Before These Memoirs - Part 29: The Arab League Council's Walkout at Chtaura Over Syria's Complaint Against Egypt

Wednesday the 22nd: The Arab League Council's Meeting in Chtaura

The town of Chtaura sits in a lovely spot, halfway along the road between Beirut and Damascus, only a few miles from the city of Zahle, with its magnificent open-air restaurants and beautiful nights.

The delegates to the League Council may well have chosen this splendid location so as to enjoy a few pleasant summer days, forgetting for a while the scorching heat of Cairo, Jeddah, Baghdad, and Khartoum. But they misjudged the moment, for they were about to spend some truly scorching hours instead, on the furnace of Arab politics, which knows neither coolness nor peace.

The delegations gathered in the great hotel's own hall.

The Egyptian delegation was headed by "Ambassador" Akram al-Dairi, with "Ambassador" Jadou Ezz El-Din and "Minister Plenipotentiary" Talat Sidqi as members, all three Syrians who had chosen to remain in Egypt after the secession. Al-Dairi and Jadou had both served as union ministers.

The rest of the delegation's members were Egyptians, foremost among them the (genuine) ambassador, Abdel Hamid Ghaleb, Egypt's ambassador in Lebanon.

He stands accused of weaving conspiracies and "buying consciences" in order to bring down the Syrian regime.

The Syrian delegation, for its part, was made up of fifteen members, headed by Mr. Jamal al-Farra, Minister of Foreign Affairs.

He is a career diplomat, known for his refined manners, his gentle tone, and his own distance from any climate of mutual abuse.

The head of the delegation had two deputies:

Mr. Khalil al-Kallas, former Minister of Economy in the union ministry, one of the senior leaders of Akram al-Hourani's own Baath Party.

And Dr. As'ad Mahassen, once a fellow member of the teaching staff at the Damascus Faculty of Law, who later chose a diplomatic career, serving as ambassador in Paris and then in Rabat. The Syrian delegation also included Amin al-Nafouri and Abdel Ghani Qanout, both likewise former union ministers. Representatives of the Arab states attended as well.

Among them, Mr. Fouad Ammoun, Secretary-General of the Lebanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, caught my attention.

As far as I know, he chaired the Lebanese committee that drafted Lebanon's own penal code, as did Mr. Saad Jumaa, Jordan's ambassador in Damascus, who had once been one of our own brightest students at Damascus University, deeply devoted to the nationalist movement, and who later became Prime Minister of Jordan.

Iraq's government was absent, having been boycotting the League Council's own sessions over policy disputes concerning Iraq's own ambitions to "reclaim the district of Kuwait" as part of the mother country.

These very ambitions would later bring a crushing catastrophe upon Iraq itself, and upon the Arab nation as a whole, through its occupation of Kuwait by force in 1990, and its own expulsion from it in a devastating war that America and Israel had been planning day and night, one Saddam Hussein's own folly handed them the means to carry out, fulfilling their own dream of annihilating the Iraqi army, starving its own people, and humiliating the Arab nation, as some Arab armies rushed, none too proudly, to fight the Iraqi army under the American banner, in the shadow of its own command and on the margins of its own battles.

The Arabs lost both their dignity and their own money, and their own "warriors" came home from this "wedding" with nothing but a crumb from the American table.

I felt real shame reading the chapters of a book this "Arab commander" wrote about this filthy war, titled "A Warrior from the Desert," his own noble portrait placed on its very first page.

I do not know whether he is even aware of his own true role in it, or not.

If you do not know, that itself is a calamity,

and if you do know, then the calamity is graver still.

The Syrian government's own complaint against the government of "the United Arab Republic," submitted by telegram to the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States on 29 July 1962, recalled Syria's own national and international standing, and that it had recovered its own international being and sovereignty on 28 September 1961, "in answer to its own people's will, expressed through the referendum held on 1 December 1961. It had likewise recovered its own seat at the United Nations, by unanimous agreement of every member state of that international organization."

Yet, as the complaint went on to say, "none of this prevented the rulers of Cairo from interfering in Syria's own internal affairs, waging rhetorical campaigns against it, and mobilizing the nationalized press and the broadcasting and media apparatus to concentrate a savage propaganda war against Syria's own being, openly calling for and explicitly inciting strife."

The complaint focused heavily on President Gamal Abdel Nasser's many speeches, especially the speech dated 26 July 1962, in which he considered Syria part of the United Arab Republic, and a second speech, dated 27 July 1962, in which the President repeated this very same view.

The complaint stated that "the Syrian Arab Republic remains devoted to managing its own affairs and raising its own people's standard of living, through progressive socialist legislation," yet finds itself forced to "take firm measures against the subversive, conspiratorial groups Cairo's own apparatus has pushed and lured into spreading chaos and destruction within Syria."

The Syrian complaint considered "the conduct of Cairo's rulers a flagrant violation of Article 2 of the Charter of the League of Arab States, which states that the League's own purpose is to strengthen ties among its member states, as well as a violation of Article 8 of the same Charter, which obliges every member state of the League to respect the system of government prevailing in every other member state."

The League Council held its own session on the morning of 22 August 1962.

Mr. Khalil al-Kallas (deputy head of the Syrian delegation) requested that the session be held publicly, and the United Arab Republic's delegation, through its own head Mr. Akram al-Dairi, agreed to this openness, "in order to prove that a handful of reactionaries, traitors, and agents now control Syria."

Al-Kallas delivered his own speech, in which he branded President Abdel Nasser "the Abu Righal of the twentieth century," saying he wished to tell "the criminal that he is a criminal, the conspirator that he is a conspirator, and Abu Lahab that he is Abu Lahab."

Perhaps behind this sharpness of tone lay the fact that Cairo radio had, in recent days, focused its own attacks on Khalil al-Kallas, calling him "the Minister of Cigarette Lighters." As'ad Mahassen spoke next, arguing that "President Abdel Nasser's denial of Syria's own independent being constitutes an open act of aggression against Syria, forbidden by the very text of both the Arab League Charter and the United Nations Charter." He asked, God preserve him, "would it not have been better for President Abdel Nasser to devote the Egyptian people's own resources and blood to recovering occupied Palestine instead?" forgetting, or pretending to forget, the sacrifices Egypt had made for Palestine, for Algeria, and for every Arab country struggling for its own independence and sovereignty.

The members of the "Syrian" delegation continued taking turns at the podium.

The Syrian government of the time gathered the documents of this complaint and the speeches of its own delegation's members into a booklet titled "Documents of the Syrian Complaint," Chtaura, 22-30 August 1962, which anyone fond of coarse language, obscenity, and the basest moral degradation may read for himself.

The Egyptian delegation withdrew, finding itself confronted by men hurling abuse with none of the decorum or dignity "diplomacy" itself requires.

Most members of the League Council must surely have found this display of foul-mouthed men distasteful, for the session was adjourned without the Council reaching any decision at all.

The Syrian delegation returned home, dragging behind it nothing but shame and humiliation.

The occasion gave Syria's "free" press the chance to relay these speeches and comment on them, emptying out every last drop of rancor it carried against Egypt and its own regime, and against the unionists and their own sympathizers.

Yet we could feel the atmosphere growing ever more charged. Our own sense only deepened that this country had come to live under conditions no longer bearable.

And the nights of time are pregnant,

heavy with every strange thing they bring forth!

Sunday, 26 August

It seems that whatever Khalil al-Kallas said in Chtaura about "his own President" Abdel Nasser had not fully satisfied him, for he gave the press a statement today sinking to the lowest depths of vulgarity, saying: "A single speck of dirt on the humblest Syrian's own shoe is more honorable than Abdel Nasser. But tell me, you Baathists, whatever became of the slogan you once raised: 'God, Homeland, and the President'?" What is truly sad and regrettable is that the Muslim Brotherhood's own newspaper published these very words of his, under an enormous headline: "Al-Kallas Exposes Abdel Nasser."

I read that a delegation of Communist lawyers, along with members of the dissolved People's Party from Aleppo, had traveled to Chtaura "to support the secessionist delegation's own efforts."

There is no doubt that the remnants of the People's Party have thrown their lot in with the secession, backing its two leaders, President al-Qudsi and his own friend al-Dawalibi. They walk, cautiously, in Akram al-Hourani's own footsteps.

Cairo broadcast that its ambassador in Beirut, a member of the "Egyptian" delegation to the Chtaura conference, had delivered an official speech, saying that certain named Syrian officers, Akram al-Khatib, Hashem Hashem Agha, and Taha Nourallah, had contacted him twice, the first time in the name of the army commander, Lieutenant General Abdel Karim Zahreddine, the second at the instruction of President al-Qudsi himself, and on both occasions had told him they had come to propose union with Egypt, relaying to him information their own intelligence apparatus had gathered, summarized as follows:

1. That Jordan had mobilized its own forces, and that King Hussein had met with his own fighter pilots and told them that an "adventure" lay ahead of them, one they had to be ready to carry out soon, telling them a great power would be supplying them with aircraft.

2. That the Turks were plotting something against Syria and the Arab region, one of their own officials having recently declared that "Syria is nothing but a natural extension of Turkey."

3. That Saudi money was flooding into Syria and Jordan, buying consciences and sowing the seeds of conspiracy, to create rifts between the Mashriq Arab states and keep them from ever considering any form of unification.

4. That Voice of the Arabs radio was building up and polishing the reputation of Brigadier General Muwaffaq Assasa, even though he was merely an officer following his own superiors' orders, with no particular importance of his own.

5. That they had put an end to the reactionary secessionist Syrian regime "to satisfy Egypt," and that the secessionist council would never be restored to life again.

6. That the command remained bound, to the letter, by the well-known resolutions of the Homs conference.

7. And they explained to him the reasons that had led them to restore al-Qudsi to power, namely that he was a man of no real strength or resource, entirely willing to carry out whatever was asked of him.

The Voice of the Arabs commentator added that Egypt knew full well the true intentions of the secessionist Syrian regime, and that its own verbal overtures toward Cairo, and its talk of union with it and turning a new page, were nothing but claims meant for local Syrian consumption, aimed at drawing out the unionists so they could be struck down and made an example of.

I learned that the Egyptian official contacted had informed the Syrian officers, in no uncertain terms, that President Abdel Nasser could never accept a union achieved through force and chaos, since he considered this an immoral course, contrary to the very principle of a sound union, one that must rest on foundations of mutual understanding and affection.

Tuesday the 28th

A major in the Egyptian army, named Zaghloul Abdul Rahman, sought asylum in Syria, and his defection came as a soothing balm to the Syrian regime's own heart. They rejoiced in him greatly, and organized a "grand" press conference in his own honor.

The newspaper Al-Sada al-Aam splashed across the top of its front page, in bold type: "Zaghloul Abdul Rahman, Nasser's Military Attaché in Beirut, Defects to Syria."

Its own editorial said: "It is honor and victory enough for Syria that its own delegation's own speech had not even finished before the Council of the League, when Damascus radio was already broadcasting to the world the news of Major Zaghloul Abdul Rahman's own defection to it, his conscience awakened, having realized, through Syria's own statements, that the road through Damascus is the road of true guidance, while Abdel Nasser's own road is one of error, conspiracy, falsehood, and betrayal."

The article bore the signature of the newspaper's own owner, Ahmad Assa, a journalist well known for his own fickleness, who, after fleeing Syria, took refuge in Saudi Arabia, and ended his own days in the service of the King of Morocco.

Cairo lost no time in exposing the fleeing major's own record, revealing to Arab public opinion that he was a gambler who had misused part of the embassy's own funds, and that once he found no way to repay what he had stolen, he staged his own defection to where the Syrian regime awaited him, confident he would be received there as "the hero whose conscience had awakened."[1]

The Syrian newspapers have become unreadable, given the vulgar depths they have sunk to.

It has become firmly settled in our own minds that the secessionist politicians, Akram al-Hourani, Khalil al-Kallas, and Abdel Ghani Qanout foremost among them, along with those who share and champion their own doctrine, such as As'ad Mahassen and Amin al-Nafouri, are determined to block every effort the moderates make to restore fraternal ties with Cairo, sabotaging every bridge that might extend toward it, for fear of losing the attention their own rhetoric has won them, and the "gains" they have secured at the expense of the nation's and the people's own true interest.

At half past two in the afternoon, Cairo broadcast a deeply moving statement, in which the United Arab Republic announced its own withdrawal from the Arab League, unless the League Council took "a decisive resolution condemning these obscenities and insults Syria has directed at Egypt, through the mouths of its own delegates (at the Chtaura conference), in a manner international councils have never before witnessed the like of, even between actual enemies."

The statement read: "Cairo believes the Arab League has, regrettably, come to be held cheaply by its own member governments, and no longer serves as a proper forum for work in the Arab nation's own interest, having become instead a place to cover up reaction's own betrayals and crimes, and it is essential that we not risk a repeat of something resembling 1948, delivered as a treacherous stab in the back."

At his own press conference this evening, the defecting, fleeing major said "he was working as a member of a body made up of students, politicians, and military men, whose goal was to liberate the people of Egypt."

And liberate them from whom, exactly, you hero? Who was it that already liberated them, drove out the British, tore up the treaty that had shackled Egypt's own sovereignty, nationalized the Suez Canal, built the High Dam, freed the Egyptian farmer and made him a landowner after having been a slave, and reclaimed for Egypt's own sons the lands once held by Italians and Greeks?

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Endnotes:

[1] The English politician Anthony Nutting wrote the following in his own book Nasser, published in 1985 (p. 361): "In the spring of 1962, the Egyptian military attaché in Lebanon, Colonel Zaghloul Abdul Rahman, who represented the main channel for Cairo's own covert operations against the Syrian regime, found himself seriously in debt from gambling at Beirut's own casinos. In a desperate attempt to make good his losses from official funds, and having run out of luck, he decided, after losing half a million Lebanese pounds (more than sixty thousand pounds sterling), to appeal to his own superior, Abdel Hakim Amer. The Field Marshal made good the shortfall, and allowed him to remain in his own post. But Amer's own generosity was repaid with ingratitude, for Abdul Rahman went straight back to the gambling club, and within a few days had lost another half a million pounds. This time he realized he was finished, and that not even Abdel Hakim Amer himself could save him." Zaghloul agreed to hand over to a Saudi embassy agent whatever documents he held, in exchange for two million pounds, and the files, containing the names of Egypt's own agents operating in Syria along with the details of their own activities, changed hands. The Saudis then handed copies of these documents to the Syrian authorities, to tarnish the reputation of Egypt, with whom they were themselves at odds. Some time later, Zaghloul surrendered to Egyptian justice, and was sentenced to hard labor for life, in punishment for his own betrayal.