had been coming in of the nationalization being reversed in the "Khumasiyya" textile sector, and of the workers' own resentment and their intention to strike. I answered that we ought to form a delegation to travel to Egypt to discuss restoring the union, at which Zahreddine stood up and said: place your hands over mine, and we all swore an oath, on the Quran, on Ramadan, on religion and on honor, to do whatever our own conscience required to restore the union, and to swiftly form a military delegation to travel to Cairo. The meeting ended a few minutes before sunset, and we all left.

The next day, Muhammad Mansour telephoned me and said: did you hear what happened last night in Qaboun? I said I had heard a meeting had been held to discuss Israeli troop concentrations along the southern border. He laughed and said, listen to this:

Al-Nahlawi had called the unit and formation commanders together, and they gathered after evening prayers, where he spoke, entirely on his own initiative, about the noon meeting at the army commander's own office, claiming that certain people were trying to sell them out to Nasser, naming Mansour and Rashed directly, without saying a single word about the oath he himself had sworn only hours earlier. And so the story spread, and I found myself the subject of gossip among everyone who was not from Damascus, and the whole plan collapsed, with none of those present ever speaking of it again.

Summary

Such was the state of the army, split between supporters and opponents of the secession, while the political situation itself descended into chaos, with every minister eager to repay his own party loyalists through appointments or transfers. A number of officers who trusted my own integrity, and my own discretion regarding what they said and did, gathered around me.

I always defended the union through thick and thin, since Israel regarded the union state with the utmost caution, calculating every possible move it might make down to the smallest detail.

Around this time, al-Nahlawi released al-Kuzbari under pressure from his own allies, and a reception was held for him at his home that he had not expected, at which he loudly declared he would curse al-Nahlawi's whole lineage over these accusations, openly accusing him of working for the Saudis and the Americans.

In the wake of these events, I would meet with certain friends, at my own home or theirs, and speak with complete candor about this deteriorating state of affairs, whether within the army or in the country at large. Among those I met with most often were Nourallah al-Hajj Ibrahim, Jamil Fayyad, Mamdouh al-Habbal, Kamel Reda, Khalil Mosli, Hussein Qadi, and many others besides, such as Muhammad al-Sufi.

Ziad al-Hariri was still commanding a brigade at the front at the time, and through his own contacts with a number of unionist officers, he knew who they were, and knew that most of them trusted Rashed al-Qatini. He began, for this reason, to grow closer to me, asking to visit me at home for a cup of coffee.

His visits grew frequent, especially after I was transferred to serve as military attaché in Amman in August 1962. My father's illness, and his stay at Mezzeh military hospital that same year, helped me travel to Damascus weekly, and Ziad had assigned someone to watch for my own arrival, or Aref al-Jaja's, who would then dash from the front to Damascus for a meeting, or would meet with his own academy classmates at Ghassan Haddad's home, commander of the Desert Guard. I would pass along to my own friends whatever passed between Ziad and me, though most of them objected to my even meeting with him, until around the middle of February 1963, when revolution broke out in Iraq against Aref, and the Baathists seized power there. Major General Namiq telephoned me in Amman, asking me to come to Damascus the next day. I went to his office, and he showed me a transfer list requiring my own reassignment as head of the intelligence branch, with Ziad al-Hariri appointed military attaché in Baghdad, along with a number of other transfers and the ending of secondments for around thirty officers. Major General Namiq told me the list had already been carried out, and that only three or four officers had not yet reported to their new posts, among them Ziad, Mati' al-Samman, Hashim Agha, and myself, and that the matter would be settled once I reported for duty. Marwan Kilani had been appointed in my place in Amman, and I was to hand the office over to him the next day.

I returned from Amman to Damascus for good around the 20th of February 1963, and took over the intelligence branch from my brother Adnan Aqil, whom I kept on beside me as my own deputy, and my troubles with the Arab Socialist Baath Party began.

Once I took over the intelligence branch, I opened the desk drawer of the branch's own director, Colonel Adnan Aqil having already alerted me to an important report inside it. I opened the drawer and found a single-page report, in handwriting I recognized, that of a Lebanese journalist who worked with the foreign section, whose gist was this:

"He had learned, from a highly placed source, that Michel Aflaq had met for several hours in Beirut, where he was residing at the time, with the first secretary of the American embassy, who told him that America could no longer tolerate or accept the existence of reactionary governments in the region, particularly in Syria, and that, following the Baathist revolution in Iraq, it would support any progressive government, on one condition alone: staying away from the question of union, whether with Egypt or anyone else. Aflaq had accepted this condition, and would instruct his own followers to act quickly to fulfill this wish."

The next day, I asked Mamdouh al-Habbal to invite our brothers Mosli, al-Sufi, Nourallah, and Kamel Reda, along with myself, and we met without al-Sufi present. I spoke of the information mentioned above, and of contacting al-Sufi to come to Damascus, since, as far as I knew, he had been in contact with certain Baathists such as Mustafa al-Hallaj, Salah Jadid, and Muhammad Umran. My own view was that we should proceed with caution, to first confirm the truth of this account.

Two days later, Ziad al-Hariri came to my home, together with Aref al-Jaja, and suggested that acting had become easy now that I held the intelligence branch. Al-Hariri was eager to move quickly, out of fear of being sent off to Baghdad. I asked him to be patient, and asked him about his own contacts with the Baathists, without touching on the subject of the report itself, at which he began to squirm, mumble, and deny everything.

The Situation in Early March 1963

1. Conditions within the army had grown badly frayed, for several reasons:

a. Baathist officers' own activity had increased following the success of Iraq's revolution in February.

b. The transfer list issued by the command, particularly concerning Ziad, al-Samman, and Hashim Agha, had never been carried out.

c. Ziad sent Major Mahmoud al-Hajj Mahmoud to the head of the Damascus intelligence branch to ask for the addresses of certain politicians and military men, for which he was punished.

d. Haitham al-Mahayni sent a squadron of planes from al-Dumayr base to fly at low altitude over General Staff headquarters, and I asked the army commander to punish him for it, but he refused.

2. Khaled al-Azm's own government relied, in its own conduct, on the strength of Major General Aziz Abdel Karim, the interior minister, and on Mati' al-Samman, commander of the Internal Security Forces, both of whom passed along exaggerated, unrealistic reports of their own influence over the officers and the like.

3. Members of the People's Assembly used to meet daily at Khaled al-Azm's own home, and it was well known that Mrs. Layla ran these sessions and issued the orders, with al-Samman assisting her.

4. After Mahmoud al-Hajj Mahmoud's arrest, and the formation of a committee to investigate him, made up of Major Mufid Hawash and Uthman al-Jayrudi of the military police, Ziad al-Hariri grew frightened, despite my own reassurances, and stopped coming down to Damascus, no longer answering my telephone calls, surrounding himself instead with tight security at his own brigade headquarters in Mas'adeh.

5. Loud rumors began circulating that a coup was on the verge of happening.

How the Revolution of 8 March Came About

1. On the afternoon of 7 March, Ziad gathered around fifteen officers, most of them unionists, at the artillery battalion headquarters in Kafr Nafakh, commanded by Major Abdel Wahab Mati'. They swore an oath of secrecy, and he explained the army's own situation to them, claiming the secessionist leadership had arrested Rashed al-Qatini and cut off all contact with him, and that duty required swift action, since one thing would lead inevitably to another. In this way, he deceived every one of these officers, and they agreed to carry out his own plan.

He formed an artillery battalion under Abdel Wahab Mati', a tank battalion under Bassam Abdel Nour, tasked As'ad Hakim with writing the statement to be broadcast on the radio, and formed a company under Salim Hatoum, reinforced with a number of smaller units. He set the time of the movement for midnight, and distributed tasks to those directly concerned, keeping most others in the dark. It is well known that he assigned no task at all to any of his own loyal followers, out of fear for their own safety, and remained himself crouched in his own car at Mas'adeh, ready, should word of failure reach him, to cross the border into Beirut and take refuge at the Egyptian embassy.

The Units Begin to Move

Around midnight, Major General Wadih Maq'abari telephoned me to say he had been at the cinema, and as the film ended and people were leaving, he had overheard one man say to another: don't forget, today's our own appointed time. I was at the office at the time. Shortly after, Major Mahmoud Abu Samra telephoned to tell me that certain units were moving toward Damascus.

I tried to reach Ziad, without success. I telephoned Brigadier Muslim al-Sabbagh, commander of the front, and asked him for news. He said nothing unusual was happening. I asked him what he intended to do, suggesting he go out on a patrol or contact the brigade commanders, and he promised to do so, but I heard nothing further from him.

I tried to reach General Zahreddine and Major General Namiq, but no one answered. The commander of the tank company at General Staff headquarters came to my office asking for instructions, since the incoming forces had begun reaching the television building, and I sent him home, around two in the morning on the 8th of March.

Shortly after, a lieutenant I knew came into my office, greeted me, introduced himself, and said the task he had been assigned had been carried out. I asked him about Ziad, and he seemed puzzled by my question, since he knew Ziad was supposed to be leading the forces advancing on Damascus.

Information began arriving one piece at a time. Major Mati' had taken up position at the Mezzeh junction, Major Bassam near the customs building, and Salim Hatoum around the television and radio buildings. Around five o'clock, al-Jaja arrived, and I asked him about Ziad. He said he was on his way to join us. I placed a call for him, from my own office, to Quneitra, reassured him, and asked him to come. He arrived around seven in the morning, or shortly before. Louai al-Atassi then arrived, along with his own companion, Muhammad Ibrahim al-Ali, coming from Mezzeh prison.

Al-Hakim began reading out the official statement, followed by commentary and appeals urging Baathist officers to join certain units, and chaos took hold in its most vivid form.

One man in civilian clothes, another in military trousers with a civilian jacket, a third in a military jacket with civilian trousers, most of them Baathists whom al-Nahlawi had discharged back in early 1962.

No resistance whatsoever appeared against this movement, and its success was therefore assured from that very morning, following the movement's own success.

Once he reached General Staff headquarters, Ziad called for a meeting of the officers who had taken part in the movement, to elect a command for the army, and around thirty-five officers gathered, later known as the Extended Revolutionary Command Council. The first vote, for the post of army commander, gave me thirty-two votes, and three to Louai al-Atassi. I declined repeatedly, since my own health did not permit such a task, and proposed my colleague Louai instead, a choice that satisfied both him and the Baathists. Al-Hariri was then named chief of staff, and, at the insistence of many, I agreed to become deputy army commander, though not without reproach from many loving brothers. All of this took place without a single written record of the meeting ever being kept.

We then completed certain further arrangements within the army. Nourallah al-Hajj Ibrahim was named air force commander, followed by the commanders of the various units, regions, and armored brigades, Tahsin Qadi for the intelligence branch, Mamdouh al-Habbal for organization and administration, Ghassan Haddad for officer affairs, Jamil Fayyad for command of the Internal Security Forces, and others for the front and its own brigade commands, and so on.

On the afternoon of 8 March, word reached the command that Haitham al-Mahayni, commander of al-Dumayr air base, had sent a squadron to strike certain units, and one pilot had dropped a bomb on the fuel tanks at Adra, setting one of them ablaze. Louai and I both contacted him to stop his own recklessness, and Ziad then called him as well to reassure him, at which point he stopped taking any further action. Nourallah went out to al-Dumayr himself, brought him back with him, and began setting up the air force command's own new arrangements.

Forming the Government

On the evening of 8 March, Salah al-Din al-Bitar was summoned to form the government, defended strongly by Louai, especially given his own public repentance, announced in the pages of the newspaper Al-Baath, for his earlier support of the secession, and his claim that the Baathists had likewise repented and now believed in a conditional union.

Michel Aflaq arrived around eight in the evening on 8 March, coming from Beirut, and so the suspicions and doubts already circulating proved, on the whole, entirely correct.

The government's own lineup was announced the following morning, with every important ministry going to the Baathists, while the Nasserists and the independent socialist unionists shared two ministries each between them. Amin al-Hafiz took the interior ministry, and Muhammad al-Sufi the defense ministry.

Whenever we spoke with Louai about the Baathists' own dominance of the government, he would say: "give it a few more days, and the union will return to what it once was." We believed him at the time, but...

In the following two days, several orders were issued discharging, transferring, and appointing officers. I had agreed with Louai and Ziad to form a committee of no fewer than five officers, so as to avoid falling into chaos, a committee that would submit its own recommendations for the three of us, Louai, Ziad, and myself, to review. But we fell into a real trap here, since Ziad and Louai were, in fact, in full agreement with one another, quite openly. I myself was uneasy about the discharges, the appointments, and the composition of the government alike, but Louai's own talk of negotiations with Abdel Nasser to restore the union offered me some comfort, and he had, in fact, contacted Abdel Hamid Ghaleb, Egypt's ambassador in Beirut, requesting an appointment with Abdel Nasser for a delegation to travel to Cairo.

Iraq's Own Position on the Revolution of 8 March

Around 11 March, a call came from Baghdad to Louai informing him that Ali Salih al-Sa'di, a member of the Revolutionary Command Council, would arrive in Damascus that afternoon, and Ziad and I were tasked with receiving him. He arrived at noon, and the three of us rode together in a single car. As we reached the town of Mezzeh, al-Sa'di remarked: I see no bodies hanging along the roadside, this is no true revolution, it has not been baptized in blood. We laughed, and I told him our own situation was different from theirs, that we here were brothers, with no grudges or bloody conflicts among us. He did not care for what I said. Around 1966, or sometime after, al-Sa'di was in Athens, loudly declaring that Iraq's revolution had come about by an American tank, and Syria's by an American Cadillac. In any case, al-Sa'di reached Damascus already acquainted with Amin al-Hafiz and Minister al-Walid Taleb, from the days he had lived as a refugee in Syria under Abdel Karim Qasim, and he began stirring the two of them up over everything happening, or being rumored to happen, never satisfied with anything. And whereas Salah al-Din al-Bitar had until then been a broken-winged man, he now began speaking loudly, whether in meetings of the Revolutionary Command Council or with him directly at the Foreign Ministry. As for Michel Aflaq, we never once heard so much as a word of advice from him, positive or negative, right up until I resigned from the army on 30 April 1963.

The Command's Own Position on the Union Talks

In all honesty, it must be said that the discharged Baathists had no wish for union with Abdel Nasser at all, unless the Iraqi Baath took part in it as well, Salah Jadid and Muhammad Umran especially. I would often go into Louai's own office and find him weeping more than once, and would try to draw out what was troubling him, but he would not answer. A week after the 8th of March, he could no longer sleep except with the help of several Valium pills, and smoked more than five packs of cigarettes a day. I once told him that Salah Jadid did not think much of him either, since, on the day Ghassan Jadid was killed in Beirut, he had denied even knowing him, claiming to have a brother named Ghassan instead. Talk of Salah's own bitterness and resentment toward others was well known among his colleagues, on top of his own perpetual silence. As for Ziad's own position, it was far more hesitant and uncertain, since if he saw his own interest served by union, he took a step toward it, but if he saw Iraq offering him more secure guarantees, he drew closer to it instead, and so it went.

The Nasserists, the unionists, found themselves scattered and lost, some slipping away entirely, others withdrawing into isolation, and one hand alone cannot clap. My own position stood alone against the two of them, Louai and Ziad. And so delegation after delegation traveled to Cairo and back, until the Charter of 17 April 1963 was finally signed, after much debate, reproach, and cross-examination between Abdel Nasser and the Baath, to the point that Abdel Karim Zohour once told him: "You, Your Excellency the President, want agents around you, not partners," a remark that deeply upset Abdel Nasser. Only after real insistence from various members of the delegation did he agree to sign the Charter, one that never truly saw the light of day, thanks to the Baath Party's own efforts.

After our return from Cairo on 17 April, I learned that Ziad had summoned a great many reserve officers, all of them from the provinces of Latakia and Tartus, explaining this as an effort to correct an old injustice done to this same group.

Around 25 April, the front commander, Adel Hajj Murad, invited us to visit him, and I spoke to him about what was happening, that the Baathists were steadily expanding their own reach in order to seize power and rid themselves of everyone else. He excused himself from taking any action, and I understood that his own comrade Ziad had reassured him that he was working sincerely for the sake of union. On the morning of 30 April, I found on my own desk a list transferring and discharging around fifty officers, precisely those who had resisted the secession and had stood with the Baathists when al-Nahlawi first proposed transferring them to the ministries. I reproached Louai for this base act, and Ziad as well, telling him: your own turn is coming next, hero. I submitted my resignation and left the office.

Summary

1. Michel Aflaq kept his own pledge never to go near the union.

2. It was Iraq's own revolution that turned the Baath's attention toward it, drawing it away from Cairo.

3. There was no true Baath Party in Syria at all, only a group of officers who had formed cells cut off from the party's own civilian membership, right up until the 8th of March.

4. A small, disciplined group, loyal to a single leader, will always outmatch hundreds of men united only by a shared opinion, with no single leader among them.

5. There is much to say about everything the unionists did for the Baathists throughout the whole secession era, met only with the Baath's own denial and ingratitude, and its own rewarding of the secessionists who had once been its enemies.

6. The "execution of the union" was carried out twice: once on 28 September 1961, and a second time by the Baath Party itself on 18 July 1963, when a great many officers and soldiers were executed, every politician and military man thrown into prison, and the final rupture between the Baath and Nasser sealed.

7. There is much more that could be said on these subjects, but I have contented myself here with a summary of them. God alone grants true success.

Damascus, 22/1/1994

Major General (Ret.) Rashed al-Qatini