Year 1960 - Part 7: The Resignations of Ministers Amin al-Nafouri and Ahmad Abdel Karim
Friday, 1 April
I held a luncheon today for Rushdi al-Kikhya and his own circle, who had come to take part in the funeral procession of the late Jamil Mardam Bey, former prime minister, seasoned statesman, and one of the great figures of the National Bloc, which fought against the French Mandate.
Among al-Kikhya's own companions were brothers of mine from the dissolved People's Party: Ali Bouzo, Dr. Maarouf al-Dawalibi, Wajih al-Hallaj, and Rafiq Bishour (an independent deputy, formerly deputy speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, and a close friend of mine).
I sensed they were delighted at this invitation, since it carried on our own earlier friendly relationship, despite the dissolution of the party ties that had once bound us together.
I had remained loyal to them, back when they still needed me.
And yet I learned that Nazim al-Qudsi, before I helped him secure the directorship of the Arab World Bank, had "grumbled" about me, when the President chose me as a minister in the Union government while assigning him no post at all, wondering aloud:
Did the President choose Homad because he is the most learned, the cleanest-handed, and the most seasoned of us all?
For my own part, I do not know the President's own reasons for choosing me as a minister, but I know he chose me for honorable reasons, in any case.
Al-Hallaj found a "convincing" answer of his own, when he visited a friend of ours and the two fell into conversation on the general state of affairs. This friend told him:
It is high time you all understood that this is an era of social and intellectual revolution, and that the President will rely on nothing but revolutionary spirits.
We, and you, have been overtaken by time, and it is time for us to clear the field for those more capable than we are of carrying this new trust.
There is nothing left for you now but to stay in your own homes and hold your own tongues, if you truly wish your country well.
The page of the "old guard" has been turned, never to be reopened.
And so long as you still have a "horseman" in the leadership, you must support him and preserve his own goodwill toward you, for that is better for you, "in this world and the next."
Al-Hallaj told him: "This is exactly our own view as well."
And we shall hold to it.
And hold to it they truly did, remaining in the shadows, loyal to the state all the while.
Rushdi al-Kikhya remained faithful to his own vote for the Union, whatever reservations he held about the conduct of some of its leaders, Abdel Nasser himself not among them.
Just as I write this part of my memoirs, a book has "slipped" into Syria titled "The Papers of Jamil Mardam Bey," put together by his own daughter Salma Mardam Bey and published in Beirut by Dar al-Matbouat in 1994.
I read it with real eagerness, for I knew the late Jamil Mardam from our own days as "colleagues" in the Chamber of Deputies, and he served as prime minister on several occasions.
He was among the most prominent of the historic leaders.
Mr. Zuhair al-Shalaq, who wrote the book's own introduction, says that Jamil Mardam Bey came from an old Syrian family, was born in Damascus in 1893, studied law in France, and took part in the Arab Congress of 1913, one of the eight men who issued the invitation to it. It was chaired by the late Abd al-Hamid al-Zahrawi, executed three years later, along with a number of his own brethren, by Djemal Pasha "the Butcher."
A ruling of the "High Court," the military tribunal that issued death sentences against enemies of the Ottoman Sultanate, was issued sentencing him to death in absentia.
He returned to his own homeland in 1919, in the company of "Sharif" Faisal, son of King Hussein, and founded a party he named the "People's Party" (not our own party of the same name).
He took part in the Syrian Revolt led by Sultan Pasha al-Atrash.
He immersed himself in the political struggle against the French Mandate authority. When Dr. Abd al-Rahman al-Shahbandar, a fierce rival of the National Bloc, was assassinated, Jamil Mardam was accused of taking part in his assassination.
But the judiciary acquitted him, and his own brethren, of this charge.
He played an essential role in the negotiations that ended in Syria's own independence. He announced his retirement from politics in 1954.
President Abdel Nasser invited him to stand beside him and President Shukri al-Quwatli at the signing of the union of Syria and Egypt in 1958, in tribute to his own past.
May God have mercy on him, he passed away in Cairo on 30 March 1960, and his remains were carried to Damascus and laid to rest in its own soil.
Thursday, 28 April
Due to some health troubles, I kept to my own home, and had an EKG done along with some other medical tests. My cardiologist reassured me, but advised me to rest for a few days, to recover from the strain of overwork.
For this reason I excused myself from traveling to Cairo, to be present for the President's reception on his return from India and Pakistan, an invitation extended to us only two days before. In all honesty, I confess I have grown weary of these formalities.
Tuesday, 3 May: The Resignation of Ministers Amin al-Nafouri and Ahmad Abdel Karim
Republican Decision No. 687 was issued, accepting the resignation of the central minister Amin al-Nafouri, and Republican Decision No. 688, accepting the resignation of the central minister Ahmad Abdel Karim. Both decisions are dated the 3rd of this May.
Before being taken on as ministers in the central government, both men had served with us in the regional government in Damascus, and our own personal and official relations were as good as any collegial relationship could be.
For some reason I do not know, the President chose them to stand beside him in Cairo as central ministers.
Ahmad Abdel Karim was productive and diligent in following matters through.
Both men were above suspicion in how they ran their own ministries. Ahmad Abdel Karim himself recounts the story of his own resignation in his own book.
But I would note that what was held against him was his own harshness in carrying out his ministerial duties, including the incident of his striking, with his own heavy fist, Mr. Sobhi al-Qal'i, a retired officer and cafe owner on the Beirut road, who had come to his office over a matter concerning his own cafe.
This incident left a bad impression at the time, and the Union's own opponents exploited it in the ugliest possible way.
Minister Amin al-Nafouri, for his part, was held to account for having traveled to Baghdad in the Union's early days to try to smooth over the rift between Abdul Karim Qasim and Abdul Salam Arif, only to criticize the Syrian-Egyptian union while there, and advise the two men against entering into any union of their own unless it took the form of a federation, with Abdel Nasser remaining at its head for no more than six months.
These "efforts" of his were reported to the President, and we too heard of them at the time. The President never forgave him this conduct, a minister of the Union state secretly working against it, advising Iraqi leaders "to avoid the mistake the Northern Region made when it submitted to union with Egypt under Abdel Nasser's own leadership without condition or restriction," as Ahmad Abdel Karim himself tells this story in his own referenced book.[1]
Around the time of these two resignations, Paul Hall, president of the union representing dockworkers at the port of New York, refused to unload the cargo of the Egyptian ship "Cleopatra," in solidarity with Israel, on the condition that the Arab government lift its own ban on Israeli ships passing through the Suez Canal, a demand Abdel Nasser consistently refused, both before and after the Canal's nationalization.
It is heartening that Arab port workers rallied to boycott American ships in response to the boycott of the Arab vessel.
It is no secret that al-Nafouri and Abdel Karim formed a faction within the army standing opposed to "al-Hourani's own faction" of officers, and enjoyed the backing of some of the army's own powerful senior officers.
I never had much taste for factionalism within the army.
Indeed, I always hated to see political activity creep into the barracks. But the "communist camp" held a different view of this matter altogether, holding that an officer is, after all, a son of his own country, entitled to a say in choosing its political leadership. Our own sons among the officer corps absorbed this view, and understood it as granting them the right to engage in political activity themselves, a mistaken notion if ever there was one.
What is beyond doubt is that the central ministers found themselves with nothing to do in Cairo, and I visited them myself at their own offices and witnessed this "idleness" firsthand.
Some of them tried to interfere in the affairs of the regional ministers, but a decision from the President was issued forbidding them from any interference at all, so as not to disrupt the handling of citizens' own affairs.
I fail to see what the central Minister of the Treasury, first Hassan Jabara, then, after his death, Abdel Moneim El-Kaissouni, could possibly do about the day-to-day running of the ministry in Damascus.
Every single day, hundreds of people with business before the ministry and its affiliated departments come to it, whether seeking a post that requires a competitive examination, or complaining of a tax unjustly imposed on them, a matter the relevant directorate alone can properly review.
Any decision requiring the President's own approval, under the law, was submitted to the Executive Council, for approval or rejection. If approved, it was sent on to the President's office in Cairo, which might, if it saw fit, refer it to the central minister for his own opinion.
The President would then take whatever decision he judged sound.
The existence of a central ministry, alongside two executive ministries, was thus an experiment doomed from the start, carrying within it the very seeds of its own failure.
There is no doubt that these two ministers' own resignation struck at the very heart of the Union, and not only at Abdel Nasser's own heart, especially coming as it did on the heels of the Baathist ministers' resignation, compounding an already complicated situation still further.
Tuesday, 10 May: Benefits for Remote Regions
Presidential Decision No. 137, dated 10 May 1960, was issued, granting certain material benefits to officials working in remote regions.
I am convinced this decision does right by these regions, making it easier to find competent officials willing to serve in them, and does right by these officials as well, granting them a fair material compensation for giving up the more comfortable conditions of the other provinces.
These benefits take the form of a salary supplement, as follows:
20 percent of the base salary for third-tier employees.
15 percent of the base salary for first- and second-tier employees.
But an official native to these very provinces receives no such supplement.
The decision defined these remote regions as the province of Deir ez-Zor, the province of al-Hasakah, and the district of Palmyra.
For my own part, during my two terms as Minister of Education, I worked to graduate holders of advanced degrees from among the sons of these provinces, and distributed scholarships to foreign universities on a regional basis.
It became clear, with time, that the sons of these provinces, having grown accustomed to comfort in the West, had no wish to return to their own regions, preferring an easier life instead, and coveting administrative posts in the capital.
We spent this evening at Rashad Barmada's home, with Rateb al-Hasami present as well, and it occurred to me to sound out their own views on the current state of government.
Both men are sound in judgment, and well informed on both foreign and domestic policy. Rashad, a former member of the dissolved People's Party, holds a senior post as Director of the Government Cases Department, a legal position equivalent in rank to the head of the Court of Cassation or the Council of State.
Rateb, also a former member of the People's Party, was once director of the newspaper al-Wihda, established with the founding of the Union. Today he holds the post of Director General of the Grain Office, a post entrusted only to a man of proven integrity, given the funds under his own control, reaching twenty-five million lira, disbursed through his own dealings with the farmers who sell their crops to this office.
This office's own directorship had previously been entrusted to a competent official known for his own honesty, who had served as governor of Aleppo in Shishakli's own time, and was dismissed from that post for this very reason, a man I preferred over a candidate from the People's Party nominated by the party's own executive office.
I asked them both, with the candor and honesty they are known for, to tell me what I did not myself know of the general state of affairs in the country, so that I might offer whatever advice I could, whenever the chance arose.
They said what they held against the regime was Abdul Hamid al-Sarraj's own intelligence apparatus and its domination over the people, and the President's own reliance on propaganda methods fit for no system but that of the German Führer, Hitler, or the Fascist Duce, Mussolini, along with his own monopoly over political decision-making.
I pressed them both, in God's own name: is the cure, in your own view, what the Baathists and the regime's other enemies are working toward, namely burying the Union itself under the guise of ridding themselves of Abdel Nasser?
They were both categorical in their answer, seeking refuge in God from such a crime.
I asked them: and what do you imagine would happen, if Abdel Nasser simply said:
Syrians, go back to how you were! And we ourselves went back to how we were?
Their own view was that the country would revert to an age of chaos, class conflict, the strong lording it over the weak, dangerous factionalism within the army, and cowardice before the enemy.
A believer must never let himself be bitten twice from the very same hole.
With a historian's own honesty, Rateb said: secession would be a supreme catastrophe. And the days ahead proved him right, for he showed himself a true Arab nationalist, believing in God and in his own nation, and fought the secessionists until God took him unto Himself.
He once came to blows with Maarouf al-Dawalibi, prime minister under the secession, right on the floor of the secessionist Chamber of Deputies.
---
Endnotes:
[1] P. 158.