Before These Memoirs - Part 20: The Nasserist Five's Memorandum to al-Qudsi and the Press Campaign It Unleashed

Saturday the 23rd

We submitted the following memorandum to Dr. Nazim al-Qudsi, reproduced here in full, since it sets out the whole of our own political position:

To the President of the Republic,

The purpose of the meeting you graciously granted us on the morning of Saturday the 16th of June was to lay out the general situation in Syria, and to set forth our own view of how to address it.

Before we parted, we agreed to follow up that meeting with a written memorandum containing the main topics we discussed and the proposals we put forward.

In keeping with that meeting and that agreement, we submit to Your Excellency the following memorandum:

"Ever since the Syrian Arab people, and with it the whole Arab nation, awoke on the morning of the event that ended the union between Egypt and Syria, sorrow has not ceased to grip every soul sincerely devoted to its own Arabism, believing in the unity of land, of endeavor, and of future. It was no small thing for a nation that had struggled and sacrificed so long for its own freedom and national unity to watch with its own eyes the collapse of the first true experiment in that very union. The believing masses, in every corner of the great Arab homeland, still look eagerly for whoever will restore to them their own confidence, and their own capacity to set out once more on the path of their national aspirations.

Since that day, the Arab people in Syria has lived through many events, all of them proving this people's own devotion to restoring what was severed of its national ties with sister Egypt. The statements and declarations of officials in Damascus, in this recent period, have all reflected this good popular will clearly and forcefully.

The army command itself affirmed, in its statement issued on 13 April 1962, 'that the army is bound to protect the highest national goals, embodied in working toward a sound Arab union with the liberated Arab states, foremost among them Egypt.'

The President of the Republic likewise broadcast a statement to the people on 14 April 1962, affirming his own resolve, and that of the government formed for the transitional period, to 'set to work at once toward union with the Arab countries, beginning with dear Egypt.'

And on 21 April 1962, Dr. al-Azma's transitional government broadcast its own ministerial statement, referring frankly in it to 'the attempts of reaction and the conspiracies of colonialism to entrench and perpetuate the secession and turn Syria away from its Arab socialist mission,' and stating that it 'had come to power to answer the free, genuine popular will, which aims at establishing an Arab union according to carefully studied foundations that guarantee this union's survival and growth.' It affirmed 'that it would proceed to take a serious step toward working to achieve Arab unity, and that it would take the initiative in contacting the liberated Arab governments, beginning with sister Egypt, in order to then place before a popular referendum a carefully studied, mutually agreed project, so that the people may have their own say on it.'

Once the transitional government had satisfied itself that the step it had taken, namely forming the Arab Affairs Committee, a committee that faced difficulties from the very start, and whose own composition and mandate made it all but certain from the outset that it would never reach any positive result, it returned, in its second statement issued on 7 June 1962, to affirm its own resolve to set out once more from the very point it should have started from in the first place, announcing that it would begin contact with Egypt to learn its own view on establishing a federal union suited to present circumstances, and thereby agree on a final formula for a union project, to be placed afterward before a popular referendum, so that the people might have their own say on it.

On 11 June 1962, Cairo's answer to Damascus's own call was broadcast, a realistic answer dictated by the delicate circumstances of the Arab nation's own life. It met Damascus's own point of view halfway, in its readiness to discuss a new project for union between the two countries, resting on a federal basis suited to the present stage of their development, and opening the door wide for the sister liberated Arab countries to join it, provided the national entities remain clearly defined within the united states, each overseen by a government answerable to an elected parliament, while unified affairs are managed by a central government answerable to a central parliament elected on fair principles.

It had been hoped, once views had converged to this degree, that sincere efforts would be made by all sides to support this direction the national cause had begun taking, one that no sincere Arab citizen could do anything but bless, and exert every effort of his own to see succeed.

For all these reasons, we saw it our own duty, in this delicate period of our country's life, to come before Your Excellency with this memorandum, to affirm our belief in the following:

1. That the Arab people in Syria's own attachment to Arab unity, and its determination, at this stage of its history, to restore the national ties that only a few months ago bound it to Egypt, is a matter no sincere citizen doubts. No attempt can divert the people from its own greatest problem until it is granted the true solution that matches the wishes of the majority of the people.

2. Full, comprehensive union was and remains the dream of Arab generations and their loftiest goal, but partial union between two or more liberated countries would itself bring the nation closer to that loftiest goal, especially if it rests on sound, firm foundations around which hearts may gather and economic and social goals may align. The union of Syria and Egypt was and remains the cornerstone of Arab strength and liberation, and were nothing else to demand it today besides Israel's very existence between these two countries, in the heart of the Arab homeland, that alone would be reason enough.

3. The external dangers surrounding the country can truly be repelled only by hastening to reunite Syria with Egypt once more, in a strong state resting on sound, carefully studied foundations, in harmony with the country's own national aspirations and suited to its economic and social circumstances.

Your Excellency the President:

In light of these considerations set out above, we come before Your Excellency with the following demands:

1. Following through on the steps officials, yourself foremost among them, have pledged to take, and taking the initiative to facilitate contact between Damascus and Cairo along the path that can actually be pursued.

2. Once agreement is reached between Cairo and Damascus on the foundations of the new project for union between the two sister countries, the people must be given the opportunity to express their own opinion of this project with complete openness and freedom, in a general referendum, with every guarantee necessary to secure the freedom and integrity of this referendum.

3. Securing freedom of expression equally for every citizen, and preventing any single faction or direction from monopolizing the means of publication.

4. Releasing detainees against whom no charge has been proven, and securing justice, security, and freedom for every citizen.

Your Excellency the President:

In coming before Your Excellency with this memorandum, expressing as it does our own view, we mean only to support every sincere effort now being made to find the true solution to the national crisis our people is living through, a people that accepts no bargaining or appeasement where its own national unity is concerned.

We hope, from the depths of our hearts, that God grants success to the officials in Damascus and Cairo in finding this true, hoped-for solution at the earliest possible time, and that the result of the referendum will be a magnificent national reconciliation, opening a new era of brotherhood, solidarity, and tolerance, in which sincere citizens race one another to close ranks, to strengthen the foundations of stability and prosperity in the country, and to secure peace of mind and prosperity for all its sons.

And God stands behind our intent.

Saturday, 21 Muharram 1382 AH, corresponding to 23 June 1962.

Abdel Samad al-Fatih, Ratib al-Husami, Ali Bouzo, AbdulWahab Homad, Nihad al-Qasim.

The local newspapers published this memorandum, some in full, others in excerpts, with most choosing to present the statement to their readers under large headlines reading:

"The Statement of the Nasserist Five."

Some papers published the statement without comment, others attached commentary of their own.

The newspaper Al-Nasr published it with commentary, saying, among other things:

"...This statement asserts flatly that this union was a sound experiment, which amounts to an implicit refusal to acknowledge any errors at all. Its signatories thereby prove that their own basic line is one of blind disregard for the reality of the deviation and domination that marked the union experience. If the rule of dungeons and whips is, in the view of the authors of this Five-Man statement, the rule truly fitting for our people, then this can only mean they alone claim a monopoly on wisdom, intelligence, and national sincerity.

They approach the question of union with the logic of men who once profited from it, grieving now for their own lost positions and personal power. By this same logic, they call on every citizen to sacrifice every one of his own human rights, merely to return once more to a system of one-man deification and the plundering of public offices and authority, and behind this call lies nothing but a dream of recovering those very same benefits, doubled, at the expense of every principle.

Cairo's response has dragged the question of Arab unity down to the level of a grudging favor granted in reply to a genuine unionist proposal, and it arrived empty of any real meaning.

The very identities of this statement's signatories only reinforce what it suggests of old attachments and nostalgia for the past, including ministers that era showered with generosity, in exchange for serving as pliant tools of a policy of Egyptianization, and a policy of turning the country into a private farm for one-man rule."[1]

A close look at the press commentary on our statement showed us that none of it engaged with the statement through calm, careful national debate, but resorted instead to slander and fabrication, and this is not what wounds us, for we know our own press well enough to know it changes its own colors according to prevailing winds, so as to keep drawing from the well of extortion it never wishes to see run dry.

That was the press's own tragedy, save for a small number of its own proprietors, content merely with sales and advertising, and with expressing the genuine national convictions in their own hearts.

But what we concluded from the outbreak of this campaign was that the government had turned against itself, shifting its own direction back toward secession, under the influence of hidden forces that had been planning resistance to union all along, even as they wallowed in the crimes of the secession itself.

The commander of the internal security forces, Brigadier General Mati' al-Samman, was one of the staunchest secessionist pillars, so much so that Prime Minister al-Azma himself, in his own memoirs, called him "the Brigadier General entrusted as the high commissioner overseeing and directing the ministry."[2]

It appears he tried to have him removed from this post, but failed, "because the majority of the votes on the military command council stood behind him... and I returned to my own work (as head of government) once I realized the situation within the army was no better than the reality of the political scene itself."[3]

God bless the resolve of a Prime Minister such as this, returning to his own post once he realized, may God preserve him, "that the situation within the army was no better than the reality of the political scene." So why, then, put on a show of unionist sentiment and proclaim it publicly, only to cower afterward?

We were astonished today by His Excellency's own statement, delivered at a press conference, in which he brazenly announced his own retreat from every unionist and democratic direction he had himself proclaimed to the people, and had asked us to support him in. We were stunned by his own declaration at today's press conference, "that he and his government represented nothing at all in the country, and that neither he nor it therefore had any right to bind the country to any union or federation, since what was needed was a representative authority (naturally arising from free elections) for the people, one capable of truly expressing the people's own will."

Television and radio broadcast these shameful statements.

Among what came out of this "historic" press conference was his own criticism of our local press for its frenzied campaign over allowing Egyptian newspapers into Syria, asking, "are these Israeli newspapers?" And yet he "swallowed" his own government's decision to allow them in, and approved the order banning them instead.

In doing so, he lent legitimacy to the conduct of the commander of the internal security forces, who had been confiscating these Egyptian newspapers during the very period they were permitted entry, the same man he calls "the Brigadier General" and "the High Commissioner."

The newspaper Al-Ahram in Cairo published a statement (issue of 22 June 1962) from Mr. Abdel Hamid al-Sarraj, who had managed to escape from Mezzeh prison, announcing that he had read the news of demands for his own trial in Damascus, and that he stood ready to appear before any fair court formed to try him, though he set the condition "that the trial be held publicly, under the Syrian people's own oversight and before its deepest awareness."

He said he was awaiting the answer of the rulers of Damascus, to be conveyed through the Algerian embassy in Cairo, and that if their approval reached him, he would board the very first plane to Damascus, to appear before its courts. That approval never reached him, for fear he would say everything he knew, and he certainly knew a great deal about every single official.

And so, "no eye saw, and no heart grieved."

God commands the believers in His own words: "And do not throw yourselves into destruction with your own hands." [Al-Baqarah 195]

Once Dr. al-Azma had cowered, and branded himself with the abandonment of a principle he had himself proclaimed, namely working to restore contact with Egypt, disowning his own statements and his own government's own statement, the local newspapers concentrated their attacks upon us with an unfamiliar cruelty, mixing truth and falsehood, with falsehood the greater part by far.

Dr. Hafez al-Jamali joined the ranks of those hurling abuse, a veteran Baathist and professor of education at the Faculty of Arts, along with Mr. Rafiq al-Maqdisi, whose writing I read, though I do not know the man personally.

Let us read two samples of these two writers' own literary output.

In the newspaper Al-Nasr (issue of 29 May), Mr. al-Maqdisi called us "Pharaoh's Five Agents," writing:

"...Do these five men consider the true experience of union to lie in the torture of the innocent and the domination of the secret police's own henchmen over the necks of God's own servants? Do they see it instead in killing, hanging, and torture? Do they see it in the fearsome rule of the police state? Do they see it in the voices of the widows bereaved of their husbands and sons in the depths of the dungeons of crime? Do these five men see it perhaps in the cells that once teemed with thousands of citizens, whips scorching their skin and electricity dancing through their bodies?"

Whoever reads this passage would think that Syria, under the union, had become like Italy under the slave revolt led by Spartacus, whose bodies the victorious Romans hung from tree branches all the way between Naples and Rome. Killing, hanging, torture! How wretched your own conscience must be, slanderer.

I have written elsewhere, in another book about "the Union," that only three men died in the custody of the secret police: Pierre Chdravian in Aleppo, Farajallah Helou (the Lebanese who had slipped into Syria), and a schoolteacher of the al-Droubi family, all three of them Communists, and no one has ever suggested any excuse for the secret police's own conduct in this, for their deaths were an unforgivable crime, which is exactly why the state compensated their own families and referred those responsible to the courts.

I must mention, on this painful occasion, that the late al-Droubi was found hanging by his own neck in his cell, and the coroner ruled his death a suicide, one he had carried out himself.

I am not defending any criminal act here, but exaggerating and sensationalizing individual crimes, the kind that can occur in any country, especially in the countries of the Third World, does violence to the truth, and proves that the writer's own conscience is not free of ill intent.

As for Mr. Hafez, he sank so low, in the secessionist period he supported with tooth and nail, as to become something of a spectacle in his own right. I recall discussing his conduct with his own "teacher," Mr. Salah al-Bitar, who found his aberrant behavior and his national deviation deplorable, saying of him: "He's come down with a case of journalistic diarrhea," meaning by this remark that Mr. al-Jamali would sometimes write three articles in three different newspapers in a single day, cursing the very union that his own "party" was, in that same period, urgently calling on the people to restore. Al-Bitar, in fact, was in contact with us, working toward "closing ranks" among ourselves.

Mr. al-Jamali had once asked to visit me at my home, after the Baathists resigned, during the union, and I received him, as a fellow member of a militant party of principle, with every courtesy. Mr. Abdel Aziz Othman, Director-General of the Insurance and Pensions Authority, was with us at the time. The conversation was entirely ordinary, so much so that I found the whole visit rather puzzling, since he never even raised the subject of my resigning in solidarity with his own brothers, as though he sensed I would answer no subversive invitation of any kind, and I saw him off exactly as I had received him.

After the secession took place, al-Jamali wrote an article in the newspaper Al-Ayyam (issue of 27 June 1962) titled "With the New Five Idealists." The newspaper's own owner appended to the title a row of dots followed by an exclamation mark, like this...!

Among what he said in this refined, elegant, and thoroughly "sincere" piece of literary craftsmanship:

"...And what is the matter with these ministers, who now shoulder the burdens of governing Syria, that they will not tell the man in power plainly of the state the union has fallen into, of the terror the citizens live under, and of the psychological and moral misery the secret police impose?

I recall now that Mr. AbdulWahab Homad, Minister of Finance, when I spoke to him of this matter, claimed that he had learned, among other things, that the secret police in Aleppo were putting out their own cigarettes in the eyes of a man held in their custody.

Or does Mr. Homad, that sincere nationalist, recall telling me, that very day, that he had informed the President that the army officers' own budget had risen by five million in a single year, and that he had asked for restraint in the budget before asking for restraint toward the officers themselves?"

He then turns to Mr. Nihad al-Qasim, Minister of Justice, taking him to task "for knowing full well that the prisons were filled with men imprisoned without trial."

I bear witness before God that I showed al-Jamali's article to Mr. Abdel Aziz Othman, who had been the very link between us, and our third companion in that unpleasant meeting at my house, and he read it and remarked that not one word of what this "distinguished" writer had put in his mouth had ever actually been said.

Al-Jamali was not the only slanderer, but one small voice in a chorus of hypocrisy and malice, made up of men who put on a show of loving union while striking at its very foundations with the pickaxes of its own enemies.

And if what he says of the union were true, why did his own teacher, Mr. al-Bitar, try to take his own life, cutting the artery of his own wrist, out of grief, sorrow, and atonement for having signed the instrument of secession? I do not say for a moment that the union was never a stage for errors committed by certain intelligence men, and that we did report them to the very man overseeing this institution, who condemned them and worked to prevent them.

But the occurrence of errors, however numerous, can never justify the crime of the secession, which shook citizens' own confidence in their identity and their future, and exposed the nation, and continues to expose it, to the gravest dangers. Any patient suffering from an inflamed eye tries to treat it, not to gouge it out, still less destroy the whole body over it.

I would like to note, simply as a reminder, that the union era was honey and butter so long as the Baathists sat in the seats of power, but once the President clipped their wings and refused to hand them Syria's own destiny, as they had demanded of him, they turned against the era and set about denouncing it, joined by the resentful reactionaries whose own interests had been harmed.

And once Haydar al-Kuzbari, Abdel Karim al-Nahlawi, and their fellow Damascene officers were toppled, the resentful rushed to embrace them, to defend their own regime, and set about philosophizing the secession, as though it were some hoped-for wish granted to the nation, dearer and more precious than the destruction of Israel itself.

The days that followed proved that the secessionism of al-Jamali and his own colleagues could not have withstood so much as the blow of a shoe's own heel.

Had Mr. al-Bitar not fought so desperately to defend him, he would have been among those swept away by the broom of civil dismissal, in just reward for the evil he had done.

---

Endnotes:

[1] Newspaper Al-Nasr, owned by Wadih Saydawi, 26 June 1962.

[2] P. 235.

[3] P. 235.