Before These Memoirs - Part 3: Formation of Ma'mun al-Kuzbari's First Secessionist Cabinet and Its Early Foreign Recognitions

Friday the 29th

The mutineers charged Ma'mun al-Kuzbari, a relative of Haydar al-Kuzbari, one of the rebel officers, with forming the first secessionist ministry (Communiqué No. 17), and authorized him to issue its decrees.

Communiqué No. 18 authorized the Council of Ministers "to issue legislative decrees during the transitional period, to be presented to the legislative authority that will emerge from the people after free elections."

That same day, al-Kuzbari issued Decree No. 1, "pursuant to Communiqués Nos. 17 and 18 issued by the Supreme Revolutionary Command," forming the ministry. Al-Kuzbari was a university professor and a veteran politician, sworn to uphold the constitution, who had held a prominent position in the National Union apparatus established during the union era, had been Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies under Adib al-Shishakli, and had been one of the leaders of the National Bloc before the union, and he was also the agent of the Five-Man Company in its glory days.

He was, then, among those who answer any caller's summons to any irregular situation, so long as a post awaits him at the end of it. As for justification, that is never a difficult matter for such men.

The ministry consisted of eleven ministers, including its head: six from Damascus, one from Aleppo, one from Hama, two from Latakia, and one from Homs.

This government named itself "the Government of the Syrian Arab Republic."

Its members were as follows:

Ma'mun al-Kuzbari: Presidency, Foreign Affairs, and Defense.

Leon Zamaria: Finance and Supply.

Farhan al-Jundali: Health.

Adnan al-Quwatli: Interior.

Izzat al-Nuss: Education and National Guidance.

Awad Barakat: Economy and Industry.

Amin Nazif: Agriculture and Agrarian Reform.

Ahmad Sultan: Justice and Religious Endowments.

Abdel Rahman Houriya: Public Works and Communications.

Nouman al-Azhari: Planning and Municipal and Rural Affairs.

Fouad al-Adel: Social Affairs and Labor.

Mustafa al-Barudi was then added as Minister of State for Information, News, and Broadcasting, by Decree No. 2.

That same day, the government issued a ministerial statement, taking care in it to win the workers' support, and to affirm "their acquired rights and the government's commitment to supporting and building upon them."

Syrian radio shrieked hysterically with insults and obscenities unheard of in the etiquette of the airwaves, against a man who only the day before had been "the Arabs' giant and the second Saladin." My friend and fellow graduate of the Damascus law faculty, Ambassador As'ad al-Khanji, visited me at my home in Cairo and told me he remained, and would remain, loyal to the United Arab Republic. But he was torn over which country to head to; he was our ambassador in The Hague.

We were not in a state of mind that allowed us to dwell long on weighing the merits of advising him whether it would be better for him to remain in Cairo, or move on to his post in The Hague and from there send his telegram of support to the President in Cairo, or head instead to his hometown of Aleppo and from there to Damascus.

I advised him to make the decision himself, and told him: let me quote you this line of verse, which condemns hesitation:

"When a man fixes his resolve firmly before his eyes, and casts all thought of consequences aside..."

He remarked on my words by saying: "If you know one verse condemning hesitation, look at this," and he pulled from his pocket a notebook containing more than a hundred verses he had collected on the theme of condemning hesitation.

This poor man remained a prisoner to this psychological affliction, which apparently has no cure.

In the end, his decision settled on joining the separatists, after which he was dismissed from his post in a most undignified manner. On this second day of "the revolution," two neighboring governments, Jordan and Turkey, hastened to recognize the separatist government, a recognition astonishing in its speed.

Both these states had been hostile to Syria before the union, and their hostility had only grown once it united with Egypt. Turkey found itself facing a major power on its southern border, and Jordan found itself in an extremely weak position, unable to protect itself from its increasingly powerful neighbor except by seeking the protection of British forces, in the early days of the union, to safeguard its throne.

The recognition of the Syrian regime by these two states exposed the true face of this right-wing regime, and how untrustworthy its actual leanings were.

Friday, 30 September

President Abdel Nasser decided to respond to Jordan's and Turkey's recognition by severing diplomatic relations with both, considering this recognition "an act of betrayal."

Guatemala and the Formosan China governed by Chiang Kai-shek also announced their recognition of the Syrian regime.

The recognition by these two states confirmed our suspicions about the direction of the suspicious Syrian coup, for both were tails wagged by America and Britain.

The Syrian "ministers" took turns speaking on the radio, cursing Cairo and the President and justifying the secession, even though every one of them had once supported the union, and some of them had held front-row seats in political and academic life.

I do not deny that some of them were good citizens at heart. Yet they proved unable to resist the temptation of office, and most of them had been living in the shadows, when suddenly the opportunity came walking to their own doorstep, to let them float to the surface and become an appealing "subject" for the camera lens, a star of radio and television, applauded by his own children when his picture appeared in the evening news, feeling himself now "a man of standing."

Money alone, however full a man's coffers, is not enough to bring some of the well-to-do their sought-after "standing." So they seek to "marry" it to a high office, to enjoy both wealth and standing together.

And this is exactly what happened to a number of the men in this "ministry."

I remembered, on reading the name of one of them, something my late friend Ratib al-Husami had told me, back when he was editor-in-chief of the newspaper Al-Wihda al-Arabiya, in the union's final days, about this "minister's" own fervent enthusiasm for Abdel Nasser, and how he had pressed the editor-in-chief, pleading with him to publish an article praising the President. But the editor kept it in his drawer, too embarrassed to publish a piece so full of flattery and sycophancy toward the President that publishing it would have been humiliating, and it seemed strange that such a piece should come from a "gifted" university professor.

When the secession took place, he crawled to it on his face, and the separatists snatched him up to make use of his talents. The late Dr. Sami al-Dahhan, God rest his soul, took over management of the newspaper, and that article evaporated from its drawers, for it was the other face of the coin that was now in demand.

Sunday, 1 October

Our meetings with the President continue.

News and messages reach him through his office director, Mr. Ali Sabri, who briefs us on the most important of them, and we exchange comments and conversation with him throughout the day and part of the night.

A pressing question kept bearing down on our nerves: should we go on with our work as though nothing had happened, or should we raise with the President the matter of tendering our resignations, since we had been ministers of "the North," and now the "North" was seceding from its mother, so what did we still represent in our ministries?

Perhaps the President sensed the confusion we suffered in our difficult position, for he asked us to keep to our ministries, as though nothing had happened.

He insisted we resume our work the following morning. The soonest good deed is the best.

We asked his leave to withdraw that evening and gather among ourselves, and he smiled his approval, and we left the Command headquarters for the home of Vice President Nur al-Din Kahhalah. I was the first to arrive.

As I entered the reception hall, I heard Mr. Kahhalah speaking in a booming voice, seemingly criticizing the President, so I listened closely to what he was saying, and I was nearly struck with astonishment at what I heard. He was telling those seated with him, some merchants from Damascus: "What was I to do? I told him, Mr. President, these socialist laws are ill-timed right now, and I advised him not to issue them. But there was nothing in my power to stop him from issuing them, until resentment spread everywhere, and the secession happened." When I reached the corner where he sat with the merchants, I greeted him and them, he broke off the conversation, and the other brothers began arriving.

I want to bear witness before God that a session gathered us, before the socialist laws were issued, at the President's house, with Field Marshal Amer, al-Qaysouni, Kahhalah, and myself seated around him. Al-Qaysouni proposed that we introduce, even if only symbolically, a general income tax. I opposed it that day, because the poor weather conditions then gripping the country had spread drought and exhausted agricultural and livestock production. Brother Kahhalah grew heated, and spoke with a fervor betrayed by the flush on his face, marshaling "arguments" in support of his own view on the necessity of proceeding at once with the socialist system, of which the general income tax was, he said, only a modest gateway. It is true that before the union he had belonged to the "Partisans of Peace" society, patronized by the Soviet Union, yet we knew that his own "socialism," and that of his friends, among them Dr. Bashir al-Azma, was a socialism of appearances, not of conviction.

To settle the argument, we proposed to the President, that day, forming a joint Syrian-Egyptian committee to study the matter. Its report came a month later, concluding that the time was not right to introduce this proposed tax, even symbolically, since Syrian capital, scarce as it was, had already been finding its way to foreign banks through smuggling and manipulation. Once we ministers were left alone, one of us raised the subject of organizing propaganda against the Syrian situation, and one of them said that those who ought to take charge of this propaganda were the ministers whose wives and children were with them in Cairo, since they were safe from reprisal.

I sensed that he meant me first, and then Nihad al-Qasim, since both our families were indeed with us, and I had enrolled my two sons in two Cairo schools.

I asked to speak, and said to the brothers:

If the matter is simply delivering a fiery speech on the radio, that is a subject Voice of the Arabs' own announcer, Ahmad Said, handles far better than I could. I, frankly, have no intention of living as a refugee in Egypt, drawing an allowance at the end of every month. So I will speak, if the President assigns it to me. But beyond that, I will not throw myself into the unknown. Better that I remain in my own country, working from within it toward the restoration of the union, should I find a way to it, than become a mouthpiece for whichever "generous benefactor" I happen to live under.

I asked the brothers: does none of you wish to speak? Not one of them volunteered, not even to address the Syrian merchants who had marched in a great procession denouncing the secession. Farthest of all from speaking were the very two ministers who had demanded that armies be mobilized to invade the mutinous region.

At noon we received news of the appointment of Officer Abdel Karim Zahreddine as commander of the army in Syria. Jadou Ezz El-Din, who is from the Jabal al-Druze, said he knew Zahreddine personally, since he was from his own region, and that he was a supply officer with no political activity. Perhaps they had chosen him precisely because he had no roots, and "no military faction backing him," so that removing him at any time would cause no trouble for whoever truly held the reins of power.

In this respect he was like Afif al-Bizri, when the warring politically-minded officers chose him as Chief of the General Staff, so that each faction could compose itself and catch its breath, waiting for the hour it would pounce upon its rivals and upon power itself.

On this day, Ma'mun al-Kuzbari's government dissolved the National Union, of which al-Kuzbari himself had been one of the most prominent men when it was founded during the union.

Some people change their principles as quickly as they change their soiled undergarments.

President Abdel Nasser harbored a boundless hatred for political parties. That is why he had set the condition, to the "unionist" officers who came to him in 1958 forcing a full merger union upon him instead of a federation, that all political parties be dissolved. The parties dissolved themselves, and politics was forbidden to military men. And al-Kuzbari had been at the very front of that procession. Yet as the old proverb goes, contrasting the more righteous Ali ibn Abi Talib with the worldlier Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan: prayer behind Ali is more rewarding, but the food at Mu'awiya's table is tastier.