Year 1963 - Part 2: The Failed 13 January Coup Attempt by Abdel Karim al-Nahlawi

Friday the 18th: The 13 January Coup Attempt

What we had heard at the start of this week has now been confirmed.

Abdel Karim al-Nahlawi and the coup officers Muhaib al-Hindi and Fayez al-Rifai did indeed return, and seized control of certain military units whose own commanders supported them. Al-Nahlawi sent us a messenger, asking to meet with us in secret, offering both Ratib al-Husami and myself a place in a ministry Maarouf al-Dawalibi would form. We did not attend the meeting, since the letter's own contents were plain enough from its title alone.

The coup they had planned to carry out on Sunday the 13th of this month failed, since the unionist units, forming the very strike forces they had counted on, refused to support them. They were therefore sent back out of the country, with no public announcement made of the coup attempt or its own suppression, since the era could not withstand shocks of this kind.

This is the third Damascene coup carried out by Damascene officers, and it too ended in resounding failure. How pitiable this nation is, sleeping soundly under the "protection" of so fractured an army.

It is certain that the forces working in the shadows, the very ones who had signaled their own support before abandoning them, know exactly what they are doing, for each time, they plan to back one faction against another, only to back a third faction, once the first has been destroyed, against the very faction that had just "triumphed," discharging known officers by the dozen in the process, until the army itself has fallen into a state of chronic hemorrhage, worn down by weakness and exhaustion.

Lieutenant General Zahreddine spoke at length about this coup and its failure in his own memoirs.[1]

Among what he wrote: "On the afternoon of 13/1/1963, the intelligence director informed me that a mutiny had broken out at the Qatana, al-Qaboun, and al-Kiswah camps alike. The mutineers, a small band of al-Nahlawi's own followers, had gone so far as to surround their own camps with tanks.

General Wadih Maq'abari, the air force commander, insisted on not deploying the air force. I met with Dr. al-Qudsi at his own home and briefed him on the situation.

We held a formal meeting, also attended by Prime Minister Khaled al-Azm and Foreign Minister As'ad Mahassen.

I addressed the President of the Republic, telling him: I hold you, sir, and the other civilian authorities present here, responsible for any possible armed clash that may occur because of al-Nahlawi and his comrades, and because of the internal security command's own failure, under Brigadier General Mati' al-Samman, to carry out its own duty.

I then held a meeting at the command.

I returned to the Republican Palace, and found al-Nahlawi and his group already there.

I met with the President, and asked him to work toward deporting these officers, or else bear responsibility himself for whatever might happen in the country."

After this, I returned to the command.

I picked up the telephone and contacted the mutineers, warning them they had to surrender before dawn broke, unconditionally, telling them that if they failed to surrender within the given time, I would crush them utterly.

The Lieutenant General closes his own long account, of the army's units rallying behind him and the mutineers' surrender at three in the morning on 14 January, by saying: "The movement of 13 January 1963 was a purely Damascene affair, a stab aimed at the very era of 28 September 1962 that the Damascenes themselves had brought about, and at the era of 28 March 1962 that the Damascenes themselves had likewise brought about. It was followed by a whole series of further stabs the Damascenes drove into their own throats."

Lieutenant General Zahreddine considers the coming 8 March coup to have effectively begun on 13 January itself.

Brigadier General al-Samman relates the story of this "coup" in his own memoirs,[2] saying he received news of al-Nahlawi and his own men's return while attending a lunch held at al-Dumayr, in honor of Zahreddine's own promotion to lieutenant general, and informed him of it, along with some of his fellow officers.

The President of the Republic summoned him by radio, and upon arriving, tasked him with going to the Qatana camps to see what was happening there.

On the road to Qatana, he saw a column of tanks and armored vehicles, their own weapons raised toward the sky, ready for action.

At the camp, he spoke with a number of junior officers, who told him "that conditions within the army had become unbearable under this weak command, run by Communist officers and other weak men, with matters going from bad to worse, ever since the loyal, honorable officers had been driven out."

It was a conversation like two deaf men talking past each other. In truth, the army's own conditions at that time were as wretched as they had ever been, without precedent.

He told the mutineers to leave the matter to the government, which had already exiled al-Nahlawi twice before, "and good riddance to him."

He spoke of "the President of the Republic weeping," addressing the officers at the palace, saying: "God ruin your homes, you soldiers, you're about to squander this country's independence with your own conduct." His tears poured down, and his own wailing rose in pain.

He recounts a quarrel that broke out between himself and the army commander, each demanding the other's own removal.

The following day, he received a call from the Prime Minister, "asking him to facilitate the departure of al-Nahlawi, al-Hindi, al-Rifai, and Omar," after they had been made to understand and accept the necessity of leaving the country. "He promised to do what was necessary, and they returned the way they had come, quietly."

What is strange is that these two bitter rivals, Zahreddine and al-Samman, should agree that the army's own condition had become unbearable, owing to its immersion in politics and its abandonment of its own true duties.

Among the signs of the era's own collapse on the civilian side was the hostile reception the people of Hauran gave Prime Minister Khaled al-Azm's own motorcade. The people attacked him, hurling curses and stones at him. The security forces defended him, and one civilian was killed, with seventeen wounded, in al-Sanamayn, while several more were killed in Daraa.

Officials' own statements reflected the very fit of hysteria that had seized them, plain in the sheer weight of their threats and warnings.

The government decided on revenge, dismissing a number of officials, among them Mrs. Thuraya al-Hafez, wife of the well-known unionist journalist Mr. Munir al-Rayyes.

In the midst of these events, Dr. Abidin Hammadeh visited the President of the Republic. It seems he advised him to give up power, to preserve his own dignity and his own national record, following the example of his friend Rushdi al-Kikhya, who had refused it outright, in full and in every detail. Abidin told me the President answered him: Rushdi al-Kikhya is a wealthy, unmarried man, with no need of a salary. "As for me, I have children, and no money to my name beyond my own salary."

This is an answer that closes off any avenue for reproach, since it reduces the highest office in the land to the level of a mere policeman or hired enforcer. Today as well, the Muslim Brotherhood's newspaper attacked the Communists and the socialists, naming Mr. Akram al-Hourani as responsible for the destruction the country has suffered, and published a document it claimed al-Hourani had once addressed to General Weygand (the French High Commissioner in Syria and Lebanon), inciting the French government against the men of the National Bloc, who had been leading the national struggle against France and its own armies to win national independence.

I will not reproduce the text of this document here, since I have no wish to dig too deeply into people's own pasts. But I confess I was genuinely astonished that Mr. al-Hourani would ever, even in his own distant past, stoop to so crude an act of incitement.

Saturday the 19th

The State Security Court, presided over by Judge Ahmad al-Rashed, issued its own rulings against those accused in the Aleppo events.

It sentenced Lieutenant Mohammed Ibrahim al-Ali to death, and sentenced some of his own comrades to hard labor. The execution papers were sent to President al-Qudsi, for his own opinion on the matter, since the President of the Republic holds the final word on whether to ratify a death sentence or not.

On a rare occasion when I met with President al-Qudsi, I advised him against ratifying the sentence against Officer Ibrahim al-Ali, since the army, of which he is himself the Commander-in-Chief, was a thoroughly politicized army, moving in whatever direction its own commanders, whoever happened to control it, dictated.

I reminded him of the coups that had already taken place, too numerous to count, and that his own era might not last much longer, at which point he might well find himself obliged "to answer for his own accounts."

Perhaps someone else had already offered him this same advice, for he never signed the execution decree. I believe I did him a service he may not have deserved, one that ended up saving his own neck when the events of 8 March 1963 caught him by surprise.

Naturally, I do not know Ibrahim al-Ali, nor do I know the officers killed in his own confrontation, but even as I condemn the taking of human life without just cause, I could not forget the unsettled, shaky state of affairs within the army's own ranks, and had no wish for this execution decree to become fresh fuel poured onto a fire already burning fiercely enough.

This is exactly where my own conviction comes from, that the armed forces must be kept apart from any party political activity whatsoever.

Many officers have tasted the bitterness of political involvement, killed, imprisoned, or discharged from service, after the country had spent millions upon millions training them for the decisive day with Israel.

Some of them chose instead to work in the dark cellars of party intrigue, abandoning their own national duty in the process.

Sunday the 20th: A Conversation Worth Noting

Dr. Abidin Hammadeh, the historian, told me what Dr. Izzat al-Nuss had told him, of the story of his own being tasked with forming the ministry.

He told him: "I was summoned to the General Staff headquarters, and walked between two rows of military police, lined up along the command's own steps, submachine guns in hand. The sight was hideous, reflecting the very tension gripping the hall within. As I came in through the main door, I saw Ma'mun al-Kuzbari (the Prime Minister) surrounded by a number of coup officers, one of whom was cursing him in the crudest terms, utterly devoid of decency, terms one would be ashamed to even repeat. Perhaps the most polite of them was: sign, you traitor, you pimp. He handed him a paper bearing the text of his own resignation, which he signed, utterly humiliated.

It was in this very atmosphere that I was tasked with forming the ministry, one already formed in advance. I confess that whenever we met in the Council of Ministers, an officer from the command was always present with us, handing us the decisions the command itself had already drawn up, our own role reduced to nothing more than signing them."

Dr. Izzat is a fine professor and a well-known sociologist. His own mistake was accepting a place in the ministry, thereby losing his own ability to withdraw from power. Had he truly known the reality of the warring factions within the army, he would certainly have kept himself far from this swamp.

Monday the 17th

I traveled to Aleppo, for the funeral of a brother of mine, older than myself, and carried out what tradition required of me.

I learned from my own friends of the government's own "reputation" among wide segments of Aleppo's own people, and of the entrenched disputes among its members and supporters.

I read a commentary signed "Zein" in the newspaper Al-Nasr, written by the lawyer Mr. Zuhair al-Shalaq under a pen name, as though trying to bolster the ministers' own collapsing morale amid the flood of rumors. Among what it said:

"Abdel Wahab al-Khatib (an intelligence officer during the union) will never again become the people's executioner, nor will AbdulWahab" (three dots, exactly like that) "become the head of an Abdel Nasser government in Syria, as some are spreading and hoping."

Strong rumors had been "nominating" me to form the first ministry (after a coup toppling the secession), rumors that "elevated my own standing" in speech while exposing me, in reality, to every manner of press attack.

What fueled these rumors was the sheer volume of talk about an imminent coup, and news of infighting among the government's own men.

Some even began sending me their own "fragrant, blessed greetings," perhaps hoping to secure their own reward, should I "come to form" the next ministry.

Wednesday, 6 February

Mr. Rushdi al-Hamid, a close friend of ours in outlook, and at the same time an old and close friend of Khaled al-Azm, had once served as governor of the Damascus countryside.

He told us today that a deep rift had opened between the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister, and that al-Azm was convinced Dr. al-Qudsi was conspiring with influential army officers to remove him from the premiership. Al-Azm did not keep this information to himself, but relayed it to the President directly, in a session between the two of them, threatening him "to publish every one of his own secrets."

The moment he returned home, he woke his own wife, Mrs. Layla, from her sleep, and told her he might be arrested that very night, and asked her to smuggle his own memoirs out of the country, to see them published there, since he wanted to expose everyone, broadcasting everything he knew about them, and was determined to bring this "corrupt" era crashing down.

She did exactly that, and now intends to travel to Egypt herself.

On the political stage, the partners in power have fallen out over how to steer the ship. The dispute is that the socialists, Akram al-Hourani foremost among them, believe the state's own repressive apparatus should be directed against the Nasserists, since they represent the true source of danger, while the Muslim Brotherhood disagrees, wanting instead to fight the Communists first, "for their own atheism and their own hatred of nationalism."

Mr. Rashad Barmada had submitted his own resignation from the government, following an ugly attack against him in the newspaper Al-Sham, but withdrew his resignation, treating us instead to a statement clearing himself of any charge of unionism, describing Abdel Nasser as "the Hulagu of the twentieth century," and declaring "that history will curse him."

In saying this, he draws closer to the secessionist officers, repaying, in kind, the favor President Abdel Nasser once did him, entrusting him, during the union, with the presidency of a major legal institution, "the Government Litigation Authority."

It has become known that some ministers have submitted their own resignations, and are standing firm on them.

Thursday the 7th

One truly despairs of the words of "reliable sources," those who "saw with their own eyes, and heard with their own ears." Hajj Qasim Yassin, a fellow founder of the People's Party and its own representative in the Latakia region, visited me today, and I was glad of this visit from "an old and familiar face," one whose company brings real comfort amid the atmosphere of rancor we live in.

He spoke, with no hedging or hinting, of his own brother, Sheikh Youssef Yassin, who had served as a minister at King Saud's own court, telling him that the Saudi king had paid Khaled al-Azm seven million pounds in 1954, to spend on his own election campaign.

In Hajj Qasim's own view, "King Saud is finished, and will never return to the throne again." What casts doubt on this story of the millions supposedly paid to Khaled al-Azm is that in 1954, the very year the first parliamentary elections were held after al-Shishakli's era fell, al-Azm was raising the red banner, calling for cooperation with the Soviet Union, so much so that he earned the nickname "the Red Millionaire."

Saudi Arabia could not, and still cannot, bear to hear so much as a mention of any leftist leaning at all, so how could it possibly have backed a man marching in Akram al-Hourani's own procession, cozying up to Khaled Bakdash and his fellow Communists?

Unless, of course, there is more behind this than meets the eye.

God Almighty spoke the truth when He said: "O you who have believed, if there comes to you a disobedient one with information, investigate, lest you harm a people out of ignorance and become, over what you have done, regretful." (Surat al-Hujurat, verse 6)

I cite this noble verse here only to caution against rushing to believe everything one hears, and I absolve Hajj Qasim entirely of the description of "disobedient one."

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Endnotes:

[1] Pp. 360 and following.

[2] P. 258 and following.