The 9 March Government - Part 4: Aflaq's Secret 70,000-Pound Payment from Nasser and the Purge of Nasserist Officers Begins

Thursday the 21st: The Second Stage of Negotiations Concludes

The Council of Ministers was called at ten in the evening, to hear a report on the discussions of the second stage of the union talks, held in Cairo.

The Syrian delegation that had traveled to Cairo two days earlier, made up of al-Bitar, Aflaq, al-Atassi, and al-Shaer, returned to Damascus at noon today. It was said that this delegation was a purely Baathist one, meeting privately to clear the air between the Baath Party and President Abdel Nasser. What I myself know is that Louai al-Atassi was not a Baathist, nor was General Fahd al-Shaer, who may have joined the Baath Party only afterward.

Mr. al-Bitar spoke of this stage, saying: "We traveled as Baathists, and President Abdel Nasser received us in that very capacity. We discussed matters with him with complete candor, to clear the clouded atmosphere between us and him, over the union's own errors, and over the Baath Party's own resignation and his own acceptance of it.

We focused on the essential matters, and did not dwell long on personal issues.

Our own repeated meetings lasted twenty-five hours, and no minutes were drawn up. I can bring you the good news that the atmosphere between us has become entirely clear.

The President came to realize that our own criticism of the former union's errors was an innocent one, meant only to identify where things had gone wrong, so as to avoid them on the road toward establishing the new union."

Mr. Salah summarized the talks as follows:

1. That tripartite union is the child of present circumstances, one that imposed itself once Iraq was freed of its own shackles, not because the Baath governs Iraq.

2. We found President Abdel Nasser fully receptive regarding this union.

3. It is certain that this new state will carry real weight on the world stage, since it will possess the Suez Canal and Iraq's oil, and since Iraq's own army will be stationed along Israel's own border.

4. This union will be capable of resolving the Kurdish question in Iraq, since it would never be right to leave Iraq to resolve it alone.

President Abdel Nasser expressed his full agreement with proceeding to establish the union, after which the Kurdish question would be addressed. He set aside the idea of a bilateral union between Syria and Egypt alone, leaving Iraq to resolve the Kurdish problem on its own, before then joining the coming union.

5. It was agreed that full merger union did not suit the reality of the Arab countries, and so the principle of federal union was adopted instead, its own structure and institutions to be determined in the coming talks.

6. President Abdel Nasser agreed to the Syrians' own proposal, that the coming state be a single state made up of regions, not a group of independent states linked by a confederation, since a state of that kind would win no one's real acceptance, the existing Arab League already serving that very purpose well enough.

The President agreed to give regional considerations the attention they deserved, but insisted this state would, without question, have a single president.

7. Mr. Salah attributed to Abdel Nasser the remark: "We erred in dissolving the revolutionary parties. It would have been better for them to remain, to help carry the burden of the revolution alongside us."

8. Abdel Nasser stressed the necessity of striking at reaction's own bases within Egypt, nationalizing its own destructive fighting capacity, showing it no truce until it fell entirely.

9. The Baathist delegation drew President Abdel Nasser's own attention to the domination imposed on the Syrian region, since Egypt had considered itself solely responsible for the union's own safety and the conduct of its affairs, without ever truly sharing this responsibility with the Syrians. He gave him the example of the central ministers in Cairo during the union, saying they had known nothing at all of what went on within the circle where the real decisions were made.

It was therefore agreed to form a joint leadership, represented, for example, by a political bureau to direct the policy of both the state and the government, perhaps along the lines of the collective leadership in independent Algeria.

10. The President assured the Baathist delegation that he had no representatives of his own in Syria, and pledged not to extend the Socialist Union's own institution beyond Egypt's own borders.

Mr. al-Qasim told us that Abdel Karim Zohour had made insinuations against the unionists during the first stage of negotiations, saying: "Egypt's revolutionary government wants to find agents of its own, and is wary of dealing with genuine revolutionaries." (Minutes, First Stage, Second Session.)

Mr. al-Qasim answered him sharply, telling him: we act out of firm conviction, and are no one's agents. We served under Abdel Nasser's own leadership throughout the union, but conducted ourselves in our own ministries according to our own conscience, never in response to anyone else's bidding.

President Gamal himself took up the matter, answering Zohour by reminding him that he had once given Mr. Aflaq seventy thousand Egyptian pounds, "not so that the Baath Party would become an agent of his, but to help genuine nationalist militants, and support the families of militants thrown into prison or forced into hiding." (Minutes, First Stage, Second Session.)

We "Nasserists" had no knowledge at all that Aflaq had received this enormous sum.

I would like to declare, before God, that we, the five-man leadership of the United Arab Front, never received a single penny, neither from Abdel Nasser nor from anyone else. Whenever we needed to send a telegram or print a leaflet, we would split the cost among ourselves, out of our own personal pockets.

The Baathists took to attacking me personally, telling Abdel Nasser that I had nominated Rushdi al-Kikhya to form the government, on the evening of 9 March, and accused me of being a reactionary. I bear witness that I made this nomination precisely to prevent Salah al-Bitar, with his own narrow partisan mindset, from reaching the premiership, and to spare the country needless infighting, especially since the Baath Party had itself once signed a document nominating al-Kikhya for the presidency of the republic in 1955, though he had flatly refused to accept the post.

It is certain that, had my own proposal been accepted, union would have been achieved on exactly the carefully studied foundations the Baath Party itself demanded, and Abdel Nasser too, and ourselves as well.

But what I later learned, published afterward in the minutes, was that President Abdel Nasser answered Michel Aflaq, who had proposed "that the Baath Party never interfere at all in Egypt's own affairs," by telling him:

"That's a mistake, brother Michel.

How, then, could we call this a union at all? If you don't interfere in Egypt's affairs, and we don't interfere in Syria's, then where exactly is the union in that?

Union can only rest on two foundations: constitutional unity and political unity.

If, as Mr. Aflaq proposes, there is one party in Iraq, another in Syria, and yet a third in Egypt, this means multiple political leaderships within a single government.

And should a clash ever break out between the Baath Party and the Socialist Union, one will simply tell the other, farewell, and the secession will have arrived all over again."

The minutes record that Aflaq withdrew his own strange proposal.

On 21 March, a joint statement was broadcast marking the conclusion of the second stage of talks, announcing the establishment of a national front in each country, as a first stage toward establishing political union at the level of the federal state, and the necessity of unifying the revolutionary unionist forces of the three countries into a single revolutionary union, under one single leadership.

During this stage of the talks, Yemen's President and Algeria's President both discussed with Abdel Nasser the possibility of their own countries joining the union.

Abdullah al-Sallal, President of the Republic of Yemen, whose own republican forces were still fighting the forces of the deposed Imam al-Badr, expressed his own country's wish to join the proposed tripartite union.

But Abdel Nasser said he did not favor Yemen joining the union at this time, for good reason, given the presence of Egyptian forces in Yemen fighting alongside the republican forces, which raised the risk that Yemen's own accession might be seen as coerced. The Baathists agreed to this exclusion.

Likewise, Algeria's President, Ahmed Ben Bella, came to Cairo to inquire about the possibility of his own country joining the proposed union. But it was likewise judged that the time was still too early for Algeria. It was agreed that President Abdel Nasser would send his own office director, Abdel Majid Farid, to Ben Bella, to explain the reasons favoring his own country's exclusion from this "Mashriq" union for now, especially given how recent the break with France still was, and the risk that the whole process might become entangled in French-Arab, or even Arab-Arab, complications, given Algeria's own geographic position between Morocco and Tunisia.

The Syrian side said that, with the issuance of this new joint statement, dated 21 March, the doubts between the Baath Party and the United Arab Republic had been entirely dispelled, and that a real trust had taken hold between the two sides, one capable of helping steer the union process safely along its own path.

Yet the most notable point agreed upon at this stage was the abolition of the security intelligence apparatus, and protecting the unionist forces from its own domination and aggression.

The unionist forces in Syria, at that time, had become the target of violent attacks from the security apparatus, on the direct orders of Interior Minister Amin al-Hafiz.

Both sides agreed to resume the union talks, which had been paused to clear the air between Abdel Nasser and the Baathists, at this second stage.

Nihad al-Qasim (our own representative in the negotiations) spoke, saying: an agreement had indeed been reached in Cairo to establish a tripartite union of a federal character. The head of the Egyptian Executive Council (Prime Minister) had taken him aside privately and asked him: is your own delegation genuinely serious about these union talks, and does it truly intend to establish union with Egypt and Iraq? Al-Qasim's own answer was decisive: the delegation is entirely serious about the process of establishing this federation, "or else we would never have agreed to remain in the government at all."

He did, however, express surprise at the Baathists' own proposal that "the Revolutionary Command Council" be made up of seven Baathists and only three others, on the civilian side. As for the military members, he preferred not to speak of them, though Defense Minister Lieutenant General Muhammad al-Sufi told us that "the military side has already been formed, and discussions are now underway to form the civilian side of the Revolutionary Council." He did not, however, name any names.

We asked ourselves: why this secrecy, which serves the union process no purpose at all, since we, the unionists, wanted to be full and equal partners in this unionist partnership? Any action taken without our knowledge or approval only deepens our own suspicion, and our own fear for the safety of the whole process.

Yet Mr. al-Bitar denied that any conversation with Abdel Nasser had taken place at all on the subject of the Revolutionary Council, and insisted he had never asked him about "the wisdom of a Baathist majority." He added: "We expected him not to interfere in Syria's own affairs at all, since Syria's affairs are its own alone. The President treats us as a sovereign state, and they received us in Cairo with both the Egyptian and Syrian anthems played."

We, the unionists, realized the atmosphere had not yet become clear at all, and that there was far more behind the scenes than met the eye.

This conversation only deepened our own fears and unease, rather than reassuring us. I later went back to the minutes Al-Ahram had printed at the time,[1] and found the following:

1. Louai al-Atassi admitted that he "had allowed unionist slogans and pictures of Abdel Nasser to be raised for three or four days, before being forced to ban them, since they contradicted the slogan of tripartite union."

2. President Abdel Nasser announced his own readiness to reach an understanding with both the Syrian and Iraqi governments, ranging anywhere from an alliance based on shared purpose, all the way to full merger.

3. Nihad al-Qasim, speaking on our own behalf, is quoted as saying:

"Given that we call for immediate union..."

I would like to correct the record here, for history's sake, that this statement was not entirely accurate. We stood for federal union, though should national circumstances demand immediate full merger union instead, we would accept that too.

The phrases "carefully studied union" and "federal union" recurred repeatedly, both in our own words and in our own actions.

4. Rashed Qatini (Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Army) said that the Egyptian officers who came to Syria during the union had done a great deal of harm, some of them spreading word that they had come on special assignments of their own, undermining Syrian officers' own trust in the army's unity.

5. This is a genuinely important point. Lieutenant Colonel Fahd al-Shaer announced the following:

a. That the military men included not a single Baathist among them, and that they stood apart from party politics entirely. This statement means that Fahd al-Shaer, one of the very pillars of the coup, was not himself a Baathist, nor were the other military men involved. It is a genuine misfortune that Fahd al-Shaer was purged shortly afterward, driven out of the army and into prison.

b. He also announced that the government formed on 9 March included twenty ministers, only seven of them Baathists, the rest belonging to no such party.

6. Salah al-Bitar said "that the gravest danger threatening us is a rivalry breaking out between Baghdad and Cairo, one that would end in the return of the policy of axes."

7. Michel Aflaq and Abdel Karim Zohour said that Akram al-Hourani's own group had demanded the Baath Party be reorganized, following the secession. "We rejected their demand, since they wanted to steer the party toward supporting this very secession. We therefore remained a mere six or seven unorganized individuals, until we met at the Homs conference and reorganized the party."

During this same period, Colonel Jasim Alwan visited me at my own office at the Ministry of Finance. I did not know him personally, though I knew that the brigade he had commanded during the union was the very one the 28 September 1961 secession had seized, during his own absence. He told me of what the Baathist officers were doing within the army's own ranks, working desperately to seize control of the armed forces, and assured me that Salah al-Bitar and his own group were merely buying time, until they had fully seized the army's own strike units. Once that was achieved, he said, they would turn toward Iraq's own Baathists and abandon the tripartite union entirely.

His own view, and that of his brothers, was that we, the unionist ministers, should hasten to submit our own resignations, and expose the hidden truth of the matter in a statement broadcast to public opinion.

This conversation took place at a time when the three delegations had already agreed that the third stage of talks would resume in Cairo on 6 April.

Saturday the 23rd

We held a meeting of our own Front's leadership at my own house this evening, to discuss what we ought to do, given how our own partners in power were evolving in their own thinking.

Our brothers spoke of their own impressions and their own view of the present reality and the future. They were unanimous that the Baathists' own conduct no longer inspired confidence, and that remaining in power any longer was no longer justifiable, since our own continued presence there only made it easier for them to achieve their own scheme of entrenching their own position, before seizing power for themselves alone, their own actions having already begun to expose their own true intentions.

I would never have imagined that Messrs. Aflaq and al-Bitar would say one thing while scheming another in secret. We decided to resign from the government at once, though we chose to delay broadcasting our own letter of resignation, hoping our partners in government might yet reconsider, or offer us some justification for their own troubling conduct.

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Endnotes:

[1] These minutes were printed by three different publishers: 1. Al-Ahram newspaper's own edition, Cairo, 1963. 2. Dar al-Masira's edition, Beirut, in two volumes, 1979. 3. An extensive study by Mr. Riad Taha, Dar al-Kifah, Beirut, 1964.