Before These Memoirs - Part 18: Cairo's Official Al-Ahram Response Accepting a Carefully Studied Union with Syria

Monday the 11th

We had agreed with Dr. al-Azma, at his own insistence, to meet him at the home of the lawyer Muwaffaq al-Mahayni in al-Midan, so that we might speak freely and at our own pace, without interruption from officials, this being preferable to a meeting held in his own official office.

But His Excellency changed his mind and asked instead that our meeting take place in his own office at the Serail, at nine in the morning, since pressing government business required his presence there.

We went to see him, Ali Bouzo, Ratib al-Husami, and myself. The conversation ran long and branched in many directions. Here is its substance:

1. We asked him whether the government he headed was truly serious about pursuing union with Egypt, or whether they were merely buying time to entrench their own secessionist position. He said: on the contrary, we are utterly serious, the question of union is a matter of firm conviction for us, and we are unionists to the bone and in spirit, and the spirit that dictated our latest unionist statement is exactly what represents the government's own conviction and policy.

2. We told him: you call for union, yet it appears you want it without unionists, since your own ministry, in its great majority, is secessionist. How do you reconcile union with secessionists who raise its banner? He said: I myself am not a secessionist, and what matters is what the government decides under its own president's leadership, not the private feelings of some of its individual members.

3. He said: the information I have suggests that reaction and the openly secessionist elements are massing together, moving fiercely, and that you unionists must therefore join hands with Mr. Salah al-Bitar and take a firm stand alongside my own ministry, letting it feel it has real support in this struggle between light and darkness, between union and secession, and part of this battle requires that you support us openly and publicly, so that public opinion may be reassured that the government is not isolated, and that it enjoys the backing of the unionist elements you yourselves represent, known and respected as you are.

4. Dr. al-Azma expressed his own regret that Egypt had not yet declared its position on our statement calling for union with it, ignoring us instead, even though we had sent an authorized envoy to propose renewed contact with them, beginning with a telegraphic exchange. But they had not met us with so much as a smile, and yet we have not despaired, and will keep pursuing our own efforts.

He did not hide his own belief that Abdel Nasser had been deeply wounded by the secessionists' own stab, but that "the secessionists never consulted us before committing their crime," as he put it. In this same vein, Deputy Prime Minister Rashad Barmada had told us only two days before that he was burning for word from Egypt encouraging his own travel there, to meet the President and settle the whole question of union at its very roots, in only two days' time. How boundless his optimism was, and how often his own opinions changed!

5. Dr. al-Azma confirmed the presence of a British military buildup in Jordan, and a Turkish military buildup along Syria's border. What he feared was the outbreak of internal disturbances in Syria, which these forces crouched at our very necks might seize as an opportunity to pounce on Syria and place it under foreign trusteeship, treating it as one more hotbed of tension and instability in the region.

We were not convinced by his talk of these military buildups, since north and south alike seemed perfectly content with Syria's secessionist state, which had torn apart the Arab nation's own unity and given Israel free rein in an arena its own champion had abandoned.

6. He expressed his own fear that President Gamal might be falling under al-Sarraj's influence, who painted Syria to him as exhausted, having lost its own capacity to survive, and that it would come crawling back to him on its knees, begging him to hasten to its rescue.

We pointed out to him that what we knew of Abdel Nasser was that he was a realistic politician, one who never let his own feelings or impulses interfere with his will when making major decisions. This is how we had known him the day he nationalized the Suez Canal, and the day he stunned the world by purchasing Communist arms, and again the day he decided to establish union with Syria, a union most members of the Egyptian Revolutionary Command Council had themselves opposed.

7. He pressed hard that we should seek a newspaper license, to publish in Damascus as a platform for the strong unionist current. In his own view, it was wrong for us to leave the field of media to the secessionists alone, free to publish their own views in society however they pleased, spreading their own deadly poison among the silent majority.

We were not convinced by this proposal either, since publishing a newspaper requires expenses we were not able to bear. We had already sworn to a firm rule among ourselves, that whatever modest expenses we might need, such as issuing a statement or a leaflet, we would share among ourselves, from our own pockets.

And so the Prime Minister's own proposal remained nothing but words, its effect ending the moment we left his office.

8. We asked him about the President of the Republic's own position on this union, and he said: he stands with us. His own office director came in at that moment to inform him of the arrival of an Iraqi delegation he had an appointment with, and we rose to take our leave, at which he renewed his own urgent appeal that we not leave the government to stand alone, in these hours of unionist truth and dignity. He handed me a small slip of paper with his own private telephone number on it, 25009, so that I might call him whenever I wished.

In fairness, we were genuinely heartened by the Prime Minister's own words, and felt that the unionist current was beginning to sweep the secessionist elements before it. Yet we were not entirely certain of the soundness of his hidden intentions, which certain officials' own words and statements sometimes betrayed.

As he bid us farewell, he gripped my hand tightly and said to me, in a lowered voice: I beg you to support us with a strong telegram, one we can use against our own secessionist colleagues, looking at me with the eyes of a man wondering whether we would answer his appeal. I promised him we would do what we could to support his government. We decided to hold a meeting among ourselves, to reconsider what Dr. al-Azma had told us, and to satisfy ourselves of the soundness of his proposal and his intentions. If we became convinced his purpose was sound, we would then look for some way to contact Abdel Nasser, to persuade him to reconsider his own rejection. We were, in truth, quite doubtful that the President would move to accept the Syrian proposal, for reasons neither slight nor few. Yet we felt morally bound to search for some way out of the state of weightlessness Syria was living in.

Tuesday, 12 June

Today Cairo broke its own silence, announcing, through the voice of Al-Ahram's editor-in-chief, Mr. Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, its acceptance of the Syrian proposal, since no one had the right to squander a unionist opportunity now appearing on the horizon. The newspaper Al-Ahram arrived by decision of the Syrian Minister of Information, carrying on its front page the text of "the political editor's" article on the position of the United Arab Republic (this being the official name Egypt had kept for itself). Since this article set out Egypt's official response to the Syrian proposal for establishing a "carefully studied" union, I find it necessary to review its passages here as follows:

1. "Union among the peoples of the Arab nation is inevitable, for it is dictated by nature, history, and reality itself, regardless of whatever disagreements may appear between the rulers of certain Arab peoples, arising from differing stages of economic, social, and political development among some of these peoples."

2. "The United Arab Republic, as a firm foundation for the progress of the whole Arab nation, believes that the goal of pursuing union can never be sacrificed, whatever the justification, for the sake of securing each people's own separate progress. It believes that the union of the Arab peoples does not conflict with each one's own separate progress, but that the prospects of union in fact reinforce the prospects of progress and drive it forward, especially when union rests on carefully studied foundations, with clear directions and goals."

I would note of this passage that it means Cairo has retreated from its earlier principle of a full merger union, adopting instead the principle of a federation resting on carefully studied, scientific foundations, since a complete union would need no study at all.

This is exactly what the unionist wing of the Baath Party, led by Mr. Michel Aflaq and Mr. Salah al-Bitar, had itself been calling for, and what Dr. Bashir al-Azma's own government had likewise adopted, with the approval of President Nazim al-Qudsi himself.

3. "Though the people of the United Republic," meaning Egypt, "feel the deepest resentment toward the reactionary secessionist coup that took place on 28 September 1961, and toward the complete domination that followed this secession by feudal and exploitative elements cooperating with Arab reaction, whether loyal to colonialism or hostile to progress, none of this, nor its consequences, diminishes in the slightest its own admiration for the Syrian people, for its firmness, and for its vanguard role in the call for, and the pursuit of, Arab unity."

"Nor does this people hold against the Syrian people the campaign of misleading, paid-for lies waged by reactionaries in Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia." Nor does it hold against the Syrian people the manner in which the Egyptians who had been serving in Syria were treated, expelled from it in a way that left them closer to refugees than to anything else.

"The people of the United Arab Republic know that many elements within Syria had the truth falsified before them, and were deceived by falsehood dressed up in the garments of truth, alongside opportunistic party factions blinded by their own personal grudges, who were themselves led, and tried to lead all of Syria behind them, into a mad hatred that stops at neither lying, nor treachery, nor the selling of one's own conscience."

4. "In light of all the above, the people of the Republic stand ready, at any time, and in the face of any pressure, to extend their own hand in union to the Syrian people, considering it now capable of bearing the responsibility of the union experience once more, on the basis of unity of purpose, which the people of the Arab Republic have made the very banner of their own unionist struggle.

The Syrian people's own insistence on recovering the socialist gains it achieved under the union confirms, beyond any possible doubt, its own appreciation of the importance of unity of purpose, as the true path toward a sound and comprehensive Arab union."

5. To these reasons may be added the following:

a. That a real union had in fact existed between the people of Egypt (a name not used in the response statement itself, which kept instead to the name United Arab Republic) and the people of Syria, and that this union was stabbed by a military coup movement infiltrated by corrupt, bribe-taking elements.

b. That this union achieved great goals, among them striking colonialism at its very heart and bringing down the Baghdad Pact, as well as forcing Arab reaction, in league with colonialism, into a purely defensive posture, its only remaining weapons being bribery, conspiracy, and reckless action carried out in the dark.

c. That this union created an excellent strategic and tactical position for confronting the base of colonial aggression in the region, namely Israel.

6. "The people of (Egypt), after deep study of the (former) union experience, believe the lessons drawn from it can be summarized as follows: that full merger came too far ahead of the stages of development. It is no secret that the prevailing current in Cairo at that time did not itself favor immediate, complete merger, though this current found itself forced to change its own position, given the many pressing considerations then present in Damascus."

The statement explains the reasons for setting aside the full-merger model as follows:

a. The absence of any shared border between the two regions.

b. The revolution required removing the feudal and exploitative capitalist elements from any influence over shaping the homeland's destiny.

c. At its outset, the union was unable to give itself a genuinely revolutionary beginning that would draw a clear line between it and the currents that had ruled Syria before it, currents that bore the greatest responsibility for the dangers that had threatened Syria's own being.

d. All these circumstances made establishing a genuine, democratic popular organization an extremely difficult undertaking. Even so, it proved possible to issue the socialist laws of July 1961, which struck a powerful blow against feudalism and exploitative capital.

7. Among the lessons and insights this union experience revealed, it is clear that any (new) union experience must differ from its earlier form:

a. National entities must remain clearly and distinctly defined within the framework of union.

b. Each national entity must have its own local government, answerable to its own elected popular authority.

c. Yet national defense (the armed forces), foreign policy, and the broad course of social policy, grounded in socialism and democracy, along with education and cultural programs, must all be unified.

d. The state must have a single central parliament, in which the national entities are fairly represented, and to which the central government is answerable.

8. The Arab Republic stands ready, at any time, to open the door to detailed discussion with any Syrian government, on condition:

a. That this government prove itself a genuine expression of the free Syrian popular will, free of any partisan bargaining that would toy with the great goal of union for the sake of some narrow, short-sighted personal interest.

b. That this government carry out an investigation into all the unjust accusations directed at Cairo in the wake of the reactionary secessionist coup.

President Abdel Nasser had himself called for this very investigation in the statement he delivered on 15 October 1961.

Cairo's response warmed our hearts, for it laid out the matter with perfect clarity, opening the door to a "carefully studied union" that would preserve the national entities, exactly what the Syrian government itself had been demanding.

And so, restoring the union of the two progressive Arab peoples had come within reach. We had genuinely, sincerely feared a negative response, knowing full well the deep, painful scars the secession had left on the Egyptians, and on President Abdel Nasser's own dignity and that of his own brothers in particular.

But what happened next was entirely unexpected.

The newspapers of Damascus came out waging a frenzied, almost deranged campaign against Cairo's response and against the very principle of rapprochement with it, let alone federation. Among the worst of those who wrote in them, spewing their own rancor and hatred, were Lieutenant General Afif al-Bizri, Akram al-Hourani, the malicious secessionist current, and a number of Communists, who seized this opportunity to return to the public stage.

Why, then, did the government accept this "reversal"?

I read the following in my own papers:

"It appears that those who had put on a show of unionist sentiment had calculated that President Abdel Nasser would refuse their proposal, at which point they could brand him the true secessionist, and lay upon him the blame for keeping the Arab nation torn apart. But he surprised them by accepting their proposal, and so they moved instead to bury the initiative before it could ever come to life.

But if this unjust course takes hold, the likelihood is that the command officers themselves stand behind it. Most of the journalists who have returned to writing and extortion need no one to push them, since the closing of the newspapers in the days of the union had cut off their own illegitimate channels of extortion."