The Unity Project Unanimously Approved - Part 4: General Qatini's Memorandum Reveals Michel Aflaq's Secret Deal with the American Embassy

Even so, I want to affirm, firmly, that I remain a devoted believer in the tripartite union signed in Cairo on 17 April 1963, even though we consider this union an incomplete one, falling short of the bare minimum of Arab aspirations. We reject outright any accusation that we favor a mere bilateral union between Syria and Egypt alone.

This had indeed been our own position in the past, back when Iraq was not yet liberated. But once this country won its own liberation, and expressed its own wish to join a liberationist union, we came to consider a union of this kind a far greater gain for the Arab nation, and gave it our own approval, embracing its own principles.

I had the honor of drafting the broad outlines of the Cairo charter, presented to the conference in the Syrian government's own name, a proposal this government had adopted unanimously.

So much for the past.

As for the present, we believe the Baath Party is committing one error after another, pursuing a narrow party policy whose only real aim is to fight the unionist forces. It behaves as though entirely unaware of the true reality on the ground in this country.

I would like to add, quite frankly, that establishing a merely formal union, as certain politicians now call for, would be a grave mistake, and that it is in the Arabs' own interest to wait as long as possible before making any unionist decision, since such a wait is far preferable to a union built on betrayal and deception.

For a union of this kind can only end in a fresh secession. And a second secession would mark the greatest calamity in the whole of modern Arab history.

This same pressing question has often crossed my own mind:

Who exactly carried out the 8 March 1963 coup?

Was it the Baathists? The Nasserists? Or was it achieved through cooperation among several different parties?

I put this very question to General Rashed al-Qatini, on the night we were at the General Staff headquarters, the night of 9 March, when the formation of the government stalled over the Baathists' own intransigence. His answer was: "By God, I don't know."

This question kept returning to me, every time the dispute between us and the Baathists grew more heated, especially once it became certain to us that they had decided to monopolize power for themselves, treating the whole question of union as nothing more than a propaganda tool, meant to buy time while they secured their own footing.

Pursuing this question further no longer serves much purpose, since the Baathists went on to wage a campaign against the unionists that lacked both integrity and honor, ending by expelling them from the partnership, and driving a great many of them straight into the killing fields.

Even so, I do not wish to leave this question without at least a brief answer. On the night the government was formed, I noticed that the officer speaking in a raised voice was Lieutenant Colonel Fahd al-Shaer.

I learned, that very day, that he was the one who had led the assault on Damascus.

It was confirmed to me that he was not himself a Baathist, exactly as he himself stated during the tripartite union talks. I also learned that the officer Salim Hatoum was the sole Baathist officer who took part, with his own forces, in occupying the radio station. From this very position, he set about summoning his own discharged Baathist colleagues, who began streaming into the General Staff headquarters where we were, dressed in civilian clothes with military jackets over them, carrying light weapons. At times, he would even assign them the specific positions they were to report to.

I asked one of them: are you coming straight from the café?

There was, in the hall, a very dark-skinned officer, constantly coming and going, carrying papers he would bring in to the command council before stepping back out to speak with one of "those standing on their own feet." I was told he was "a hardline Nasserist from Latakia," named As'ad al-Hakim.

Naturally, the true mastermind behind the movement, holding real control, was Ziad al-Hariri, with Captain Aref al-Jaja as his own "right-hand man" beside him. He took part in the "back and forth" whenever the discussions grew heated between us and Mr. al-Bitar and his own brothers, Abdel Karim Zohour especially.

When Abdel Nasser delivered his own famous speech, announcing the abolition of the 17 April charter, on 22 July 1963, he said: "Only a single Baathist officer took part in the 8 March movement."

I believe he meant Salim Hatoum, who was executed several years later, by his own comrades' own bullets. Lieutenant General Zahreddine wrote the following in his own memoirs:[1]

"Fahd al-Shaer wanted immediate union."

The Nasserists were themselves advocates of immediate union, while the Baathists sought instead a "carefully studied union."

During the union talks, Fahd al-Shaer stated that the army wanted nothing to do with partisan politics, and that it contained no party men at all. This statement means that, up to that point at least, he was not himself a party man.

General Muhammad Umran wrote the following in his own book, My Experience in the Revolution:[2]

"And so the 8 March 1963 coup took place, at the hands of several different groups who took part in carrying it out. Yet the Baathist bloc played the leading role, both in inciting it and in its own planning and execution.

The period following 8 March was governed by two kinds of struggle:

The struggle between the Baathists, on one side, and their own partners among the unionist elements, on the other, and a second struggle, whose own arena was the Baath Party itself.

Two currents crystallized within it: one calling for openness and cooperation with the unionist elements and the establishment of union, and another insisting on building the party's own independent experiment, unwilling to show any real leniency toward the unionist elements or share power with them seriously. The military men's own role emerged as the first true ruling faction."

Umran was known as a unionist Baathist officer, and was later exiled from the country.

Michel Aflaq said:[3]

"In Iraq, the Baath alone bears responsibility. But in Syria, the situation is different, for the Baath cooperated with every unionist element, bearing the greater share of responsibility." Mr. Munif al-Razzaz, former Secretary-General of the Syrian Baath Party, wrote the following:[4]

"...Just as the party had no knowledge of the 28 March movement, it likewise had no official knowledge of the 8 March movement.

This was a purely military movement, prepared and carried out by an alliance of military men, Baathists, Nasserists, Arab nationalist officers, and unaffiliated officers all among them.

What united these officers was their own determination to bring the reactionary secession to an end, not any clear, positive shared program.

The Baath Party did not itself carry out the 8 March revolution. The military committee (which had planned this coup), the very leadership of the military organization, answered to no party leadership at all.

It met entirely on its own. The proportion of military men on the National Council for the Leadership of the Revolution was seven out of fifteen.

The Baathist military organization's own starting point differed from that of the Baath Party itself.

In Arab politics, they set out, from the very days of the union, from a starting point of rancor toward Abdel Nasser, for the dispersal and persecution he had inflicted upon them."

This is testimony "from one who knows it firsthand."

General Rashed al-Qatini handed me a memorandum, signed in his own hand, discussing conditions before the 8 March 1963 coup, and the night the ministry and National Council were formed, the night of 8-9 March. I quote the following passages from it:

"The eighteen months of the secessionist era were the weakest period Syria's own history had ever known. Many of those who took part with al-Nahlawi in this secession never knew, beforehand, that the plan was to separate Syria from Egypt at all. Al-Nahlawi had instead convinced them that the whole matter would amount to nothing more than certain reforms, whether within the army or within the state's own departments.

Once the secession's own leaders succeeded in separating Syria from Egypt, the army's own formations began taking on a distinct shape, as Abdel Karim al-Nahlawi insisted on appointing mostly Damascenes to command the units, and likewise to head the regions and sensitive posts, which stirred real resentment among those who felt themselves wronged by it.

Al-Nahlawi thought of ridding himself of the party men, and sixty officers were transferred to the Ministries of Economy, Supply, and Agriculture.

Hafez al-Assad and Salah Jadid found themselves sent to the Maritime Transport Directorate, and Muhammad Umran to the Ministry of Supply.

The unionists withdrew from this meeting, while Ziad al-Hariri and Ghassan Haddad approved these transfers.

Amin al-Hafiz was never known to be a party man. He was sent to Argentina as a military attaché. In February 1962, the workers of the electricity company went on strike, and Lieutenant General Zahreddine summoned me, along with General Namiq Kamal, Brigadier General Muhammad Mansour, Brigadier General Zuhair Aqil, and Colonel al-Nahlawi, to his own office. Rumors spread that nationalization of the Five-Man Company was about to be lifted.

I proposed forming a delegation to travel to Egypt, to discuss the question of restoring union, and Zahreddine stood up and said: place your own hands over mine. We all swore, by the Quran, by Ramadan, by our own faith and our own honor, to do whatever satisfied our own conscience to restore union, and to send a delegation to Cairo as quickly as possible.

Yet despite swearing this very oath alongside us, al-Nahlawi began telling the unit commanders that certain people wanted to sell us out to Egypt. The story spread, and the whole plan collapsed.

I spoke often, with senior officers, of the country's own deteriorating situation. Ziad al-Hariri, at that time, commanded one of the front-line brigades, and began contacting me, visiting me at my own home ever more frequently.

In February 1963, the Baathists seized power in Iraq, after doing away with Abdel Karim Qasim. I was, at the time, military attaché in Amman.

General Namiq Kamal summoned me, and told me I had been appointed director of military intelligence, and that Ziad al-Hariri had been appointed military attaché in Baghdad.

On 20 February 1963, I took up the intelligence directorate.

Colonel Adnan Aqil alerted me to a very important report in the desk drawer. I opened it, and read the following item:

'I have learned, from a highly placed source, that Michel Aflaq met for several hours in Beirut with the First Secretary of the American embassy, who proposed to him that America could no longer tolerate a reactionary government in the region, in Syria especially, particularly now that the Baath revolution had taken place in Iraq, and that it would support any progressive government instead. Its only condition was staying away from the question of union, whether with Egypt or with anyone else. Aflaq accepted this condition, and pledged to instruct his own group to act swiftly to carry out this wish.'

Two days later, Ziad al-Hariri and Aref al-Jaja visited me at my own home, and al-Hariri told me the work had become easier, now that I had taken over the intelligence directorate.

I asked him about his own contacts with the Baathists, and he squirmed, mumbled, and denied everything.

Conditions within the army had by then become utterly chaotic, as the Baathist officers grew ever more active. The transfer orders against officers Ziad al-Hariri, Mati' al-Samman, and Hashem Hashem Agha were never actually carried out.

Al-Hariri was supposed to leave for his own post in Baghdad on 7 March, but he stalled and never traveled.

On 7 March, al-Hariri met, at the headquarters of the artillery battalion commanded by Major Abdel Wahab Qatii', based at Kafr Nafakh, with fifteen officers, most of them unionists, and they swore an oath to keep the secret. Al-Hariri explained the situation to them, and told them the secessionist command had arrested Rashed al-Qatini, and that there was more to come.

He then formed an artillery battalion under Abdel Wahab Qatii', and a tank battalion under Bassam Abdel Nour, tasked As'ad al-Hakim with writing the statement to be read out on the radio, and formed a company under Major Salim Hatoum, reinforced with a few smaller units. He set midnight as the hour for the movement.

He assigned none of his own supporters any specific task, out of concern for their own safety.

He himself remained holed up in his own car at Mas'adeh, and once word of failure reached him, crossed the border into Beirut, to take refuge at the Egyptian embassy.

The units then began to move.

Major Qatii' took up position at the Mezzeh intersection, Major Bassam near the customs building, and Salim Hatoum around the television and radio station.

Around five o'clock, Aref al-Jaja arrived, and I asked him: where is Ziad? He said he was on his way to join us. Ziad arrived at the General Staff building, and there met with the officers who had taken part in the movement, to elect an army command. Around 35 officers gathered.

The first vote for the post of army commander went as follows: 32 votes for me (Rashed al-Qatini), and 3 votes for al-Atassi. I declined the post repeatedly, citing my own declining health, and proposed Louai al-Atassi instead, and this was approved. I accepted the post of deputy army commander, and Ziad was named Chief of Staff.

I often went to see Louai al-Atassi, and would find him weeping. I would ask him what was wrong, and he would give no answer. He took to smoking five packs of cigarettes a day, and could not sleep at all without taking Valium.

I submitted my own resignation from the army on 30 April 1963."

It is clear, from this account, that Ziad al-Hariri was the true man behind the coup, along with a handful of junior officers, and that he rushed the movement forward so as not to find himself suddenly forced to travel to his own posting in Baghdad, since his own ambitions reached far beyond that post. He did achieve what he set out to achieve, but soon lost everything he had gained.

My own brother-in-law Abdel Moneim once told me something that confirms General al-Qatini's own account. He told me (he was, at the time, an officer in the army) that the three officers who entered the city of Damascus with their own forces were all Nasserists: Lieutenant Colonel Abdel Wahab Qatii' (from Idlib), Major Bassam Abdel Nour (from Maarrat al-Nu'man), and Major Ratib Kojan (from Hama), all three of them Nasserists. Lieutenant Colonel Qatii' arrested Colonel Najati Samra, commander of the anti-aircraft artillery division, and placed him in Mezzeh prison, and it was this that finally broke the secessionists' own resistance.

After that, the Baathists set about seizing the army for themselves, and, with it, the government itself. And so the whole question of union vanished into the labyrinth of history. God rest the soul of Umm Abdullah al-Saghir, who said to her own son, weeping over his own lost kingdom:

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Endnotes:

[1] P. 388.

[2] P. 20.

[3] Quoted from Dr. Adel Zaaboub, The Arab Charter, p. 39.

[4] In his own book The Bitter Experience, p. 90 and following. "Michel Aflaq accused him of being in contact with certain conspirators in Baghdad. They killed him at night, inside his own cell, and buried him in an unmarked grave." From Mr. Mahmoud al-Saadani's own book Countries That Fall and Countries That Rise, Dar al-Hilal Publications, 1993, p. 112.