Before These Memoirs - Part 10: Nazim al-Qudsi's Election as President and the Author's Declined Paris Ambassadorship

Thursday the 14th: Nazim al-Qudsi Elected President of the Secessionist Republic

Why did you do it, Abu Sa'd? It is a grave thing, grave before God and before people. How did you weaken before the lure of an office offered to you by coup-makers, when you had been among the fiercest enemies of anyone who walked in their train? Did you not resist Husni al-Za'im because of his domination of civilian rule?

And Adib al-Shishakli, who arrested you and your brothers because you refused to make peace with him, considering him a usurper of legitimacy and a conspirator against the constitution?

Why did you support Rushdi al-Kikhya's position when he refused the presidency of the republic twice, because he did not want to be a tool in the hands of officers dominating the government?

You used to fill my ears, during the union, with its beautiful anthems, and rail against al-Hourani and his group, because they were working to undermine "the first great consensual union among Arabs in the modern age."

So what has changed, then, since then?

You know they threw themselves at your friend Rushdi to make him accept the presidency, yet the man remained faithful to his own convictions, that the military had grown comfortable dominating civilians, leaving the army's own thorny affairs untended, preferring instead to install a ministry obedient to them and topple any ministry that no longer earned their favor. That is why their claims of "the army withdrawing to its barracks" were never once believed, not even once, for the appetite for domination never fails to return to them in the depths of the night.

Perhaps they were sincere just once, in the days of General Sami al-Hinnawi's coup. But it turned out that al-Hinnawi alone had kept faith with his own promise, for al-Shishakli pounced on him in less than three months. And Halima returned to her old ways. These are lessons we learned by heart.

We applauded the union, and so did you, because one of its slogans was keeping the army out of politics. We accepted its other slogan too, the dissolution of political parties, in order to secure that first one.

You were honored during the union, even though the President never entrusted you with any official post. He would have wished to, had it not been for "the cursed thing hanging round his neck."

No one anywhere in the Arab world is unaware of what your own convictions hold, of devotion to the unity of your nation from its Gulf to its Ocean.

How, then, could you accept to lead the funeral procession, receiving the condolences of the mourners, and then hasten to spread the hem of your own robe over the misdeeds of the men of misdeeds? Merging yourself with them, raising their false slogan of "the unity of the greater homeland"?

It is as though you imitate Muawiya, when Amr ibn al-As advised him to raise copies of the Qur'an to cover his own nakedness, saying: "Judgment belongs to God alone."

And Ali's answer came back to him: "A word of truth, meant for a false purpose." It may be that you convinced yourself you wished "to save what could be saved" from the union's own wreckage, and so you gambled your reputation and cast it into the unknown, an enterprise whose outcome was hopeless from the start.

But certain knowledge was not long in reaching you.

Let the facts speak, to you and to us alike.

They are crude and bitter, unashamed and unhesitating in saying what they wish to say. God granted you a long life, to see, an exile in Jordan, what the secession brought down upon this homeland and upon the whole Arab nation of tragedies and calamities, farces the ignorant laugh at, while the wise weep at their consequences.

On this day the deputies gathered to elect you, beneath the very dome that had witnessed your own glories and the glories of your brothers in the People's Party.

And things unfolded exactly as the command officers had drawn them up. You came to Damascus, "and the command sent you a car that brought you to my office at the General Staff headquarters, and most of the command's members attended this session. You agreed to our proposal and promised to make a special, personal effort with every deputy," as the secessionist army commander himself says.[1]

So this was a presidency cooked up in the kitchens of the coup-makers. And I had thought I knew you well enough to know you would never accept a cooked-up presidency.

Khaled al-Azm was asked to withdraw in your favor, and the man agreed, he who had waded through every stagnant water and crept through every trench in pursuit of the presidency, now bowing to orders that could neither be refused nor resisted. I myself had once opposed him, alongside your own brothers, when he put himself forward for the presidency, because he was unfit to be head of state, and we preferred Shukri al-Quwatli over him, giving him our votes in 1955. With his withdrawal, or I might almost say his being withdrawn, you secured 153 votes. Daham al-Hadi shared your "fame," winning a single vote, cast by some wag, just as Fahd al-Dandal won a vote from another jester. Seven deputies abstained, casting blank ballots into the box, as though registering a silent protest against the whole process from its very foundations.

Nine ballots were declared invalid.

And so you became "President of the Syrian Arab Republic," sixty-seven days after the ill-omened secession took place.

This election was the beginning of the tragic serial to come. And yet your own luck was better than Napoleon's, who ruled France for a hundred days after his return from exile, while you stayed in the presidential chair for a hundred and five days, before the very men who had placed you there led you off to prison. Your own hands had tied the knot, and your own mouth had blown the breath into it.

I do not know exactly where you are now (September 1996), still chewing over the aftermath of that fatal sin, one we all still suffer from, one the whole nation still licks its wounds over. In the letter you addressed to General Abdel Karim Zahreddine, the army commander, you told him:

"Now that constitutional order has returned to our dear Syrian Arab homeland, now capable of resuming the burdens of its role in the service of the whole Arab nation, and now that the army has likewise returned to the framework of its military duty, it gives me pleasure to convey to you my thanks and appreciation for the sincere effort and true sacrifice you have shown, and for the loyalty and selflessness you have displayed in returning to democratic parliamentary life, and in returning every authority to its constitutional axis."

And you yourself know that none of this was true.

The clever man's own mistake is worth a thousand.

And the nights of time are pregnant, heavy with every strange thing they bring forth, and in the days of your presidency, the nights brought forth every strange thing indeed, regrettably. And naturally, it never occurred to me to go to my old friend to congratulate him on the presidency.

That same evening, Dr. Izzat al-Nuss submitted the resignation of his transitional ministry, which the President accepted on the 22nd of that same month.

Friday, 22 December: Formation of al-Dawalibi's Government

Despite the veto the army had placed on Maarouf al-Dawalibi, Dr. al-Qudsi entrusted him with forming the new government, as the parliamentary blocs and parties themselves had recommended.

Dr. al-Dawalibi is a well-known university professor, known for combining both cultures, the Islamic religious and the modern.

He holds great confidence in himself, and considers himself fit for the highest offices.

I recall that it was he who once proposed to Abdel Nasser, before the union, at the al-Ma'moura resort near Alexandria, where we were the President's guests at lunch as a Syrian parliamentary delegation, that he agree to a union between Egypt and Syria.

At the time, Abdel Nasser cited the immense difficulties standing in the way of such a union, and expressed his readiness to establish close economic, military, and political ties between the two states instead, until the time was ripe.

Al-Dawalibi then reminded him of the significance of Suleiman al-Halabi's journey from Aleppo to Cairo to kill the French general Kléber, whom Napoleon had left in charge of Egypt in his own place. Al-Dawalibi formed his ministry, issued by Decree No. 15, dated 22 December 1961. It contained sixteen ministers: six from Aleppo, six from Damascus, two from Deir ez-Zor, and two from Latakia.

The remaining provinces went unrepresented, an unusual state of affairs.

The military command considered that President al-Qudsi had dealt it a second blow, "since the agreement between it and him had been that no decree forming a ministry would be issued before informing the command of it beforehand."[2]

But the President had grown bold, and acted with a will of his own. Yet this was reckoned against him as a second, unforgivable sin.

From this moment, the countdown began on his term as president. Dr. al-Dawalibi kept the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for himself as well.

I decided to remain in my isolation, and chose not to go and congratulate him, even though he was an old friend, a fellow student from the University of Paris, and together we had founded the People's Party.

But I was surprised by his visit to my home a few days after the ministry's formation. He told me he had come "to draw me out of my isolation," one I had imposed on myself.

He said he knew of my love for Paris, where we had lived as students before the Second World War, throughout its years, and after it had ended. And so, he had come to offer me the post of Syria's ambassador there, and that if I agreed, he would sound out the French government at once.

And indeed, I do love Paris.

This was the second occasion on which I was offered that sensitive embassy. The first had been in 1956, when Munir al-Ajlani threatened to resign from Said al-Ghazzi's government unless it approved his own nomination as ambassador in Paris. The government agreed, and sounded out the French government, which approved, but al-Ajlani then changed his mind and declined to accept the post. The Prime Minister then set about persuading me to accept it, to placate the French government, but I declined at the time, for personal and party considerations.

I thanked Dr. al-Dawalibi for his visit, but declined his generous offer, for I did not wish to compromise my own national convictions.

I am a unionist and a nationalist, and the secession is a treacherous act, and it would never be right for me to accept a post within it. And to this principle I held myself firmly.

Thursday, 28 December

I was surprised this morning by a telephone call from the Republican Palace, with "His Excellency the President" himself on the line.

He reproached me for this unwarranted "estrangement," and insisted that my wife and I join him and Umm Sa'd for dinner at his residence at the Guest Palace that evening, which he had set aside specially for us, "to chat together."

Old, fond ties would not let me bring myself to decline the invitation. At "Abu Rumaneh" Palace, which Adib al-Shishakli had built for the state's guests, we were received with the utmost courtesy. For up to that point, I had not been considered "an enemy of the regime," since I had confined myself to passivity.

I had undertaken no public activity of any kind.

It seems Dr. al-Dawalibi had told him what I had said about my decision to decline the Paris embassy, for he reproached me gently over it, speaking as though he did not wish his own era to cost him an old personal friend.

I used to call him Nazim Bey, or Abu Sa'd. I could never bring myself to call him "His Excellency the President."

I sensed a certain irritation in his tone, and in Umm Sa'd's manner as well, when the union era came up, and how President Abdel Nasser had managed to remove the politicized officers from the army's ranks. But the secession had brought them back through the window, after the union had shown them out the door. The hours passed heavily, until we rose to take our leave, thanked them for their gracious hospitality, and left, as though a heavy burden had been lifted from our shoulders.

Indeed, the gulf between our two ways of thinking had grown deep.

I do not know whether Dr. al-Qudsi harbored some coldness toward me, which I sensed on certain occasions, though he always dispelled it with his smiles and his warm welcome.

Yet he never once offered me any ministerial post in the governments he formed before the union. There are explanations for this conduct, though this is not the place for them.

1962

The first two months of the secession's life came to an end, and a new year began, one on whose horizon signs of restlessness within the armed forces had already begun to loom. The majority of Professor Akram al-Hourani's own officers were discharged, said to number around a hundred.

This discharge was carried out on Abdel Karim al-Nahlawi's own proposal, with the approval of the Defense Council, after excluding a small number from al-Nahlawi's own list.

It was a fresh blow to the leftists, Baathists and Communists alike, and a further unmasking of the rightward drift, which was growing ever more reckless.

But it was a blow struck at the very heart of the homeland, for whoever comes to power purges from the officer corps whoever he does not trust with his own regime, casting out to the cafés capable officers on whom the nation had spent its own heart's blood, so that they might defend it against external dangers and stand against the Zionist enemy, or so, at least, it had been hoped of them.

Yet their own "concerns" shifted from holding fast to duty to wallowing in the mire of conspiracy.

News of divisions within the ruling circles began pouring in.

One view held that the conscience of some of the coup-makers had awakened, that they had come to realize the enormity of what they had done, and had begun thinking of atoning for the sin they had committed. Another view held that the coup-makers had simply begun growing weary of the President himself, and of his own Prime Minister as well, so much so that the army commander, by his own account in his memoirs, asked Dr. al-Dawalibi, in one session of the Council of Ministers, to explain what Egyptian Voice of the Arabs radio was accusing him of, "that he had taken Iraqi money." Al-Dawalibi answered that "yes, I received between five and six thousand Iraqi dinars from the Iraqi embassy in Beirut, to resist the al-Shishakli era, to buy weapons and explosives." Zahreddine answered him "that whoever accepts five or six thousand dinars can just as easily accept fifty or five hundred thousand, and that the men of the revolution had arrested one of their own comrades, Brigadier General Faisal Sirri al-Husseini, once they confirmed he had received only five or six thousand Syrian pounds, from his own brother and not from Nuri al-Said. So we believe exactly what this radio station says about you, and about some of your own colleagues in the ministry or in the parliament."[3]

And so the fractures within the secessionist regime's ranks had already begun. And another problem now flared up as well, a dispute over the very principle of the socialist system.

Monday, 8 January: The al-Dawalibi Government's Statement

Dr. Maarouf read out his government's long policy statement. In it, he declared his government's commitment to the principles of the Agrarian Reform Law, and pledged to preserve all the farmers' rights, but announced that it would remedy every injustice arising from the law's poor implementation.

He said that this government would repeal the nationalization laws, whether total or partial, in their current form. In exchange for this repeal, share ownership would be defined for every joint-stock company.

He declared his commitment to preserving the workers' demands, yet he also adopted the principle of economic freedom in currency dealings and its free import and export. During the session, Akram al-Hourani launched a fierce attack on feudalism and capital.

He also attacked the government's intention to alter the Agrarian Reform Law, in the fiercest terms. Chaos broke out in the chamber, so much so that some deputies from among the great landowners physically attacked al-Hourani.

The coup-making officers had announced, on 2 October 1961, that they were upholding the socialist course and remained committed to defending it.

It is beyond doubt that Dr. Maarouf al-Dawalibi's government statement was a flagrant departure from that very course, an affront to the convictions of the great majority of the people and the overwhelming majority of officers, who themselves came from the ranks of workers and farmers.

Al-Dawalibi and his government, then, showed little wisdom in retreating from the socialist foundations that had become the farmers' and workers' own acquired rights.

Monday, 29 January 1962

Dr. Maarouf's government submitted three draft laws, which I believe Dr. al-Qudsi himself had a heavy hand in drafting.

The first draft dealt with regulating the status of industrial establishments, that is, repealing or reconsidering the July 1961 nationalization laws issued under the union.

The second draft dealt with regulating banking institutions, that is, reconsidering the state's ownership of the banks, decided under the union.

The third draft dealt with introducing sweeping amendments to the reform law the union state had put in place, the very law that had raised hired farmhands to the rank of landowning citizens.

These new amendments, as approved by the parliamentary council, amounted to a retreat backward, one the sons of the popular classes interpreted as aimed at destroying the very gains the union era had won for them. The echo of this retreat was extremely strong within the officer corps, among the sons of workers and farmers themselves.

---

Endnotes:

[1] Zahreddine, op. cit., p. 153.

[2] Zahreddine, Memoirs, p. 163.

[3] Memoirs, p. 185.