The Unity Project Unanimously Approved - Part 3: Ziad al-Hariri's Ultimatum to the Baathists and His Expulsion from Syria

3. Nor will we hide from you that great question marks have begun forming, in our own minds and in the people's own mind alike, over the true motives behind this policy of discharge and transfer, carried out on account of unionist sympathies, after it was agreed in Cairo, on 17 April 1963, to establish a tripartite union between the United Arab Republic, whose own struggle and heroism we honored by taking its very name and flag for our new union, adding only a third star, and the Republic of Iraq and the Syrian Republic, at a time when we stand in the greatest need of solidarity and closing ranks, so that the country may stand united and cooperative against the conspiracies of colonialism and its own agents abroad, and the intrigues and sins of secessionism at home. This country will never achieve the future it aspires to unless every one of its own forces, its armed forces foremost among them, stand as solid as a mountain to protect its borders and secure the people's own goals, and unless its own unionist forces especially remain united and cooperative, to realize union in exactly the form agreed upon in the Cairo accord.

What we fear most of all is that the ranks of those working for this homeland's own good and for Arab unity might fracture, letting the seeds of sedition and the agents of sabotage slip through the very cracks.

4. Finally, despite our own withdrawal from government, we remain firm in our own conviction, unionists, and supporters of every unionist government. We shall therefore remain, though outside government, in complete alignment with you on the road to union, and we hope, now that you govern alone and bear its heavy responsibilities, that this new government will remain faithful to the very principles the revolution proclaimed on the day it broke out, union, freedom, and socialism, and that it will work sincerely to give the people a genuine role in building its own future, never falling into the path of rashness and impatience, for nothing is more dangerous, to ruler and ruled alike, than these two.

We would like to remind you that we insist on the necessity of respecting the human dignity of every citizen, that no one should be harmed except for committing an act the law itself forbids, nor deprived of his own livelihood except for conduct at odds with the honor of his own office and the dignity of the homeland. We likewise demand that citizens be given real peace of mind to express their own views within the bounds of the law, and be guaranteed honest justice, one that wrongs no one and respects the established rules of law, foremost among them following only those investigative methods the law itself sanctions, granting every person the right to defend himself, and never holding the innocent responsible for the guilty, for no soul shall bear the burden of another.

We would like you to regard this memorandum as coming from the very heart of brothers of yours, whose only real concern is the homeland's own safety and the realization of the very union whose own charter you signed, gladly and willingly, and that you not forget the democratic principles you yourselves once called for, when you stood in the ranks of the people.

Nothing harms a ruler more than a failing memory.

And peace and God's mercy be upon you.

Damascus, 6 May 1963

AbdulWahab Homad

Nihad al-Qasim

Mr. al-Bitar proved once again that his own appetite for power outweighed any real commitment to his own philosophy of union. The resignation of "the Nasserist Five" from the ministry, along with the three Baathists, as Dr. al-Droubi later confirmed to me himself, is what finally drove Mr. al-Bitar to submit his own (first) government's resignation, and Decree No. 285, dated May 1963, was issued accepting this resignation.

And so "the Nasserists" no longer had any tie at all to the new era, one in which the scales had begun tipping ever further in the Baathists' own favor, at the expense of Ziad al-Hariri, Chief of the General Staff and the very architect of the coup, who no longer held any real influence at all.

Dr. Sami al-Jundi was tasked with forming a new government, but tendered his own apology the very next day, his own "ministry" never even seeing the light of morning.

He did, however, take up a ministerial post in al-Bitar's new government, formed on 13 May. The well-known British journalist Patrick Seale wrote, in his own new book Asad, of the struggle between the unionists and the Baathists, as follows:[1]

"Nasserist strength rested on a few dozen officers and three civilian political groups, the most important of them the Arab Nationalist Movement, led by Hani al-Hindi and Jihad Dahi, and the Unionist Socialists movement, led by Sami Sawfan, itself a loose group of former educated Baathists who had broken from the party in the wake of its first rupture with Abdel Nasser in 1959."

The second grouping was "the United Arab Front," led by Nihad al-Qasim and AbdulWahab Homad, both Nasserists in every sense of the word.

The (Baathists) found in the agitation Abdel Nasser's own supporters engaged in a real warning of danger, and so carried out what can only be described as another coup of their own. Between 28 April and 2 May 1963, they discharged more than fifty officers loyal to Egypt, prompting the prominent Nasserists, Defense Minister Lieutenant General Muhammad al-Sufi and Deputy Chief of Staff General Rashed al-Qatini, to resign from the Revolutionary Council in protest. They were followed by five Nasserist ministers, and the Nasserists then organized widespread unrest in Damascus and Aleppo on 8 and 9 May. At this, the military committee asked Interior Minister Amin al-Hafiz to suppress the unrest and restore order. As a result, fifty people were shot dead, and the matter, for the Baathists, had become one of kill or be killed."

The Revolutionary Command broadcast a statement on 19 May, telling "the story of the revolution," saying an agreement had been struck between Lieutenant General al-Sufi (who had commanded the Fifth Armored Brigade in Homs) and General Rashed Qatini (director of military intelligence), on one side, and General Ziad al-Hariri, on the other, to carry out a coup, its date set for 7 March 1963, but that al-Sufi and al-Qatini had backed out of the agreement, asking for the operation to be postponed "since it was no longer secret." Al-Hariri and his own fellow front-line officers, however, did not back down, and carried out the coup on the morning of the eighth of March.

Al-Hariri and his own comrades had no wish to monopolize power for themselves, and asked their own unionist comrades to share the burden of responsibility in the new era with them. "But these men tried instead to monopolize power for themselves," as the statement put it, and "were conspiring against the revolution."

General Qatini, whom I met with many times, held a different view, one he set out in a detailed memorandum he wrote on the 8 March coup, and gave to me himself. It will be discussed further below.

Despite the total break that had occurred between us and the new regime, the unionists of all three forces came together and agreed on a fresh memorandum, presented to the National Council for the Leadership of the Revolution on 21 May 1963, in which they said the Baath Party had violated the 17 April charter, by resorting to suppressing every unionist movement, opening the doors of detention, and using violent methods against anyone who fell into the security forces' own hands. The memorandum affirmed that "the unionists place the highest national interest above every other consideration, having become certain that imperialism's own claws have not weakened, nor has reaction's own ferocity subsided." The memorandum demanded that the unionist forces be reunited, on the basis of splitting governing responsibilities evenly, half to the Baath, half to the three unionist forces. Yet this memorandum met with no acceptance at all, but with harsh treatment instead, gagging the unionists' own mouths entirely.[2]

The moment the memorandum was submitted, carried by Ratib al-Husami, Hani al-Hindi, and Hasan Hilal, representing the three forces, all three men were arrested, in place of any calm dialogue at all.

And so any wish for real rapprochement had, by then, entirely left the Baathists' own minds.

Given my own personal acquaintance with the Interior Minister, my brothers tasked me with meeting him, to learn the reasons behind this arrest and press him for their own release.

He received me in his own office, and I expressed our own dismay at his own hardline stance against the bearers of a memorandum three political groups had agreed upon, its only "crime" being that it worked, exactly as the regime itself claimed to, toward an Arab union whose own charter the Baath had itself signed.

He answered me by saying: the movement against the government has been growing, and it has decided to stand firmly against it. I assured him that we would remain true to our own principles, but would never step outside the bounds of dialogue and legality. I asked him to release the detained unionists, and he said: this is not within my own authority, but that of the head of the National Council for the Leadership of the Revolution, Lieutenant General Louai al-Atassi. He advised me to have an appointment set for me to meet with him, with the two of us meeting together at his own office. An appointment was set immediately, though the Interior Minister asked that each of us go separately. A few minutes later, we were discussing the general situation, and the release of the three detainees.

The Lieutenant General was in a state of real agitation, one whose cause escaped me entirely.

He spoke as though "the era" belonged to him personally, as though we had not, only a month or so earlier, stood together in the very same unionist movement and the very same state policy. What had stirred this nervous agitation in him, when he knew, as I knew, that he stood on sand shifting beneath his own feet, for he would remain, in the party's own eyes, at best, nothing more than "a runaway Nasserist who had abandoned his own brothers"?

Even so, I secured his own agreement to release my own brothers. He kept his word, and ordered them returned to the world of freedom.

On 25 June, Ziad al-Hariri's own turn finally came. "He rashly left the country on 23 June, for Algeria, at the head of a military delegation. The military committee seized on his absence, purging and transferring 25 of his own most prominent supporters, and offered al-Hariri himself, as a consolation prize, the post of military attaché in Washington. But he chose instead to abandon politics altogether, and retire to Paris."[3]

The Baathist party men then formed the National Guard, "to protect the revolution." Mr. al-Bitar himself joined its own ranks, becoming a "national guardsman." A copy of the newspaper Al-Baath reached us in our own detention at Mezzeh, its front page carrying his own handsome photograph, a submachine gun slung over his shoulder. I do not know whether his own weak eyesight was even capable of telling it apart from Moses's own staff.

Dr. Zaaboub tells the story of al-Hariri's own removal somewhat differently, saying: "On 25 June, a delegation traveled to Algeria, headed by al-Bitar, Aflaq, and al-Aysami, with Ziad al-Hariri among them."

The authorities seized the opportunity of his own absence, discharging ten officers and transferring twenty more to embassies, and asked him not to return to Damascus at all, but to travel directly to the United States, as military attaché. But the forces loyal to him barricaded themselves in their own barracks, and he returned. From his own headquarters, he issued an ultimatum to the National Council, dated 2 July, demanding:

1. The dismissal of Louai al-Atassi, head of the National Council, and Amin al-Hafiz, Minister of Interior.

2. The release of political detainees.

3. The establishment of a national front bringing together every political direction.

This ultimatum meant the clash between the partners in government had become a decisive one, one that could only end with the destruction of one side or the other.

But his own barricading in one of the barracks loyal to him did not spare him from facing his own inevitable fate, for he was expelled from the country on 7 July and removed from his post, arriving in Beirut, and from there making his way to Paris, where he declared he had come "for health reasons."[4]

Dr. Sami al-Jundi states, in his own book, "that al-Hariri traveled to Paris on 8 June." This appears to be a printing error.[5]

"The last of the independents remaining in a position of power was the courteous General Louai al-Atassi, head of the National Council for the Leadership of the Revolution and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces," as Mr. Patrick Seale put it.[6]

Amid the gloom of these fast-moving events, a journalist[7] from the Lebanese newspaper L'Orient came to me, seeking whatever news I might have on the question of union, and published the interview in her own newspaper on 28 June 1963.

Here are some highlights from this interview, expressing the views of "this politician, once a guiding figure in the Syrian People's Party and Minister of Finance during the Egyptian-Syrian union era, and one of the leaders of the hardline Nasserist direction," as the journalist herself put it in her own introduction to the interview.

"Dr. Homad holds an absolute faith in Arab unity, and has fought for it with all his own strength, throughout the eighteen months of the secessionist era. More than that, his own faith in this union's eventual triumph remains unshaken, despite the difficulties standing in its own path today," as the journalist put it in her own introduction to the interview.

I told her:

"I believe the great majority of the Syrian people are unionist. I have expressed my own devotion to union ever since I voted for it in 1958, under President Abdel Nasser's own leadership.

I am convinced that this people still demands union between the two regions of Egypt and Syria, and that our own people had no hand at all in severing the bonds of union, during the days of the secession, since this secession was the work of the imperialist powers and certain corrupt, exploitative, reactionary factions.

I was in Cairo on that ill-fated day. There, and here, I kept hearing loud voices declaring that the secession had occurred against the very grain of history and reality itself. I was genuinely happy to take part in the government of 9 March, since an agreement had been struck that very night to establish a tripartite union bringing together Syria, Egypt, and Iraq, and I would like to confess that, despite my own participation in the government, I was never truly optimistic.

I noticed, from the very start of the process, that the Baath Party was taking measures to remove certain unionist forces from power."

It went on to impose its own party majority, at a time when such a party majority carried no real meaning or necessity at all.

For this very reason, I set a condition that I would remain in government no longer than a single month, since I could not, at the time, refuse the urgent calls for my own participation in the government, given the sensitive circumstances that followed the destruction of the secession, and in keeping with the unionist forces' own decision to take part in this new experiment.

But once we found the Baathist leadership beginning to work toward monopolizing power for itself, my colleague Nihad al-Qasim and I submitted our own resignation from the government, fifteen days after that same government's own formation.

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Endnotes:

[1] Published in London by Al Saqi Books, 1988, the author devotes it to studying the life of President Hafez al-Assad, from his own beginnings up to the book's own date of publication. This handsome volume runs to 832 large-format pages, divided into two parts, the first titled "The Revolutionary Leader," the second "The Leader." The passage cited here appears on p. 136 and following.

[2] For a fuller account of this memorandum's contents, see Dr. Zaaboub, The National Charter, p. 117 and following.

[3] From Patrick Seale, op. cit., p. 141.

[4] In his own book cited above, p. 119 and following.

[5] In his own book (Al-Baath), p. 130.

[6] Op. cit., p. 142.

[7] She is Thuraya al-Hayani, daughter of the former Director-General of the Telegraph, Post, and Telephone Administration, Mr. Tawfiq al-Hayani.