Before These Memoirs - Part 5: Nasser's 5 October Speech Renouncing War Over Syria, and the First Bitar-Hourani Split

Thursday the 5th

The President summoned us to his house at 1:30 in the afternoon. His own vice presidents sat at the front of those present, and all the Syrian ministers gathered around him and around his vice presidents, as though birds perched over our heads in silence. The President began explaining the international situation, and how the Arab reactionaries and the foreign intelligence services had succeeded in drawing the Syrian mutineers to their side. He said he had made a decision that wounded his conscience and his nerves, but that he had found it a decision that had to be made: that the battle with the Syrian coup-makers must be brought to an end, to preserve what remained of nationalist sentiment inside Syria, for fear that the extremists would rush further into their folly, both at home and abroad.

The President then began reading the statement he would broadcast that day. He read it as though choking on his own tears, trying not to let his feelings show too strongly. We suggested a few amendments to him, which he accepted with grace and understanding.

He had scarcely finished reading it when we broke down, and he with us, into weeping we could not master. And I bear witness that he kept a firmer hold on his own nerves than we did.

He turned to us, as though trying to soften the blow of the tragedy, and said: I hope the sleep of the sleeping will not be long delayed, and that consciences will soon stir. What grieved him most of all was speaking of how the Egyptians were being treated in Syria, because when they returned home they would speak of what they had suffered at the hands of "the Syrian brothers," and resentment would only grow, and the wounds would only deepen.

The most prominent passages of this sorrowful speech were as follows:

"Brothers throughout the Arab homeland:

This is the first time I have allowed myself to address all of you in this formal manner, but I feel it is your right upon me, and my duty toward you, to lay open my thinking and open my heart to you in these decisive moments of the Arab nation's struggle, and of its striving toward its highest ideal of unity and freedom.

I consider that the hours we are now living through are not ours alone, but belong to a history that came before us, to a present being built by blood and toil, and to a future we are trying to set in motion within the conscience of the unseen.

Brothers:

What has happened in Syria, you all know. You know what happened yesterday, and you know what is happening today. And if I tell you that I am following the course of events with a wounded heart, I tell you at the same time that what occupies my mind is not what has happened so far, but rather what may follow from it in the way of dangers to the Arab nation, to its being, and to its future.

And I tell you now that I can almost see the Arab nation heading toward a terrible ordeal, and I feel it is my duty to do everything in my power to spare the Arab nation this ordeal.

And I say to all of you, with an easy conscience and a contented heart, that I do not accept, whatever the circumstances, to see the people here, and the people in Syria, as two sides of a battle, as parties to disputes and division.

I cannot imagine, in Cairo and in Damascus, anything but brothers in struggle, comrades in battle, and partners in fate and destiny.

I have felt, over these past days, that all that has happened has opened a wide opportunity before the enemies of the Arab nation: before the forces of imperialism and its agents, before the forces of reaction in the region, and before the enemies of the progress of peoples.

I have seen with my own eyes their joy, all of them, at this opportunity.

And I have sensed that they want it to be a battle in which factions of the Syrian people's own sons kill one another, a battle in which strife falls between the Arab people in Syria and the Arab people in Egypt.

You know that I made a decision, days ago, that Arab unity between Egypt and Syria must not turn into a military operation.

On that basis, I halted all the military operations that had begun in support of the rising masses of the people against the secessionist movement in Syria.

And today I announce to all of you: if I have refused to let military war be a means of upholding Arab unity, then I now refuse to let civil war be a substitute for it.

Brothers throughout the Arab homeland:

You know that I am an advocate of unity, and you know my position when the free Syrian popular will imposed this comprehensive union in February 1958. You know it was my view that unity, especially in periods of national construction, is an arduous and exhausting process, and that my view was to prepare for it gradually over years. But I bowed to the Syrian popular will, and I felt in my depths that in doing so I was protecting Syrian patriotism and taking part in saving the Syrian homeland from the dangers of internal division that threatened it, in the face of the pressure of the colonial powers.

I devoted my effort to the work of construction in Syria. And in three and a half years, real accomplishments were achieved there such as Syria had never witnessed in the whole of its history."

The President then went on to recite the development-budget figures that had been allocated to raising income,[1] and to recall the agrarian reform laws and the lifting of capitalist domination from the popular classes, the state's ownership of the banks, the nationalization of the monopoly companies, and the raising of the farmer's status from an enslaved laborer to a liberated owner, since the state had begun distributing 561,123 hectares to them. He concluded by stressing the following points:

1. He asked all the popular forces still loyal to the United Arab Republic and to Arab unity to now recognize that national unity within the Syrian homeland must take first place.

2. He had now instructed the head of the United Arab Republic's permanent delegation to the United Nations not to stand in the way of Syria's request to be admitted as a member of the United Nations.

3. Only five states had recognized the existing regime in Syria: the remnants of the family that had betrayed Arab history in Amman (King Hussein), the government of Chiang Kai-shek (exiled to Formosa), the fascist military government in Turkey, the government of the fruit company in Guatemala, and the government of Israel's friends in Tehran.

Here it is worth mentioning what Mr. Ahmad Hamroush[2] wrote about President Sékou Touré's reply to a telegram Ma'mun al-Kuzbari had sent him, asking him to recognize the situation in Syria after the secession. Touré answered him as follows:

"I do not permit you to address a message to me concerning myself, for I consider you a treacherous rebel, and we can have no relation except with the legitimate government of the United Arab Republic."

4. He had asked the United Arab Republic's Ministry of Foreign Affairs not to stand as an obstacle to Syria's membership in the Arab League.

5. He had requested an investigative committee to make certain that Syria's gold reserve and the backing of the Syrian currency remained, as they had been before the union, fully present in the Central Bank in Damascus.

As well as to verify that the number of detainees in Syria had not exceeded 95. Nor did he forget to mention that he had ordered the files kept open on some of today's conspirators, for conduct that should rightly have brought them before the dock.

He closed his speech by affirming that "I trust in the inevitability of unity among the peoples of the Arab nation as I trust in life itself, and as I trust that dawn will break after the night, however long it lasts."

I knew for certain that Abdel Nasser was sincere and truthful in his unionism and in his adherence to the principle of Arab nationalism. In a conversation that once passed between us, he bared his arm, pointed his finger at a vein in it, and said: "Arabism runs in my veins, just as my own blood runs in them now."

Perhaps I add nothing new if I say that he used to read the works of Sati' al-Husri, and that he admired them.

It was the view of that great philosopher of Arabism that: "The Egyptians have no right to turn their backs on Arabism, clinging instead to their connection with Pharaonic civilization, which has vanished beyond recall.

Arabism is not part of an embalmed past, for it is part of a living present."

And so that Abdel Nasser might remain faithful to his belief in unity, he refused to restore the name "the Egyptian State," for he kept for Egypt the historic name that had joined Syria and Egypt together, the United Arab Republic, so that it might remain "raising its banners, chanting its anthem, pressing forward with all its strength to build itself, to stand as a support for every Arab struggle, every Arab right, and every Arab hope."

In answer to this historic speech, the secessionists in Damascus took turns speaking on the radio in response to what it contained.

Al-Kuzbari's speech included the following:

"Whoever reviews President Abdel Nasser's speeches and statements since the start of this blessed revolutionary uprising, this magnificent uprising, can sense how he feels the failure of his own policy in Syria.

Those who know the history of the Syrian Arab people know with the surest knowledge that throughout its long history it has never risen up except in response to Arab dignity, honor, and pride.

It was the suffering of the army and the people under the exploitative union that led to this magnificent revolutionary uprising, which has secured for the Syrian Arab Republic a place at the forefront of the Arab ranks, its head held high and its dignity intact.

Our army was and remains a magnificent example of sacrifice and defense of the homeland's borders. It is the pride of the Arab armies, standing in the front line of fire, answering the call of sacred duty. And yet, for all that, the Arab people in Syria was and remains committed to true unity, and it extends its faithful, sincere, believing hand to the brother people of Egypt and to all the Arab governments alike, to draw up a covenant of true Arab unity, free of domination, exploitation, monopoly, or condescension."

He closed his speech with a slogan revealing the depth of his professed commitment to Arab unity, saying:

"Long live the Syrian Arab Republic, and long live true Greater Arab unity."

It seems that what was meant by this "true Greater Arab unity" was one under whose banner twenty-three despotic kings, self-styled princes, and inspired presidents would gather. And yet al-Kuzbari himself, and his colleagues, had not hesitated to dance among those dancing on the remains of the first union in modern Arab history.

By one of fate's ironies, he had once held an exalted, distinguished, and leading place within it, and had been one of those who worked to bring it about. And it is perhaps one more of fate's ironies that this very army al-Kuzbari now praises and flatters would soon expel him from the government and arrest his own mainstay, Colonel Haydar al-Kuzbari, before the ink of this very speech had even dried, discharging him from the army on the charge of "receiving money from Jordanian intelligence."

Other "ministers," of whom no one had ever heard before, were then enlisted, and they went on chanting their replies to Abdel Nasser's speech.

It is enough for me to name them, referring anyone wishing to read their replies, "which falsehood cannot approach from before or behind," to "the memoirs of Lieutenant General Abdel Karim Zahreddine."[3]

These were Ma'mun al-Kuzbari and Awad Barakat (who had been a competent official at the Central Bank), and Ahmad Sultan, the lawyer of whom no one had ever heard. And "men of letters" enlisted themselves in the campaign as well, such as Sheikh Ali al-Tantawi, Shakib al-Jabiri, and Sheikh Abu al-Yusr Abidin, the former Grand Mufti of the Republic.

I had studied jurisprudence under His Eminence the Mufti at the Faculty of Law in Damascus, and we had memorized it by heart in order to pass the examination, and then promptly forgot everything we had memorized. Later I became his colleague, and the Dean assigned me to complete the quorum of the examining committee alongside him. We had some amusing stories together. Then fate decreed that he be retired in 1955, and the retirement decree bore my own signature. He came to me complaining of his "injustice," and among what he said was: now that I have "ripened," I am being sent into retirement. I told him, that is exactly the reason, Professor, because you have indeed "ripened." He later returned to his post in a subsequent term, and was retired a second time, and on this occasion, as my own bad luck would have it, the decree of his retirement again bore my signature.

A passage in al-Tantawi's speech caught my attention, in which he said: "What angered us was nothing but this depraved progressivism, and these socialist decrees... We refuse to let the depraved come and teach our daughters to dance."

I do not know the reason for Professor al-Tantawi's hatred of a socialist system that takes the worker and the farmer by the hand. Nor could I approve of what he said about the young women of the garden of literature, daughters of the noblest families of the homeland, simply because they performed the eastern samah dance, as they had done before Abdel Nasser's time and continued to do to this day, held in respect and esteem all the while.

Friday the 6th

We heard on the radio that the Arab Socialist Baath Party had broadcast a statement, signed by Mr. Salah al-Bitar, calling for a return to union with Egypt.

One wonders, what has changed since then?

Had Mr. Salah not, with his own honored signature, sealed "the ill-omened secession petition," and not three days had passed since the secession? Had his conscience then stirred, and had the fangs of regret bitten into him over this signature, so out of keeping with his long political past, a past whose merits, no doubt, outweigh its faults? But then, what Baathist socialist party is it that Mr. Salah now represents? This party has, regrettably, torn itself apart, and become at least three parties.

Saturday the 7th

The answer to my question, of which Baath Mr. Salah al-Bitar represents, the one who broadcast a statement yesterday calling for union with sister Egypt, was not long in coming. For today Mr. Akram al-Hourani issued a statement attacking Abdel Nasser and declaring that he rejected any tie with Egypt at all. This is the first split between "the two Professors." And I think it is in truth an old split. A question comes to mind:

Did the Baath Party not dissolve itself, and did it not broadcast a statement to the people announcing this very dissolution? And did a republican decree not then follow, at the very start of the union, issued by Abdel Nasser, with al-Hourani as his own First Vice President and al-Bitar as his close minister, enshrining this dissolution into law?

How, then, could these two skillful politicians allow themselves to revive a party that had already passed into history, just as every other party had dissolved itself in response to Abdel Nasser's condition, only for the dissolution decree to come and put a final end to the existence of every one of them?

And does this "revival" reveal just how little this featherweight "party" truly believed in the legislation and decisions issued with the knowledge, and perhaps even at the prompting, of its own leaders?

Or is it that the end justifies the means, according to Machiavellian convictions?

There was another event this day as well:

Al-Kuzbari "welcomed" Abdel Nasser's speech, which had officially ended the union. Yet only hours later, his own Minister of Information, Mustafa al-Barudi, issued a statement to the press agencies denying his own chief's declaration.

This is not a surprising position.

For real power lay in the hands of the coup-making officers, and al-Kuzbari and his government were nothing but a facade. And when al-Kuzbari "overstepped" the line permitted him, he was met with a reaction accordingly.

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Endnotes:

[1] I quote these passages from the text of President Gamal's speech, published in the issue of Al-Ahram dated 6 October 1961, 26 Rabi' al-Thani 1381. I have passed over the figures themselves, for time has overtaken them, and they are known to every Syrian.

[2] In his book "The Story of the 23 July Revolution," Volume 3, "Abdel Nasser and the Arabs," Madbouly Library, Cairo (undated), p. 79.

[3] Pp. 113-120.