Behind Bars - Part 12: Maarouf al-Dawalibi's Claim That His Warning to Kennedy Led to the President's Assassination

A Meeting with Jasim Alwan

On Wednesday, 19 May 1982, Colonel Jasim Alwan telephoned me around ten in the morning, and we agreed to meet half an hour later, since he was staying in his own apartment on the nearby Amman Street. He asked whether I would prefer that he visit me instead, but I preferred to be the one to make the visit, out of simple courtesy, for Jasim Alwan is a man of the loftiest principles, one who never wallowed in the fashionable mire of shifting loyalties and changing colors.

At the door stood a doorman, from whom I learned that the apartment was rented by the Iraqi embassy. The Iraqis were at the time carrying out a tactical retreat on their own war front with Iran, having already poured out, in this reckless war, all the money in their own treasuries and all the weapons in their own arsenals, sacrificing thousands of their own officers and soldiers in the process.

Such, too, was the fate of the Iranians.

No one found any comfort in this except the arms dealers, and the states with their own malicious interests in the region, Israel foremost among them, who rushed, openly and in secret, to the aid of whichever side seemed to be tipping toward defeat.

He spoke to me of "our own brothers" in Egypt, Youssef Mazaham, Jadou Ezz El-Din, and Ahmad al-Hunaidi, all of whom had served as ministers under the union, and had been barred from the country by the secessionist regime. When they returned on the ninth of March, the 8 March revolution did not even allow them to step off the plane, sending them straight back to Cairo at gunpoint. Colonel Alwan corrected himself, adding that they were now permitted to travel back and forth to Syria, having secured the regime's own approval to do so.

After the usual preliminaries, he turned to speak of colonial policy in the Arab East, saying it was carrying out exactly the policies described by the well-known Indian writer Karanjia in his book "Israel's Dagger," policies resting on the principle of shattering the region east of the Mediterranean into a mosaic of small states: Israel in the south, a Maronite state in the center, and an Alawite state around Latakia, with dominance in the end resting with Israel.

No one, he said, could doubt that the most visible feature of policy in this region was the elimination of Sunni leadership.

He assured me there was no real danger on the Arab Iraqi front against Persian Shia Iran, likening the Iraqi army's withdrawal to its own international border to Rommel's own withdrawal in Libya, a withdrawal shielded by Iraqi air power's own command of the skies, with the Iraqis still holding their positions firmly in the Iranian city of Khorramshahr, or al-Muhammara as he called it.

Our own view was that a defeat of Iraq, should it occur, would represent the gravest national loss the Arabs could suffer, stretching from Syria all the way to the Gulf states. We placed real weight on the warning issued to Iran by the two states facing it across the western shore of the Arab (Persian) Gulf, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

In taking this step, the two of them were, in effect, mounting an indirect defense of their own safety.

Colonel Jasim then returned to the subject of Syria's own internal situation, saying that conditions there, and across the whole region, portended great calamity, and that the coming fragmentation had to be confronted before it ever took hold.

Among what he said was that Mr. Ahmad Mahfal, leader of the communists who had broken away from Bakdash, had told him he would join a "Liberation of Syria" front, but only once he had secured the loyalty of a number of his own communists first. The Muslim Brotherhood's own leader, Adnan Saadeddine, had told him the same, having agreed to work alongside the communists.

As for Mr. Maarouf al-Dawalibi, prime minister of the secession government, he said he had met with him, and that he supported the front and would announce his own joining it at a later time. For the moment, though, he was occupied mediating between Iran and Iraq, in his capacity as head of the World Islamic Congress, and did not wish his own name openly announced, so as not to embarrass his Saudi "hosts."

He asked my own opinion, and I told him: everything you have said is clear and well known. We live in our own country torn apart, subject to a dictatorial rule that makes no secret of what it is. But I cannot bring myself to trust men who already carry on their own shoulders the weight of national and regional tragedies. I find no good reason to be convinced their own directions are sound, or that they can be relied on to keep their own promises.

Beyond that, I told him, my own health no longer allows me to risk the strain of travel, moving from one country to another, and the weight of my own years has left me no choice but to freeze all political activity. My service to my own nation is now confined to something no less useful to it than politics, namely teaching at the university, "from the Atlantic to the Gulf."

He said: I understand you well, but you will remain with us all the same, and asked that his visit remain a secret.

I confess he told me things of the utmost gravity, but I judged it in the country's own best interest to let them pass into forgetting.

For those who have betrayed the trust of arms may yet, one day, come back to their senses.

Two Meetings with Dr. Maarouf al-Dawalibi

The last time I met Mr. al-Dawalibi was in the final third of July 1963, when I was transferred and brought into Mezzeh prison.

For a reason that has remained unknown to me, the prison director, myself a Nasserist, placed me in the very room set aside for the leaders of the secession, men like Mr. al-Dawalibi, his own brother Brigadier Mustafa, Muwaffaq Assasa, Haitham al-Mahayni, and Fayez al-Rifai.

Once released, he left the country for Lebanon, and from there joined the Saudi royal court.

My wife and I once traveled to visit our son Ghassan, who was working as an engineer on the Arab satellite (Arabsat), headquartered in Riyadh.

A wave of nostalgia stirred in me to see an old friend residing in the Saudi capital, a chance time might never grant me again.

I telephoned Dr. al-Dawalibi, and he told me he was delighted by the surprise. We agreed I would visit him at half past seven in the evening on Sunday, 29 February 1988 (corresponding to 12 Rajab 1408). I visited him at the appointed time, together with my son Ghassan.

He returned the visit on Saturday, 5 March 1988.

I recorded a summary of both evenings in my own notes, and what follows is whatever falls within the scope of this book. Whatever does not belongs, by right, to its own subject alone.

I want to be honest with the reader here: I love Maarouf, as a friend and a companion of a lifetime. We studied together at the Sorbonne, lived through the years of the Second World War side by side, and I stood beside him in political work there, always on the side of right rather than wrong, trusting his own judgment. When we returned to our studies, we worked together in the People's Party, led at the time by Rushdi al-Kikhya. But we came to differ once the secession took place, since he supported it and followed in its wake, accepting the secession's own premiership, while I opposed and resisted it. Yet we never clashed on a personal level; our disagreement remained confined strictly to the political sphere, though in honesty, our own two souls never quite recovered the closeness they once had.

Today, he and I both live in the shadows, neither of us bound any longer to a political activity that would force us to stand in opposing camps.

The flood has since swept away everything that once lay in its path, and I will take care to convey his own thoughts here with a historian's honesty, whether or not I find them agreeable, since I have bound myself to record, for history's sake, the events of an era I myself lived through, given that those who have already written about it were neither fair nor impartial.

1. The professor appeared in the full elegance he was known for: a dark, European-tailored suit, a tie chosen to match its color, and a small handkerchief tucked into his jacket's breast pocket, the very handkerchief he was always recognized by. His short beard and handsome mustache lent him a youthful air he took real care to preserve, even as he stood at the edge of his own eightieth year. The professor had refused to follow al-Mutanabbi's own words:

"Out of love for truth in my word and in my deed,
I have left the color of my graying hair undyed.

And out of love for all that wears no disguise,
I have no desire for false hair upon my head."

Al-Mutanabbi, in other words, disliked dyeing one's hair, and I myself have followed his own school of thought on the matter.

The professor, though, broke with this school entirely, appearing before me a "young man" with jet-black hair.

2. He was living in an elegant villa, placed at his own disposal by the King.

3. He told me he had telephoned our brother Rushdi al-Kikhya, residing in Cyprus, and had not been reassured by the state of his voice, which sounded faint and shaky, since the cancer continued to worsen despite his own laser treatments.

He had discussed his condition with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who was moved by the news and offered to have the Kingdom host him for treatment in its own hospitals, or else host him for treatment in America or Europe. Rushdi Bey had preferred to come to Saudi Arabia, but his health no longer permitted it.

4. He spoke of Dr. Nazim al-Qudsi, saying he had become a broken old man, his back bent, living now in the homes of his own children, outside Syria.

5. The conversation then turned back to his own old political memories, among which he said:

a. "When we drove Abdel Nasser out of Syria," his own literal phrase, "he took the Syrian army's own weapons with him to Egypt, leaving the Syrian army without arms. Fearing that Israel might launch an attack against us, I telephoned Khrushchev, the Soviet president, through his own ambassador in Damascus, and told him: I am not a communist, but I am not an American either. I asked him for a swift arms deal, one sufficient to let our army fight at least a single battle, and told him that without it, the Soviet Union would lose Syria's friendship forever. After some resistance, Khrushchev told me: send us a military delegation, and we will give it whatever weapons it asks for. I pointed out to him that if we sent a military delegation and word of it leaked out, Israel might attack us first. Khrushchev told me: then leave the matter to me, I will handle it myself. And Khrushchev was true to his word, sending us weapons with real speed, and we fought a battle against Israel with these very weapons, one in which we made them taste true terror."

"After that, secret reports came in that Israel was preparing to attack us once again. I summoned the American ambassador and warned him that if Israel attacked us, your own roots would be torn out of Syria and your embassy here would be shut down, and asked him to relay our fears to President Kennedy that very night. He did so, and traveled to his own capital, and persuaded Kennedy that America's own interest required issuing a stern warning to Israel, which he did, a warning that stunned Israel and shattered its own peace of mind. This warning, I believe, was the direct cause of Kennedy's own assassination not long afterward." The professor added: you surely are not unaware that Kennedy's killer was Jewish, and that his own killer's killer was Jewish as well. (In truth, I know nothing of this, and cannot vouch for what His Eminence the Sheikh has claimed here.)

b. "I was also given the chance to speak with Khrushchev, who told me he trusted me, meaning Dr. al-Dawalibi, but did not trust President Abdel Nasser.

Khrushchev told me he had information indicating that Abdel Nasser intended to occupy Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and the whole region, with America's own approval. I rushed to inform the Saudi ambassador of this news, and asked him to relay it to King Saud at once, and in person, so that word of it would not leak out if sent through the diplomatic pouch.

c. And I told Khrushchev: America has entangled you in the Afghan war to take its own revenge on you for its defeat in Vietnam, and because of your own atheism, you have made yourselves enemies of Islam. Our own country has given the world three religions, and is content with them, and has no wish to import a new one (communism, of course). Khrushchev took real interest in what I was saying, and proposed to me, as head of the World Islamic Congress, that we admit the Soviet Union's own Muslim republics into this Congress. I answered him that this was not possible for now, so long as you remain present in Islamic Afghanistan.

d. The Soviet Union's own prime minister, Demichev, told me in Moscow that his country was spending a billion dollars every month in Afghanistan, and that his country intended to work toward withdrawing from Afghanistan, a war it had entangled itself in.

I also received, around that same time, a letter from Shevardnadze, the Soviet foreign minister, which I still keep to this day, and will show you one day."

6. He said: "I visited the People's Republic of China, and met with its leaders, and made them understand the error of their own policy against the Muslims in their country. They were persuaded by my own argument, and promised me they would reopen the mosques and stop forcing Muslims to eat pork."

What I held against my own friend the professor was this unjust bias against President Abdel Nasser, which he took real care to display through his constant repetition of phrases like:

"...when we carried out our coup against Abdel Nasser..." and "when Abdel Nasser arranged the coup against me" (against him personally, in the singular).

Every person knows perfectly well who it was that carried out the secessionist coup of September 1961, who shattered the union, and branded themselves with everlasting disgrace.

Every person likewise knows who carried out the coup of 1963 under the guise of restoring the union, and brought down the secessionist rule then headed by Dr. Nazim al-Qudsi as president of the republic, and Khaled al-Azm as prime minister, a government al-Dawalibi himself was never even a member of. They then turned their own backs on unity and its own people. When the secession took place, al-Dawalibi was with us in Cairo, working on the committee for unifying religious law between the two regions, and he, along with our friend Mustafa al-Zarqa, was treated there with every mark of respect and honor. Where, then, was his own role in bringing about the secession, a role I myself would gladly absolve him of, though he himself seems intent on dragging its disgrace onto his own shoulders?

It is a matter of real regret, too, that the professor should also be convinced that President Abdel Nasser's own aid to Yemen's President Abdullah al-Sallal "was carried out with America's own approval."

The earth itself knows, and the heavens are not ignorant of it, that Abdel Nasser threw his own army, and himself, into the fire of the Yemen war, in response to a purely national impulse, free of self-interest and untainted by any political motive whatsoever.

It was a bold gamble on his own part, one that wore him down both psychologically and physically, and placed a burden on the Egyptian treasury beyond what it could truly bear.

But he saved "Happy Yemen" from the fossilized rule of its own Imamate, a system so far behind the civilization of its own age that it belonged, in its backwardness, to a time before the Stone Age itself.

But hatred can lead even "fair-minded men" astray from the straight path of truth, until they see good in what is not good at all. With this "brotherly" meeting, I bring this part of the memoirs to a close.

I finished writing it on Friday, 29 March 1996, and reread and revised it on Friday, 23 August of that same year.

"Our Lord, do not hold us accountable if we forget or make a mistake." All praise belongs to God, Lord of the Worlds.

Written on this day, 23 August 1996.