Days of the Union - The First Year - Part 10: The 1958 Agrarian Reform Law and the Redistribution of Syria's Farmland

Saturday the 27th: The Agrarian Reform Law, No. 161, dated 27 September 1958

This law has a long history in our country. It begins from the time the Ottoman Sultan began granting lands lying outside the towns to those who performed great services for him and for his state, thereby creating a class of landowners in Syria and the other regions of the Sultanate, who employed peasants to plow the land, tend it, and gather its harvest, presenting it at the end of the season as an easy "spoil of war" for the feudal owner. These lands were called "amiri" lands, and were divided by inheritance equally between daughters and sons, contrary to the religious rule that "for the male, what is equal to the share of two females" (Quran 4:11). Jurists justified allowing this form of inheritance on the grounds that the land itself belonged to the Sultan, and that it was the owner's right to distribute his own wealth as he wished among his children and others.

This rule is still applied among us to this day.

Ever since the country freed itself from the French yoke, Syrian intellectuals, who had devoted their struggle to fighting that yoke, came to detest the continuation of this exploitative arrangement. They saw in it a harm to the country's wealth, since the feudal landlord did not spend the sums that would have improved the land's condition and productivity, because he owned so much of it that, however it was used, even by the poorest traditional methods, it still filled his pockets with enough money to live in comfort and satisfy the excesses of the most dissolute among them. The peasant, meanwhile, was in the position of a "serf," a slave to the land, working with his family throughout his life in exchange for the bare morsel that kept him alive, as though they were mere tools for plowing, living far from every trapping of civilization, never attending schools, which were in any case rare in the country to begin with, with no one caring to develop their outdated customs, so that they grew up and lived as bondsmen, never enjoying the legitimate exercise of human rights.

This state of affairs was a loss to the national economy, and a cause of the state's backwardness and its successive defeats.

The evils of feudalism in certain regions had a direct effect in stirring the socialist current and bringing it out into the open. I recall that, from the time we were students in France in the 1940s and formed the Arab Society, one of the articles of its charter stated clearly the "necessity of distributing land to the peasants, for the sake of their liberation."

When we returned, we found a movement stirring in the country, the loudest voice among them being that of Mr. Akram al-Hourani and his brothers-in-arms in Hama.

The voice of the communists, led by Khalid Bakdash, likewise had some echo, though it remained faint, since they were seen by many as followers of Moscow. Communism was not accepted among us as a social doctrine, though the Soviet state enjoyed our respect, as a political counterweight to the West, and one that often stood by the Arab cause in the face of colonial arrogance.

Given my own humble origins and my legal and literary formation, I stood, necessarily, on the side of the workers and peasants, and called for them to receive their legitimate rights. My own position always lay between a greedy capitalism that is never sated and never satisfied, and a communism that embraces the principle of class struggle and raises the banner of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." This middle doctrine was the socialist doctrine.

Socialist doctrine had several schools of thought.

The school I embraced was "constitutional socialism."

When the 1949 elections were held for a constituent assembly to draft the first constitution of the independence era (the last Frenchman having left on 17 April 1946), some of the campaign slogans called for "fighting feudalism."

Fierce clashes broke out between the wing that called for abolishing feudalism at a single stroke, through a provision written into the constitution, and those who wished to leave things as they were, under the banner of "vested rights."

The matter ended in a general agreement, set down in Article 22 of the 1950 constitution, which read:

"In order to achieve the proper cultivation of the nation's land and to establish just social relations among citizens, special legislation shall be enacted, based on the following principles:

"The land must be cultivated, and if neglected for a period set by law, the right of disposal over it shall lapse.

"A law shall set a maximum limit on the holding and cultivation of land, according to region, without retroactive effect.

"A law shall be enacted guaranteeing the protection of the peasant and the raising of his standard of living."

Article 26 was likewise established to safeguard workers' rights, requiring that they be given a wage proportionate to the quantity and quality of their work, setting their weekly working hours, granting them paid weekly and annual rest days, and securing financial provisions for them or their families in cases of dismissal, illness, disability, and work-related emergencies. It also provided that "the organization of trade unions is free, within the limits of the law."

I can attest that the late Rushdi al-Kikhya played an essential role in making these provisions "go down easily" for those who feared being singed by their heat.

The feudal landlords accepted them, since they preserved their enjoyment of these riches and privileges for the whole of their own lives, and after them, the deluge. But their acceptance of them was very much a case of "your brother is compelled, not a hero."

This spared the country a great deal of strife, especially since barely four years had passed since the departure of the French, during which Israel had come into being, and no one could do anything but call for closing ranks and setting aside internal division, if the homeland was to stand strong in the face of the looming external danger.

We in the People's Party (which we formed in 1948, and which was dissolved along with the other parties in 1958) followed a moderate socialist course, that is, an evolutionary one. We did not accept leaving "things as they were," since that arrangement ran counter to the interest of the country and its people, but neither did we call for changing it through revolution, only through following the development of general thought, drawing inspiration from it, and enacting laws that gave this development permanent form.

I delivered a public lecture in Aleppo, on 11 March 1955, running to 54 pages, which I titled "Constitutional Socialism" (marked as "Published by the People's Party"), in which I set out my own views, and the party's, on the question of social development.

I said in it: "The method I call for in achieving the socialist idea is the application of the constitution, not the path of revolution and class struggle. That is to say, I call for a quiet socialism, brought about within the framework of legislation, inspired and guided by the constitution. We do not, then, believe in sudden leaps. The military coups in Syria have themselves proven their inability to apply socialist principles all at once, despite our being persuaded that they seek not social justice, but control over government."

From this standpoint, I called for "encouraging national capital," protecting it, regulating prices, safeguarding state property, and having the state carry out the major projects.

I expressed my view on a grave matter whose echo, at that time, could be heard across the country: nationalization. I said of it:

"We are among those who favor a policy of nationalization, as a means for the state to take control of the major public utilities, since it is a path toward achieving a quiet socialism."

I closed the lecture by saying "that we must not despair or lose hope of establishing socialism in Syria, for socialism, in its higher stages, presupposes the existence of a fully developed, exploitative, investing capitalism, and such capitalism is still only in its beginnings among us. I do not speak here of feudalism, for what exists is not feudalism in its old sense, but simply the theft of state property, seized without right or justification, depriving the toiling peasants of it, when they are the ones with the truest and prior claim to it."

And so, "our socialism serves the interest of the workers and the landowners themselves, and the interest of society as a whole. The philosophers of socialism resented a society built solely on the foundation of private property, since it is a society in which wealth and misery, gluttony and hunger, meet side by side, a society that no reasonable person has ever accepted, from the prophets of the Children of Israel to Saint-Simon to Proudhon to Bernard Shaw, and from Plato to Rousseau and Kant and the English Fabians."

So that the peasants would not remain exposed to exploitation and extortion, the Syrian Chamber of Deputies issued a law in early March 1957, consisting of a single article, reading:

"Pending the enactment of legislation regulating the relationship between peasants and landowners, in accordance with the provisions of Article 28 of the constitution, the eviction of peasants from their homes is prohibited."

This law was received with overwhelming joy by the peasants, since it secured them in their homes and prevented their displacement.

In order to implement Article 22 of the constitution referred to above, a parliamentary committee was formed, which drew up a draft law on agricultural relations.

This draft later became the law discussed a little earlier.

When we studied the conditions of the peasants in the countryside, we found astonishing things.

It became clear to us that small holdings (before the Union), meaning holdings not exceeding ten hectares each, amounted to 1,097,491 hectares, equivalent to 13.8 percent of the total agricultural land, that medium holdings, ranging from 10 to 20 hectares each, amounted to 2,892,414 hectares, and that large holdings, exceeding these areas, amounted to 2,348,783 hectares.

Likewise, influential landowners had seized most of the state's own lands, amounting to 1,593,000 hectares.

On this basis, small peasants controlled only about 13 percent of the total agricultural land, while large landowners controlled more than 60 percent.

This is a state of affairs no one could accept.

One researcher notes[1] that the area of agricultural land owned by the peasants actually working the land does not exceed 9 percent (nine percent) of the total lands of the Euphrates and the Jazira region, amounting to one million four hundred thousand hectares, with the remainder owned by the great feudal landlords.

This same researcher states that the proportion of non-Arab settlers (Assyrians and Kurds) in the Jazira province in particular reaches about 60 percent of its total population.

There were, then, lands in the homeland that were not being properly cultivated, and it was in everyone's interest that the hand of agrarian reform reach them, distributing whatever exceeded the owner's own capacity to cultivate among the peasants who had the truer claim to it, for their own good and the good of the country.

It was on this basis that the draft agrarian reform law was drawn up just days before the Union came about, then amended at the outset of the Union's state, before making its way to Cairo for ratification.

I recall that Abdel Nasser amended in it only the phrase "sons of the Syrian region," writing it in his own hand, in red ink, on the draft, so as to bar Egyptian peasants from coming to Syria, lest the Union's enemies exploit an influx of Egyptians into the Syrian countryside. I do not know whether this amendment was right or not.

I recall very well that President Shukri al-Quwatli used to call for "resettling a million Egyptian peasants" in the Jazira, in order to improve and increase national production and to adjust the demographic balance between its Arab and non-Arab inhabitants. I heard him express this wish repeatedly.[2]

President Abdel Nasser approved the draft, and issued it as Decision-Law No. 161, dated 27 September 1958, published in the Official Gazette that same day, thereby fulfilling the hopes of those who had called for the peasant's liberation and the spread of social justice among the citizens.

This law was subsequently followed by 8 amendments up to 1961, then 11 further amendments after that date.

I shall now take a brief look at the law as it was issued on 27 September 1958, leaving the tracking of its amendments and the development of the agrarian reform question to specialists who wish to study it further.

The law set, in its first article, a maximum limit on agricultural ownership, providing that "no person may own:

1. More than 80 hectares of irrigated land.

2. Or more than 300 hectares of rain-fed land.

When the state took possession of the area exceeding this maximum, the owner retained the right to choose which portion of each type of land he wished to keep.

It is regrettable that the Minister of Agrarian Reform (Mustafa Hamdoun) refused to grant some landowners this right of choice. In one instance, a lady of the al-Jabiri family told me that she had chosen the plot of land where her father's grave was located, in order to preserve that grave, but the Minister refused to grant her this right. She complained of the injustice done to her, and her complaint reached Abdel Nasser. When complaints of this kind grew numerous, the President dispatched a committee, headed by Sayed Marei, the central Minister of Agrarian Reform, of which I was one of the members, and we traveled to the provinces and heard the complaints. Hamdoun grew deeply frustrated with this committee, regarding it as directed against him, and it was perhaps one of the factors behind the withdrawal of confidence in him, which ended with his resignation and that of his colleagues from the government.

Irrigated land was defined as land watered by ease of access (without effort) or by lifting (from a well, for instance, by means of a fuel-powered motor), whether the water lifted came from groundwater or from springs and rivers.

In addition to this amount of ownership, the law allowed the owner to cede to each wife (if he had more than one) and to each of his children an area of his land (deducted from the area exceeding the permitted maximum), as follows:

10 hectares of irrigated land as a maximum.

And 40 hectares of rain-fed land.

Or the equivalent proportion of the two combined.

For fear that large holdings would remain within the family's grasp, something the law took care to prevent, Article 2 set a limit on the total area that could be ceded to wives and children, at no more than:

40 hectares of irrigated land or 160 hectares of rain-fed land, or the equivalent proportion of the two combined.

Article 5 provided that the state would take possession of the excess over the maximum within five years, with the owner retaining the crops standing on the land and the fruit of its trees until the end of the agricultural year in which possession was taken.

Article 6 provided that the following would not be recognized:

1. Transfers of ownership by the owner, nor mortgages, made before this law took effect, unless their date was established by an official registration, for fear that an owner might transfer ownership to persons acting under his own direction.

2. Transfers of ownership by the owner to his spouses, his descendants, the spouses of his descendants, or the spouses of their descendants, however far removed, where such transfers did not have an established date prior to 1 January 1950, without prejudice, however, to the rights of third parties who had acquired rights from the persons named above through transfers with an established date, registered officially, before this law took effect (that is, before 27 September 1958).

This provision was inserted into the committee's original draft, since the committee had held to the text of the 1950 constitution, which forbade retroactive effect. Once the Union came about, the provisional constitution was issued, which contained no such prohibition on retroactivity, and so this provision was added.

Some landowners suffered injustice as a result of this provision.

In Maarrat al-Numan, a major landowner had ceded one of his villages to his son, who supported a large family, before 1950. The son worked the land until it became productive and fruitful, only to have it taken from him.

In Aleppo, brothers of a well-known family had agreed to register everything they acquired in land, whether by inheritance or purchase, in their mother's name, believing this registration would equally preserve the rights of the elder and younger among them. When the Agrarian Reform Law was issued, the mother was considered the true owner, and the law was applied to her without her true situation being taken into account. But the law sought to cut off the path to manipulation, and some people were bound to suffer harm from it as a result.

I did not follow the amendments closely enough to know whether these flaws were later corrected or not. Law, being a work of human hands and not divine revelation delivered by angels, remains forever exposed to error, and for this reason it was amended some nineteen times, to remove such injustices.

The same provisions applied in the event of the owner's death after this law took effect, meaning that if a landowner died, its provisions applied to his inheritance and his will. The state would first collect the estate tax, then take the area exceeding the maximum permitted ownership, with what remained of the legally permitted area divided among the heirs and legatees according to the provisions of the Personal Status Law governing inheritance and bequests.

To encourage joint-stock companies, cooperative societies, industrial companies (already existing before this law took effect), scientific agricultural societies, and charitable societies, and to safeguard the rights of creditors, the law allowed them to own areas of land exceeding the stated maximum.

The law preserved, for anyone from whom the state took possession of excess land, the right to compensation, calculated on the basis of ten times the average rental value of the land for one agricultural cycle, not exceeding three years, or the owner's share of it.

This compensation was to be determined by specialized committees (Article 8).

The landowner had the right to object to the amount of compensation.

The period for paying this compensation was set at forty years.

Article 10 provided that this compensation would be paid in state bonds bearing interest at a rate of 1.50 percent. These bonds could be transferred to anyone holding the nationality of the United Arab Republic.

The bondholder could use these bonds to pay taxes owed on agricultural land, as well as the estate tax.

It so happened that the state took possession of the village of Qastoun, owned by Wahbi al-Hariri. Al-Hariri owed the state a debt of about three million lira, which he had borrowed from the public treasury by a decision of Husni al-Za'im. He requested to pay off this debt using the very bonds he had been given for his land. I supported this request in the Council of Ministers and in the board of the Agrarian Reform Authority, since it was a legitimate claim, but the majority rejected it.

Article 13 provided for the distribution of expropriated land among the peasants of each village, such that no individual's holding would exceed 8 hectares of irrigated land or 30 hectares of rain-fed land.

As I noted a little earlier, the peasant benefiting from this distribution had to be a native of the Syrian region, his occupation had to be agriculture, or he had to hold an agricultural certificate, and he had to have reached the age of majority.

The peasant received the land against its price, which he paid, under the provisions of Article 14, over forty years, along with interest at a rate of 1.50 percent and a one-time payment of 10 percent of the price, to cover the costs of expropriation.

The law provided for the establishment of a public institution with legal personality and financial and administrative independence, called the "Agrarian Reform Authority," with its own board of directors and director general, and it also provided for the creation of a special fund for it.

Article 17 entrusted the board of directors with "the interpretations necessary for the provisions of this law," subject to ratification by decisions of the President of the Republic.

These decisions were considered binding legislative interpretations. The law also required the peasants of each village to form an agricultural cooperative society, whose function would be to obtain advances, to supply farmers with what they needed to cultivate the land, to sell the harvest, and to carry out other tasks that would allow the society to serve its members' interests, so that they would have no need of usurers or greedy middlemen.

Following this law, a decision was issued by the President of the Republic, No. 1181 of 1958, establishing the Agrarian Reform Authority.

Its board of directors was formed under the chairmanship of the Minister of Agrarian Reform, made up of seven ministers, one of them the Minister of the Treasury. I attended this board's sessions in that capacity.

We issued a series of interpretations, through which we eased conditions for the landowners subject to expropriation.

There is no doubt that the issuance of the Agrarian Reform Law was a fundamental consecration of socialist doctrine, a liberation for the peasant, and a blessing for the homeland. I have limited myself here to some of its features, since a precise study of it would require far more attention, especially given the many amendments that later followed it.[3]

The secessionists later tampered with it, but were forced to return to its original provisions.

It was then amended under Baath Party rule, once power fell to them after the coup of 1963.

Thursday, 2 October

A republican decision was issued today, No. 1221, transferring the Ministry of the Treasury's powers over the supervision of banks, the oversight of insurance bodies, and the regulation of securities sales, to the Ministry of National Economy in the Egyptian region, later extending this to the Syrian region as well.

This is a strange decision, since the Ministry of Finance (the Treasury) had always supervised these sectors, which lie at the very heart of its financial powers.

It is certain that the President issued this decision only in deference to the wishes of Dr. Abdel Moneim El-Kaissouni, who had become Minister of Economy, and who wished to have the banks, the Central Bank especially, placed under his own supervision.

We all know that El-Kaissouni held a special place in the President's regard, owing to his long career at the World Bank in Washington and the breadth of his connections with its officials, his American president, Mr. Black, especially.

---

Endnotes:

[1] Awni Farsakh, Unity Put to the Test, Dar al-Masira, Beirut, 1980, p. 231.

[2] Mahmoud Riad recorded this same view, as he heard it from President al-Quwatli (his memoirs, p. 239).

[3] Many have written on agrarian reform; I limit myself here to mentioning a few of them: Mr. Abdul Hadi Abbas, in his book The Land and Agrarian Reform in Syria, himself originally a Baathist known for his moderation and fairness; Badr al-Din al-Siyasi, The Transitional Period in Syria, the Era of the Union 1958-1961, Beirut, 1975; Dr. Abdullah Hanna, an article in Historical Studies, a special issue on agricultural relations, December 1992.