Behind Bars - Part 10: Teaching in Rabat and Kuwait, and a Frank Critique to General Khleifawi

Travelling to the University of Rabat

We had come to feel that the question of unity had been folded up and set aside on the Arab stage. The two wings of the Baath, in Damascus and in Baghdad, had joined forces in resisting Abdel Nasser. The Syrian secession had struck him a deep wound that never truly healed, just as the country itself never healed from the gaping wound the secession had cut into its own heart.

Abdel Nasser threw his own forces into Yemen, Syria turned inward to its own troubles, and Iraq withdrew into its own wounds, born of the struggle between General Abdel Salam Aref's own faction and the Baath Party.

Talk of "the specter of unity" became nothing more than idle rhetoric, one no one truly sought to confront in earnest any longer.

And so the colonial camp triumphed, a camp that had never once slept on an injustice done to it until it had humbled both unity and the unionists alike, since it could tolerate neither one.

Among what I have read more recently on this subject: Dr. Khaldoun al-Husri, son of the late eminent scholar Sati' al-Husri, published a study in the book "Studies in Arab Nationalism and Unity" (first edition, 1984, p. 234, published in Beirut by the Center for Studies on Arab Nationalism and Unity), in which he said he had come across a secret British Foreign Office document dating back to 13 June 1933. The most striking thing in this document was its explicit statement that any Arab effort toward achieving Arab unity had to be resisted, since it would run counter to British interests. The researcher adds that this document had been drawn up specifically "to resist any effort King Faisal I might undertake to unite Syria and Iraq."

I recall, too, that the Soviet Union, which normally stood beside the Arabs against the imperialist encirclement, actually opposed the union of Egypt and Syria in 1958, even though Mr. Khaled Bakdash himself supported federation. Once it became clear that what was being established was a full union rather than a mere federation, he failed to attend the session of the People's Assembly, as its own deputy for Damascus, and left the country.

This same year (1966), Mr. Mohamed Hassanein Heikal published a book titled "The Secret Contacts Between the Arabs and Israel," in which he spoke of "the Campbell-Bannerman Conference held in London in 1905," from which a document bearing this same name emerged. Campbell-Bannerman was Britain's prime minister at the time.

This document reportedly stated the following:

1. There is a danger in the Mediterranean, given its role as a link between East and West, inhabited along its shores by a single people bound together by a shared history, geography, and language, and by every element of cohesion and unity (perhaps meaning here the prevailing Islamic religious unity), quite apart from its own revolutionary tendencies and its vast natural wealth.

2. Should this region ever acquire the full means of modern civilization and the fruits of the industrial revolution, and should education and culture spread throughout it, then the death blow would have been struck against the Western empire as it currently stands.

3. As a result, the conference resolves that it is necessary to work toward weakening the Arab homeland, by the following means:

a. Establishing a strong, foreign human barrier at the very heart of the Arab homeland, separating its eastern half from its western half.

b. Working to entrench fragmentation and prevent any unionist effort, by denying the objective foundations on which unity itself rests (the unity of history, land, and language), and by firmly establishing a narrow, country-based identity in place of a broader national one.

On this very basis the Arab lands were torn apart, first by the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, then by the issuing of the Balfour Declaration in 1917, ending with the partition of the Arab lands among the states of the camp that had triumphed over the Ottoman Empire, and that then reneged on every single promise it had made to the Arab nation.

When the union of Egypt and Syria was established in 1958, against the will of the Western states (and the Eastern ones as well), those states did not sleep on this injustice either, and worked to bring that union down. They found hired officers and politicians who sold their own conscience to help wreck the very first brick laid among the Arabs, one meant to serve as the nucleus for gathering them together and raising their own standing in today's world, a sharp weapon for their own protection.

But the very concept of unity has since collapsed, growing weaker by the year, while narrow country-based identity has only put down deeper roots. And here today are the Arabs "rushing" to embrace Peres and Rabin (before a Jewish extremist assassinated the latter).

Whatever tomorrow conceals is uglier and darker still.

It was amid this psychological weight and moral exhaustion that the University of Rabat asked me to teach criminal law at its Faculty of Law. I received a letter from the Moroccan embassy in Damascus (No. 464, dated 16 May 1964) informing me that Morocco's minister of national education had sent word asking the embassy to contact me to learn my own thoughts on "joining Mohammed V University in Rabat" to teach there.

I consulted my friends Abdel Samad and Ratib, and they encouraged me to "change the air," and to offer a scholarly service to a brotherly country, rather than remain frozen in place, neither useful nor harmful to anyone.

Morocco had had Egyptian professors of its own, but it had sent them away once President Abdel Nasser backed Algeria in its dispute with Morocco, sending it weapons and men. For this reason the University of Rabat turned instead to contracting professors from Syria, since Syria alone remained "fertile ground" for offering this kind of service, with a pool of idle expertise it could draw on.

I informed the embassy of my own wish to work at the Moroccan university. What actually happened, though, was that the Syrian government refused to grant me a passport to leave the country. This refusal lasted nearly seven months, and I did not obtain an official passport, as a former minister, until Morocco's foreign minister passed through Damascus and worked together with the ambassador to persuade our own government to release it, an effort that finally succeeded.

I left Damascus for Paris, and from there to Rabat, in the month of March 1965.

At the airport I was received by Dr. Ma'mun al-Kuzbari, the secession's own prime minister, and Dr. Mustafa al-Baroudi, information minister of that same era, along with a number of Syrian and Moroccan professors. I began my own work the very second day after my arrival.

For the sake of our own dealings within the faculty council, and of living together in a country we were, after all, "guests" of, the three of us professors at the Faculty of Law, al-Kuzbari, al-Baroudi, and myself, agreed to deal with one another purely as colleagues, without letting our own political past play any role in carrying out our new duties.

Things proceeded as well as could be hoped.

Then, through sheer bad luck, while I was enjoying Morocco's own generous hospitality and the warm welcome of the faculty's Moroccan professors and the refined manners of its students, the police came for me one night at half past one in the morning and took me to the police station, only a few days after my own arrival, before I had even learned my own way back to my hotel with any ease.

At the station I found some of the Syrian and Egyptian professors, along with some who had managed to stay on at the university, and among the detainees was the professor Mrs. Mawaddat al-Jabri. We remained there three days, without a single restful night's sleep, though we entertained ourselves telling one another jokes and amusing remarks.

Once we were released, we decided to leave the country and return to our own homeland, but the university's rector, Mr. Muhammad al-Fasi, urged us insistently not to take so drastic a step, since our departure would only help the pro-French faction, numerous and powerful as they were, in their own resistance to Arabic-language education in Morocco. He held a generous reception for us, at which he delivered a gracious address apologizing for what had happened to us in our detention, and the dean of the faculty, Mr. Abdul Rahman ibn Abdennabi (as he himself spells his own name), sent me a letter "asking, in your own generous spirit, that the students not be deprived of your scholarly gifts and your abundant legal experience."

My own sweet residence at the University of Rabat continued for nearly four years, minus a few months, after which I moved on to teach at the University of Kuwait.

Whatever good I may say about my own residence and work in Morocco, I will never find words adequate to repay this brotherly country and its own people the full measure of my own gratitude and affection.

But this is not the place to dwell further on this residence so dear to my own heart.

The June War of 1967 between the Arabs and Israel broke out while I was still in Rabat, and I bear witness before God that the feelings of the Moroccan people were entirely with their own brothers in the East, so much so that some of them wept on hearing the news of the defeat.

A Professor at the University of Kuwait

I began my own work at the Faculty of Law in Kuwait on the first of September 1968. The university assigned me a beautiful apartment on the shore of the Arabian Gulf, in the Salmiya district, and I never once felt like a stranger, moving as I was from one brotherly country to another.

Just as I had been happy among the Moroccans, I found myself happy among the Kuwaitis as well. I bear witness that I never once felt out of place, neither in Morocco nor in Kuwait, since I consider the Arab homeland, for all its many regions, to be my own homeland, and my own father's and mother's homeland as well. Otherwise, why would I call myself an Arab nationalist at all?

I will not speak here of my own university work, since that falls outside the scope of a political memoir. But I will speak of a few meetings connected to Syrian political affairs that came my way during this period, following my own return to university teaching.

1. A Meeting with Major General Abdul Rahman Khleifawi

Dr. Muhammad al-Imadi visited me at my own home on the evening of Tuesday, 3 August 1976, accompanied by Dr. Abdel Salam Kanaan.

Dr. al-Imadi had been one of our own brilliant students at the Faculty of Law, and circumstances allowed me to help send him abroad to earn his doctorate in financial sciences from America, which he completed with real distinction. He had served with us in Kuwait as director of the Arab Fund for Economic Development, a post not easily won except by men of rare competence, one whose benefits to its holder are as generous as they are enticing. For a reason I do not know, he left the presidency of the Fund and was appointed minister of economy and foreign trade in the Baathist government formed by Mr. Mahmoud al-Ayyubi on 23 December 1972, and remains in this very post to this day, some 24 years later as I write this.

The lifespan of a government cabinet in our own day was a matter of a few months at most.

Dr. Maarouf al-Dawalibi's own government in 1951 lasted less than 24 hours.

For a reason I likewise do not know, al-Ayyubi's government resigned after nearly four years, and Major General Abdul Rahman Khleifawi was tasked with forming the new government, having served as interior minister in the previous government formed by General Hafez al-Assad, following the Corrective Movement he carried out to bring down the government of Dr. Nureddin al-Atassi (16 November 1970).

General Khleifawi's own selection for the interior ministry may well have stemmed from his reputation as a capable and upright officer, coupled with his own strictness in his work.

We spoke, in this sitting, of all manner of subjects, and did not stint on time given to political matters.

I note here, for the record, that al-Imadi was not at ease with how the government was being run, and voiced his own criticism of it, expressing his hope that conditions might improve if General Khleifawi succeeded in forming the new government.

That year I was on academic leave from the University of Kuwait, a full year's leave, half of it paid and half unpaid. I spent it in Damascus, writing my own book "International Criminality," which the United Nations helped me complete, by supplying me the documents I had copied at my own expense.

I was, in other words, well aware of what was happening in the country, having lived alongside its events and its own men.

I too spoke up, criticizing the general state of internal affairs.

Dr. al-Imadi told me, in a visit the following day, that he had passed most of my own criticisms along to General Khleifawi, who took a real interest in them and asked al-Imadi to arrange a meeting with me, perhaps to ask for my own cooperation, and he set an appointment for me the next day at his own home.

I told al-Imadi: I no longer think of working in any field except university teaching, nor am I any longer of an age that would allow me to take up any public or political post. I asked him to excuse me from this meeting.

The doctor went, and came back the following day, telling me that Khleifawi insisted on meeting me, and was waiting for us at his home right now.

There was no other means left for me to excuse myself, so I set out in the plush black Mercedes with its own black curtains, "so that its rider not be struck by the evil eye of the envious," and we asked the guard's leave and entered the Khleifawi villa in Mezzeh.

The general was dressed in "sport" clothes, and received us with the utmost warmth and welcome. He led us into one of the rooms, where the three of us sat, and gave orders that no one else be allowed in to see us.

We spoke, and the conversation stretched on for nearly two hours, with the general himself carrying the coffee tray and serving us the refreshments with his own hands.

I offered him my own thanks for his courtesy.

He opened by praising me, saying he "considered me one of the statesmen who had rendered great service to the country," and that this man here, gesturing toward al-Imadi, "was one of its own ripe fruits."

I spoke up, to cut off in advance whatever offer he might be about to make, and told him: I remain bound by contract to the University of Kuwait, and have no intention of giving it up. Nor am I any longer willing, or able, to shoulder the burdens of any government post, whether at home or in an embassy abroad.

Given my own aversion to all such posts, I asked that nothing at all be offered to me.

Signs of genuine surprise crossed the man's face, and he asked me: I understood from Dr. al-Imadi that you hold certain views on the general state of affairs, and I would like to hear them from you personally.

I spoke frankly, and the conversation stretched on at length, branching into many different subjects. I now have before me three pages I am looking over, twenty years after writing them, summarizing this same sitting. Having read them over again, I ask myself: was I right to speak as I did, and how did a man tasked with forming a government, a longtime Baathist himself, and an officer known for his own firm grip and boldness, tolerate everything I said about the ruling order?

Perhaps he tolerated it because I was already advanced in years, and because I was a guest in his own home, and it is the Arab custom to honor one's guest, and because Dr. al-Imadi was very close to him personally, and it was he who had taken the initiative of bringing us together for this sitting.

What is remarkable is that what I said twenty years ago could just as well be said today, provided one adds to it words even more painful and revealing still.

What follows is a summary of the conversation:

a. Domestic Conditions

I told him that two positive points needed to be acknowledged:

Greater internal security.

And an easing of border restrictions for those wishing to travel abroad.

Yet the sheer heavy-handedness of the intelligence services over the people, and the constant talk of arbitrary arrests of innocent people, and of violations of personal dignity, left citizens in fear for themselves and their own children, and only deepened their hatred of the entire political system.

I assured him that the state appeared to exist for no purpose other than protecting the political order itself, while the weak among the people dared not even demand their own rights, since they had no way of reaching those who actually held the power of decision.

As for the corruption spreading throughout the machinery of the state, it was on everyone's lips, and hardly a conversation between two people passed without talk of shady deals and commissions running into the millions.

As I spoke, I noticed General Khleifawi giving a slight nod of his head, as though silently saying: yes, all of this is already well known.

b. The State of the Ruling Party

When I touched on the state of the Baath Party, of which he was a member of both its national and regional leadership, he asked me to speak candidly, and I told him: I do not believe you invited me to your own home, in the midst of forming a new government, for any reason other than to hear the whole truth spoken plainly. I read from my own notes the following:

"The party holds an indescribable grip over the machinery of government and over the citizens themselves. You surely hear, as I do, that a great many of its own members commit every manner of transgression, and I believe many of them have only joined its ranks in recent times purely for personal gain and profit. Talk of certain members' own sudden wealth is now on everyone's lips."

It seemed to me that my own choice of words, personal gain and profit, struck a chord with him.

I asked him whether he believed citizens in our own country enjoyed even the most basic human rights. As for myself, I said, I see that arrest, or the mere threat of it, is incompatible with even the smallest of these rights.

I spoke to him, too, of the corruption spreading through the university, a subject I had real firsthand knowledge of, since professors, some of them my own former students, would tell me what they themselves saw and heard, in a state of bewilderment that left the soul in real despair and hopelessness.

Nor did I forget to speak to him of the mistaken slogan raised by "graduates of the socialist bloc," men from universities like Lumumba, Sofia, and Bucharest, who declared that "the age of the colonial universities is over," in order to attack the graduates of the universities of Paris, Oxford, Cambridge, and Harvard, and seize their own professorships under the pretext of "instilling party ideology in the students." I gave him my own example, saying: were I myself a professor at the Faculty of Law teaching criminal science, what real difference would there be between a non-partisan professor and a partisan one, in explaining to their students the procedures for bringing a criminal case, the grounds for appeal to the Court of Cassation, the concept of an impossible crime, or the workings of Interpol?