Year 1963 - Part 4: Adel al-Hajj Murad's Ultimatum and Officers' Demand for a Homad-Bitar-Atassi Government

Sunday the 10th

News keeps pouring in from Iraq, all of it confirming the coup-makers' own firm grip on power, and confirming the execution of the fallen era's own senior figures.

Some were dragged through the streets, as is the custom among the people of Iraq, while others were caught hiding in a woman's own robe and killed on the spot where they were found.

Reports say the people turned on Qasim's own supporters, Communists above all, putting them to the sword, so much so that it was said ten thousand people were killed within two days.

There is no doubt that such conduct violates every code of ethics and law alike.

Had those in charge followed a more principled path, they would have referred every accused person to a proper court, to examine the charges against him and hold him to account for them.

But those who justify these acts say that Qasim's own regime had humiliated Iraqis, degraded them, and persecuted them, and that today the chance for vengeance had finally come, and they simply gave free rein to their own base instincts, especially since they feared no accountability or trial whatsoever.

It has become known that when Abdel Karim Qasim once referred Abdel Salam Aref to al-Mahdawi's own court, which sentenced him to death, the sentence was never actually carried out. Yet he then turned to the Communists to shore up his own regime, and they threw themselves into persecuting the nationalists, to the point where it was said they would kill a man and hang him from a tree trunk, then set about cutting his own body to pieces while chanting: "Arab nationalism, a kilo for a penny."

Today the telegram of congratulations the Syrian government sent to the Iraqi government was broadcast.

Lieutenant General Zahreddine notes that it was the army that demanded this telegram be sent, and that the President of the Republic strongly opposed the move. Zahreddine requested an urgent session of the Council of Ministers, and Foreign Minister As'ad Mahassen backed him, so the session was held within the hour, and the decision was made to send the telegram.

The unionist officers, however, asked the army commander to send a military delegation to Baghdad, to congratulate the new era's own leaders there. Lieutenant General Zahreddine approved this request, and a delegation of four senior officers was formed, two of whom I know personally, Brigadier General Nourallah al-Hajj Ibrahim and Colonel Adel al-Hajj Murad.

The delegation traveled to Qamishli, on its way to Baghdad, but the slap in the face of those who had sent it was not long in coming, for the Iraqi government excused itself from receiving them, "on the pretext that the bodies of the dead still filled the streets." The delegation was sent back to Damascus, empty-handed.

Four leaders of the Syrian Baath Party obtained permission to travel to Iraq to study the situation there: Messrs. Michel Aflaq, Salah al-Bitar, Shibli al-Aysami, and Mansour al-Atrash. We ourselves saw no reason to seek out such permission, preferring to wait and see what tomorrow would bring.

Besides, we have others doing this very work for us, and doing it better than we ourselves could, with watchful eyes and a mind that knows neither fatigue nor boredom, especially since we know not a single one of the new era's own men.

We decided to send a telegram of our own, though without any confidence the post office would even agree to send it. It cost us seventy Syrian pounds.

Here is its text:

To His Excellency President Abdel Salam Aref, President of the Iraqi Republic

Baghdad

The blessed 14 Ramadan revolution has restored to the glorious 14 July revolution the full splendor of its own dawning, the nobility of its own goals, and the loftiness of its own aims. It has put an end to tyranny, corrected deviation, avenged the noble heroes, and taught a lesson to anyone who stands against the people's own will, strays from its own goals, and exploits its own aspirations. It has set the Arab people in Iraq back on the true path, to march forward at the very forefront of the liberated Arab procession, toward realizing union, the hope of millions of Arabs from their own Gulf to their own Ocean.

The martyrs have given, across the years and the generations, the purest of their own blood in pursuit of union, the Arab vanguard above all others waging the harshest and most honorable of struggles to witness its own dawn break at last.

Great hopes now rest on your own wise leadership, to purify your own sacred, usurped land of the filth of Zionism, to liberate every Arab territory still weighed down under colonialism and occupation, and to turn the Arab aspirations embodied in union, liberation, socialism, and democracy into a living reality our own eternal Arab people may rejoice in.

Through the 14 July revolution, you put an end to collaboration and corruption, and through the 14 Ramadan revolution, you have swept away tyranny, ethnic chauvinism, regionalism, and the deviation of national goals away from their own lofty ideals toward petty ends and cheap glories.

May God Almighty realize, at the hands of your own blessed heroes, yourselves foremost and at the very vanguard among them, everything the faithful, sincere Arab masses long for: dignity, strength, and a bright and glorious future, under the shade of a sacred union that erases every artificial border and every false entity, restoring to the Arabs, since the days they formed a single nation within a single state, the glory, civilization, values, and immortality they once wrote across the very brow of time.

10 February 1963, 16 Ramadan 1382

Ali Bouzo

Abdel Samad al-Fatih

AbdulWahab Homad

Nihad al-Qasim

Ratib al-Husami

Some of our own brothers proposed that we push the people into the streets, to attack the state's own institutions, since the Syrian era, in their view, was already breathing its last, its own men already thinking of fleeing.

I objected strongly to this proposal, since I was convinced the era would collapse like a house of cards on its own, so why should we drag people into a path of violence, exposing them to the vengeance of a frightened, cornered regime? I reaffirmed to our own brothers, General Muhammad al-Jarrah above all, that we had to remain exactly as we began, unionists working without coordination or contact with the officers of the armed forces.

A Damascus newspaper fell into my hands, and I saw a photograph of the delegation traveling to Germany to negotiate a financial loan for building the Euphrates Dam.

It genuinely disturbed me to see the engineer Nur al-Din Kahhalah walking behind them like an outcast, this very man who had, only recently, been Vice President of the United Arab Republic, Abdel Nasser's own deputy during the union, and head of the Syrian Executive Council.

He wasted no time seeking a position within the Euphrates Dam project, and the secessionists granted him one, which he accepted, forgetting his own glory of only yesterday, and his own once-lofty standing.

The fault here is not his own, but that of whoever chose him for this role.

In the evening, I paid a visit to the Iraqi embassy, to congratulate its members on the national victory achieved in Baghdad, and handed the ambassador (or perhaps his own deputy) a copy of the telegram we had sent to President Abdel Salam Aref.

My own heart was warmed by the gracious reception these dear brothers gave me, and I felt certain God never lets the reward of a good deed go to waste. I wished the secession's own "fringe elements" could have seen how men of pure principle are honored.

The Iraqi government broadcast its own reply to the Syrian government's telegram, dripping with rebuke and reproach, and broadcast its reply to our own telegram several times as well. Here is its text:

Our dear brothers, Ali Bouzo, Abdel Samad al-Fatih, AbdulWahab Homad, Nihad al-Qasim, and Ratib al-Husami. We were delighted by your own fraternal telegram, and we affirm that the blessed 14 Ramadan revolution is a sincere expression of our commitment to realizing our own national goals, union, freedom, and socialism foremost among them.

May God guide everyone's steps toward realizing the great Arab homeland.

Baghdad, 2 February

Abdel Salam Muhammad Aref, President of the Iraqi Republic

We learned that the Syrian government hesitated to broadcast this Iraqi reply telegram, finding it unbecoming, given the veiled criticism and painful rebuke it carried against the Syrian secessionist entity. In the end, though, it decided broadcasting it was the wiser course, so that the Iraqi embassy in Damascus would not report back to its own government that the Syrian government had refused to broadcast the very telegram Iraq had sent it in reply to its own congratulations.

In the evening, a very special piece of news reached us through a friend of ours in Latakia, Colonel Said, who told us the following:

1. It is indeed true that the army forced the government to recognize Iraq's own government and send the telegram of congratulations. So what Mr. Rushdi al-Hamid told us was accurate, and reliable.

2. Military forces in combat dress have been moving toward Damascus since the start of this month. The first contingent, led by Brigadier General Adel al-Hajj Murad, commander of one of the brigades facing Israel, a unionist and one of my own former students in Aleppo, later spoke to me of this very matter, when we met after 8 March.

The second contingent came from the Homs forces.

They informed the government that they were demanding the implementation of the Homs conference's own resolutions, adopted after the 28 March 1962 coup. Wiser heads intervened, and the advance was halted, on condition their demands be met in full within a period no later than 15 February of this month, with a possible extension of the ultimatum until the 22nd, should the government demonstrate good faith, this being the final deadline.

We were told that the ultimatum Adel al-Hajj Murad issued was dated 3 February, and that should it not be met by its own deadline, "he would bring the palace down on everyone inside it."

This news summarized the "mutineers'" own demands as follows:

a. Dismissing the military command. A rumor circulated that Zahreddine had in fact submitted his own resignation, and when he later wrote his own memoirs, published in Beirut in 1968, he noted that "he submitted his resignation for the third time" (p. 407), and wrote "a farewell statement to the army."

b. Dismissing the government headed by Khaled al-Azm, ill and absent from work for days. Akram al-Hourani declared to the press today that "his own ministers have resigned, and will not return to power."

As for our friend Rashad Barmada, he had submitted his own resignation, as he himself told us, but returned from Aleppo "to rescue the deteriorating situation."

He may well have changed his mind about resigning, and it was said he would withdraw it. He did in fact withdraw it, and returned to his usual activity.

c. Forming a new government of unmistakably unionist direction, headed by one of three "Nasserist" leaders, AbdulWahab Homad, Salah al-Bitar, or Jamal al-Atassi, its ministers drawn from the unionists, on condition that its own ministerial statement contain an explicit pledge to establish a federal union with Egypt.

It was as though our own brothers had already "claimed their prize," for both Ali Bouzo and Abdel Samad whispered in my own ear that each wished "to be chosen Deputy Prime Minister."

As though the whole matter had already come down to dividing up the posts.

Dr. Abidin Hammadeh focused his own request on taking charge of the Ministry of Education.

The secessionists felt real alarm, sensing themselves surrounded, their own end now closer than their own jugular vein, prompting Mustafa Hamdoun and Abdel Ghani Qanout (both pillars of Akram al-Hourani's own party) to declare that the Iraqi coup was "the work of their own Iraqi Baathist brothers."

But the two of them forgot to mention that these were from Aflaq and al-Bitar's own unionist wing, not al-Hourani's own wing, which had severed every last tie to any talk of union at all, save for the "Greater Union," a mere fig leaf, incapable of covering any real shame.

Tuesday the 12th

Mr. Rashad Barmada, Minister of Education, asked to meet with us within the hour, and told us that most of the ministers had resigned, the socialists and Amin al-Nafouri, and the Muslim Brotherhood's own two ministers, Nabil al-Tawil and Omar Odeh al-Khatib, and that he himself had resigned as well. He explained his own resignation by saying "he would now devote his own life to bringing down Akram al-Hourani and his own group." He told us a decree would soon be issued naming As'ad al-Kourani (the current Minister of Justice) Deputy Prime Minister, to take up the Prime Minister's own duties for the duration of Khaled al-Azm's illness, who remained confined to his own home.

The intention was to bring in a number of "technocrat" ministers, and the names mentioned included Dr. Madani al-Khaimi, Mr. Rifaat Zurayk, and magistrate Adnan Mansour, himself "of Hourani's own leaning," currently serving as governor of Hama.

Given our own friendship, I advised Mr. Rashad to stand firm on his own resignation, to free himself from this filthy swamp. He could hardly be unaware that the security forces had come to behave like gangs, terrorizing people day and night, while the government itself lay paralyzed, "neither with the caravan nor with those calling it back," as the old saying goes. Let him look at himself, this brilliant minister, and ask himself what real power over government he actually held in his own hands.

We read today President Abdel Salam Aref's own reply to President Shukri al-Quwatli's telegram, which I reproduce here from the newspaper Al-Ra'i al-Aam, which published it when no other newspaper did, as follows:

Mr. Shukri al-Quwatli, Damascus

We were pleased by your own telegram, and we affirm to you, pledging this before God, our own devotion and faithfulness to what we set down together in beloved Damascus on 19 July 1958. There is no room for reaction or opportunism in the blessed 14 Ramadan revolution, which has rescued the will of the 14 July people. We hold firm hope that our own brother, the Arab people in Syria, will work hand in hand with us, to realize our own national aspirations of union, freedom, and socialism.

President of the Republic, Abdel Salam Aref

I would note the following about this reply telegram:

1. President al-Quwatli was not right to send a telegram of congratulations to Iraq's own revolutionaries, knowing full well President Aref's own ties to President Abdel Nasser. President al-Quwatli disowned union, supported the secession, and congratulated al-Kuzbari from his own residence in Geneva, later acting as a "mediator" to resolve certain problems for the secessionists.

Today he rushes to congratulate the Iraqi era, which put an end to Qasim's own regime, the trusted ally of Syria's own secessionist era. It is genuinely difficult to describe al-Quwatli's own telegram with any generous term at all.

2. The reply telegram carried no honorific title whatsoever. It has long been customary to address a President of the Republic, even a "former" one, with the title "His Excellency the President," when the exchange is between the heads of two states. President Aref contented himself with addressing him simply as Mr. Shukri al-Quwatli, without even using the word "President" at all.

3. It reminds him of the unionist pact Abdel Salam Aref concluded with President Abdel Nasser, when he came with a ministerial delegation to Damascus on 14 July 1958, following the overthrow of the Hashemite monarchy in Baghdad and Iraq's own withdrawal from the ill-fated Baghdad Pact. President al-Quwatli had been present at these bilateral talks, blessing them, and being blessed by them in turn, in his own capacity as "the First Arab Citizen." Yet he then, regrettably, removed himself from this noble unionist current, throwing his own lot in, for no reasonable cause, with the secession and its own camp.

4. Finally, the telegram states that the Iraqi President and his brothers "place their own hope in their brother, the Syrian people," to realize the national aspirations, and not in any former or current president, who now holds nothing of the presidency but its own name, emptied of all real meaning.

And on itself, Baraqish brought her own ruin.

It is in times of hardship that a man's true metal is revealed. As for those who swim with every current, they will win nothing but exactly what they deserve. I have no wish to say more, for this man had his own share of national struggle and patriotic stands. I will simply say: he had.