Before These Memoirs - Part 17: Critiquing Akram al-Hourani's Unity Pamphlet and the Three-Way Split of the Baath Party

Wednesday the 29th

Dr. al-Qudsi sent me an invitation to dinner at his own table, along with the members of "the Arab Affairs Committee." Since I had resigned my own membership by telegram sent to the head of the Council of Ministers, I saw no reason to accept a dinner that had lost both its justification and its meaning, and so I contacted the protocol office and informed the official there of my regret at being unable to accept the President's invitation.

I learned that nine people attended: Mr. As'ad al-Kourani (who had won a seat in the elections for Aleppo), As'ad Harun, Akram al-Hourani, Amin al-Nafouri, Dr. Jamil Saliba (the great philosophy professor, known and respected for both his competence and his modesty), Hani al-Sabai, Said al-Ghazzi, Abdel Karim al-Farhan, and Farhan al-Jundali.

We were at a friendly gathering with Rashad Barmada, when a sudden fit of temper seized him, with no provocation from anyone, and he began denouncing President Abdel Nasser's policy toward the Syrian situation, using an unseemly expression, saying: "Even if his eyes were gouged out, he still wouldn't see Syria." We were astonished at this sharpness, so unlike him. We reminded him that Abdel Nasser had, until only a month before, been our own president, and that it was he who had signed the decree appointing him, Mr. Barmada, as head of the Government Litigation Authority, and that only the day before, he had been showering him with praise after praise.

Thursday the 30th: Akram al-Hourani's View on Union

Along with the newspapers today, I bought a study titled "Mr. Akram al-Hourani's View on Arab Unity," dated 20 May 1962, priced at 25 Syrian piastres, twenty pages in a small format.

It appears a journalist composed it, since it takes the form of questions and answers. It contains some rather baffling views, such as this one:

"Though a single flag, a single national anthem, a single state emblem, a single president, and a single government are all outward signs and evidence of a unified political state, this does not mean that by unifying the flag, the anthem, and the emblem, and by installing a single president and a single government, we will have thereby achieved the political unity our nation truly hopes for, or established the unified Arab state."

So then, what exactly does a political state consist of? Surely any countries joined together under a single flag, a single anthem, a single emblem, a single government, and a single president, form, without question, a single unified state.

Mr. al-Hourani holds that a single free will, and the securing of a shared, equitable interest among the various Arab countries, is a fundamental condition for any true union.

He acknowledges that this constructive, liberationist call found its first and strongest echo in Greater Syria, and that "the emotional response to this call remains deeper still in the soul of the individual Arab of Greater Syria."

But then he wanders off into "a world of dreams," insisting "that preparing a project to unify the Arab nation into a single political entity must not be left to Syria alone, nor to any other single Arab country. The path to achieving Arab unity requires every Arab country to be represented by its own vanguard movements and its own intellectual elite. Once these studies crystallize into clear programs and carefully studied projects, the whole matter should then be placed before the Arab nation, in every one of its countries, for free discussion. Afterward, a general congress would convene to review these discussions, and should it approve them, they would become the constitution of a comprehensive Arab union."

He then turns to attacking Abdel Nasser, accusing him of "counterfeiting the slogan of Arab unity, and the slogan of socialism, just as he counterfeits the slogan of democracy, and that he dreams of establishing an empire ruled by one-man rule, resting on neither the people nor its own organizations nor its free will."

He closes his "study" by saying "that the true path to Arab unity rests on liberation from every form of colonial influence, and on faith in political and social democracy, and that it is the Arab vanguard's own duty to tear down tyranny and reaction, and that our Arab people today must walk the true path toward building Arab unity, and struggle in its cause."

There is no doubt that Mr. al-Hourani despises political union of the sort Bismarck achieved by force in unifying Germany, or that Garibaldi achieved in the same way in Italy, during the nineteenth century.

But what actually happened in the union of Egypt and Syria, in which Mr. al-Hourani played a prominent, if largely formal, role, something he himself admitted during the secession, since it was the officers who drove the chamber of deputies and the government, President al-Quwatli at its head, to rush to Egypt seeking Abdel Nasser's approval for this very union, what actually happened is that a union came into being, and this was a tremendous achievement realized for the Arab nation.

Regrettably, the Baathists resigned halfway along the road, because Abdel Nasser refused to let them govern Syria on their own, as they had demanded of him, and they did not remain neutral either, for many of them joined the very camp opposing this same union, a camp supported and funded by the colonial powers and the reactionary Arab regimes.

The union's enemies managed to destroy it in "the full bloom of its youth," striking it down like a green branch cut from the tree, burying it while it was still young, its skin still tender.

A sincere, reasonable man might accept the argument for patience, for "scientific study," in establishing a "sound" union. But once that union has actually come into being, working to destroy it, or taking part in that effort, is a crime beyond any forgiveness or pardon, whether from God or from His creation.

No patriotic researcher has the right to close his eyes to the developments the world has witnessed over these past thirty years.

Formidable powers have risen in this time, possessing enormous military capabilities and vast economic markets, perhaps even capable of self-sufficiency, thanks to their scientific and technological advancement and their superior economic and military capacities, such as the United States (which merged into a vast economic market with Canada and Mexico), the Soviet Union, which buckled under the weight of its own military spending, cracking apart and collapsing, though Russia, which arose from its ruins, remains a formidable military power, China, which forms a terrifying nuclear power and an economic market of more than a billion people, and Japan, the economic and technological miracle of the twentieth century.

As for Europe, the very cradle of civilization, industry, and thriving economies, it has abandoned its old notions of sovereignty, set aside its own old grudges and its own bloodshed, and gathered itself instead into a "European Union" in constant growth, one that may eventually include every European state, west and east alike, in order to form a unified entity in which economies merge, and from which manufactured goods flow out to compete with the finest goods on the international market. Europe came to realize that the survival of its own states, among the most advanced and prosperous in the world, could not be assured amid the arena of global economic and political blocs, and found no way to preserve its own high economic standing and secure its national and political safety except by pursuing this very union, under whose shade it now flourishes. The victorious Allies, in the wake of the Second World War in 1945, divided defeated Germany into two parts, an eastern part shadowed by the Soviet Union's own wing, which fell behind, and a western part the Western powers took under their own care, which flourished, until West Germany became a global economic giant, its currency stronger than gold itself. And when international circumstances at last allowed the Germans to unite themselves once more, they threw themselves into it with real enthusiasm, fully aware of the heavy burden West Germans would bear as a result of this reunification. Had they thought only of material self-interest, this union would never have come about, not in any foreseeable future.

Every fair-minded person knows that the future of the Arab nation, two hundred million souls strong, depends on its own unification, for they have no hope of a dignified life unless they form a single market and adopt a single national philosophy.

And if oil is a blessing to the oil-producing states, it is at the very same time a curse upon them, for it is the great powers with designs on this oil who truly control their fate and their wealth. Had these states truly understood their own real interests, the fumes of oil would never have clouded their own chests, nor would they have let greed, financial pleasure, and the satisfaction of base appetites rob them of both sight and insight.

I recently read in a magazine that the revenue of the Swiss company Nestlé, which manufactures chocolate and infant formula, exceeded 32 billion dollars last year alone, a figure that rivals, or even surpasses, what the oil wells of every oil-producing state combined bring in.

I have not spoken here of the Zionist danger, since every Arab and every Muslim already knows its tragedies and its dangers. Nor will these dangers be lessened by the peace treaties Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinians have been drawn into, with those rushing to conclude them racing one another so as not to miss any "opportunity" to please their American masters. Nor will this numbness that has struck the very concept of Arab nationalism sap the resolve of true Arab nationalists.

It has become certain that the Arab Socialist Baath Party is suffering major splits, and now forms three conflicting groups:

Akram al-Hourani and his own group (the Regionalists), who support the secession and stand in open hostility to Abdel Nasser (God rest Akram al-Hourani's soul).

The Aflaq and al-Bitar group (the Nationalists), who long for union and issue statement after statement demanding a carefully studied union with Egypt (God rest the souls of Aflaq and al-Bitar as well).

And the defectors from both blocs, who demand a union exactly like the one that once existed between Egypt and Syria, defining their own "unionism" strictly as the necessity of restoring that very same former union.

A brother among "al-Bitar's own men" told me that the Baath Party's national leadership had met a few days earlier in Homs, without any Syrian Baathist representatives present, and demanded that al-Hourani and his group finally abandon their support for the secession once and for all. But he and his group refused, and so this leadership decided to expel them. At the head of those expelled were Akram al-Hourani, Khalil al-Kallas, Abdel Ghani Kallas, Abdel Ghani Qanout, Wahib al-Ghanem, Abdel Fattah al-Zalat, and Riad al-Maleki.

Yet this regionalist wing refused to recognize the legitimacy of its own expulsion, indeed refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the Fifth Congress itself, and held its own "regional congress," broadcasting a statement on 25 June 1962 declaring itself the true Baath Party.

The Baath's own military organization threw its support behind this wing.[1]

Wednesday, 6 June

Dr. Bashir al-Azma delivered the new government's statement, addressed to the people, containing three principles:

The first: "The progressive socialist direction must inevitably guide the country's social and economic policy, and the country will accept no retreat backward whatsoever. The plan the state draws up must be one leading, through sure steps, toward socialism, while taking into account the country's own economic reality and the necessity of encouraging national capital."

The government made good on this promise.

It nationalized the Five-Man Company, issued a law regulating the banks, reconsidered the amendments the secessionists had introduced to the Agrarian Reform Law, and regulated the distribution of profits to workers within the nationalized companies.

These were modest measures, standing halfway between the union's own radical measures and the extreme capitalist direction of the first secessionist government.

The second principle rested on the premise that "the country has decided to pursue a national, unionist policy, and is serious about achieving it, believing that this union will not reach its full scope, nor yield its hoped-for fruits, unless it comes about according to sound, carefully studied foundations."

(This being the favored expression of Mr. Salah al-Bitar and his own brothers.)

The government had come to understand, as had the people alongside it, that the country faced three fundamental choices regarding union:

The first current: the secessionist current, which tries to entrench the secession, using the errors that occurred under the union as pretexts and justifications for striking at the very principle of union itself, or casting doubt upon it. Behind this current stand forces aiming to serve colonialism and Zionism.

The second current: the one demanding immediate union, prepared by no real study and protected by no real foundations. Such a current has no wish to learn from the past union experience and its own errors. "This current is no less dangerous to union than the previous one."

As for the third current, it is the one the country's great majority has settled upon, and the one the government itself adopts with full resolve and determination, believing it the true, realistic solution, the only one capable of enabling Syria to play its part in union. For this reason, it considers the task now resting on the country's shoulders, regarding union, to be one of exerting every effort toward laying the foundations capable of guaranteeing this union, and shaping it in a form that allows it to survive and grow. This is the very course the government follows.

The mass of the people believes that union is the path to salvation and strength for the Arab nation, yet believes, at the same time, that any headlong plunge into an unstudied union serves not the aims of union, but the aims of secession.

The government considers reopening the question of union with Egypt a national necessity and a realistic demand dictated by the present circumstances of the Arab countries, and believes that beginning this union with Egypt must be the first step toward union with every other Arab country as well.

Despite the atmosphere of doubt cast on the government's own intentions by both the secessionist current and the current demanding immediate union, the government, after lengthy study, proceeded to name the members of this committee (a committee containing an overwhelming secessionist majority) without consulting them beforehand, in the interest of time, convinced that those named must shoulder their own national responsibilities in this delicate phase.

We hope that sister Iraq will join this new union (formed of Egypt and Syria), so that a powerful Arab federation might take shape, one that would serve as the very backbone of comprehensive Arab unity.

Nor did the honorable government forget to bring the citizens the good news of a new constitution and a modern electoral law.

It promised the citizens it would carry out these principles within six months, no more.

In closing his statement, the President attacked "the attempt aimed at restoring the former parliamentary council," which he considered dissolved once most of its members had submitted their resignations, saying it was "the government's own duty to remind those behind this attempt of its dangers, and to hold them fully responsible." In this final passage, he was referring to the petition the resigned deputies had submitted to the President of the Republic, in which they had cast blame on the army for refusing their return, demanding the restoration of their own dissolved council.

It seems to me that the government is working to buy as much time as possible, and to blur the whole question of union. We ourselves hold not a shred of faith in the unionist credentials of the President of the Republic and his own supporters, nor in the unionism of the head of government himself, nor of the majority of his own ministers.

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Endnotes:

[1] Dr. Najah Muhammad, The Arab Nationalist Movement in Syria, p. 465. And Dr. George Haidar, Contemporary Political Thought in Syria, 2nd edition, 1993, p. 146.