Days of the Union - The First Year - Part 9: The Customs Union Between the Two Regions and a Silk-Smuggling Case Involving Nasser's Brother

Sunday, 31 August

One state became a region, and a larger state became a region, and the two regions were united, despite every obstacle that colonialism and its agents had planted in their path. So long as the two had become a "union," they were bound, of necessity, to move together toward "full integration," and this is exactly what the Northern Region and the Southern Region did.

Among the boldest steps taken was Decision No. 131 of the President of the Republic, dated 31 August 1958, concerning certain customs exemptions.

Article 1 of this bold and blessed decision provided as follows:

"Animal and agricultural products, natural resources, and industrial products originating in either the Northern Region or the Southern Region shall be exempt from the customs duties imposed on foreign imports, in each of the two regions.

"Certain goods may be excluded from this exemption, by agreement between the Ministers of Economy and Trade of the two regions."

On the strength of this decision, Syrian products began entering Egypt, just as goods manufactured in Aleppo began entering Latakia, and goods manufactured in Alexandria began entering Damascus.

To prevent importers and exporters from manipulating the state's rights, the law set out a logical condition, given that goods would be leaving the borders of one region to enter the borders of the other, with Israel's existence forming an international barrier between them: the exporter of the goods had to obtain a document from an official body (chambers of commerce, for instance) certifying that the goods were indeed produced in the Northern or Southern Region.

Matters proceeded very well. Syria's textile industry flourished thanks to the spread of its consumption in Egypt, and Egyptian products likewise flourished, cutting across the sea to be unloaded on the shores of the port of Latakia.

The "suitcase trade" also flourished considerably.

Even so, some greedy merchants remained unsatisfied.

An ugly incident occurred, brought before me after I had taken up the reins of the Ministry of the Treasury. There is no harm in recounting it here, so that I need not return to it again.

A lawyer from the Southern Region visited me one day at my office in the Ministry of the Treasury. I had heard of his reputation but had never met him, the brilliant Mr. Hammada al-Nahel (whose surname, fittingly, means "the slender one," and he genuinely was slender). He spoke to me on a matter that astonished me: he was asking me to exercise my discretion to settle his clients' case.

I asked him to give me time to request the file from the Directorate General of Customs, and, to my regret, I found that his clients had been sentenced by the Syrian Customs Court to pay enormous sums, as compensation to the state for a hideous piece of fraud. They had been importing natural silk fabric from Italy, obtaining a certificate of origin from the Alexandria Chamber of Commerce falsely stating that it was cloth woven in Egyptian mills, and it was then entering Syria exempt from customs duties, duties that were originally quite high on this luxurious and expensive fabric. What astonished me, however, was that the Syrian merchant involved, whom I shall refer to as A.T., was carrying out this despicable trade in partnership with none other than a full brother of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, named El-Leithy Abdel Nasser. It came to me as a sudden shock, one I had not at all expected.

I asked myself: why do some small-minded people exploit such opportunities to reap forbidden profits, exposing their own great relative to disgrace and injury? Was El-Leithy not satisfied with this glory, this fragrant reputation, that his great son had built for him and for his family?

It is true that God, glory be to Him, says: "No bearer of burdens shall bear the burden of another," but wagging tongues move as though they had never heard of this sacred principle.

Under the provisions of the (Syrian) Customs Law, the Minister of Finance had the right to settle with those convicted for a single multiple of the amount of the judgment, waiving the remaining five, and the law even allowed him to waive the entire amount for special reasons.

I made my decision, between myself and my own conscience: to protect the President's reputation, I would insist on demanding the full amount of the judgment. It was the Customs Court's usual practice to set its fines high, so as to end up with a reasonable sum once a settlement was reached.

When Mr. al-Nahel returned, hesitant and embarrassed on account of his clients' identity, I informed him that his clients would have to pay the full amount.

He looked at me in astonishment, since the usual practice was to insist on only a single multiple.

I told him: this is my final decision. He argued his case well, with strong reasoning and full command of his profession.

I said to myself: truly, the poet who said the following was right:

You see the thin man and hold him in contempt,

yet beneath his garments lies a fearsome lion.

The strapping man delights you, so you put him to the test,

and the strapping man betrays your good opinion of him.

I directed the Finance Directorate in Damascus to collect the sum, and it placed a lien on the offenders' properties in Syria, then sold them off in accordance with the enforcement law.

I then forgot about the matter entirely.

Until, years later, I went to teach as a professor at the University of Rabat.

There were three Syrian professors of ours in the Faculty of Law.

A Syrian merchant, a friend of one of my two colleagues, invited us to dinner at his villa in Casablanca.

After we had finished eating and withdrawn to the salon for coffee, our host sat beside me and reminded me of this old affair. I had forgotten his name, but the name of the President's brother had stayed in my memory. My tongue was tied with astonishment when he told me that he had been El-Leithy's partner, and that he had left Damascus with only a small sum of money to his name, wandering aimlessly across God's vast earth.

I reproached him for inviting me, given this painful "precedent" between us, but he was the very picture of tact, and assured me that he had invited me to thank me, for God had steadied his steps and led him away from the path of forbidden gain and its profits, and that he had worked as an upright man ought to work, and God had not disappointed his hopes: He had smoothed his way to an arrangement with Italian and Japanese financiers, and he had set up, in Tangier, a factory employing four thousand male and female workers.

We visited this factory in his company, and he joked with me, saying: "This is the fruit of upright conduct, and of your own effort, no less."

How true it is that mountains alone never meet.

Monday, 1 September

The President issued, during this period, a number of fundamental laws, which I thought best to survey together and briefly, given how closely they are bound to one another.

Here is an outline of them:

The Economic Development Program

Law No. 133, dated 1 September 1958, was issued, setting out the ten-year economic program for the Syrian region, running from 1958 to 1968. This program provided for the establishment of a number of economic projects, the most notable of which were:

The Euphrates Basin

Aerial surveying began under the Union, along with geological and hydrological studies. Experts began drawing up the preliminary design for the storage dam and preparing the technical report. The final, approved design was scheduled to be completed by the end of 1961, with construction to begin in 1962-1963. The project was allocated 1,140 million lira.

The Rouj Project

This is a marsh located southwest of Idlib, covering an area of 5,000 hectares. Work on it began before the Union, and the digging of the main tunnel was completed before it. Under the Union, the drainage canals and irrigation networks were completed.

The Khabur Dam

Under the Union, aerial survey operations were carried out, and topographic plans were drawn up for the lands the project would irrigate.

Survey teams prepared detailed maps of the sites of the storage and diversion dams. The studies were expected to be completed by the end of 1961.

The Ghab-Ashaarna Project

The Upper Orontes Basin

The Sinn Project

The Yarmouk Project

The program also included extensive projects for transport and industrialization, for which 60 million lira was allocated, with total projected expenditure estimated at 2,694.4 million lira.

This was in 1958. Today's lira is worth less than 0.01 of the old lira (see details in the Official Gazette, issue 26, dated 4 September 1958).

The Law Regulating Agricultural Relations Between Landowners and Agricultural Workers, No. 134 of 1958, dated 4 September 1958.

This was published in the Official Gazette on 26 September 1958. This law was the work of a Syrian committee formed before the Union by the Chamber of Deputies, of which I was chairman. Among its members, I recall the late Dr. Ihsan al-Jokhdar, my colleague at the Faculty of Law in Paris and Secretary-General of the Ministry of Labor, and Mr. Musa Shahoud.

This is not the place for a detailed study of it, but I will extract a few passages that give an idea of the new outlook toward the peasants, aimed at safeguarding their rights and thereby freeing them from the pressure of the feudal landlords.

Article 37 prohibits binding a worker to an employment contract for the whole of his life, so that he does not become a serf of the Middle Ages, bought and sold along with the land.

Article 38 forbids employing a year-round agricultural worker before he has reached at least eighteen years of age.

Shepherds and workers in light tasks are exempted, provided they are not younger than twelve.

Article 47 forbids employing children, whether boys or girls, in agricultural work before they have completed their twelfth year.

This is the age by which a child ought to have obtained his primary school certificate.

Had this provision been properly applied, we would have done away with illiteracy, which today (1995) stands at 50 percent in Syria, and at 80 percent at the very least across the Arab world.

Article 80 provided for setting a minimum wage for the agricultural worker, "such as to secure for him the basic costs of living and to help him meet the demands of life."

I once spoke with a worker in the Alawite Mountains about what wage he received, and he confirmed that he earned only one hundred lira a year, ate the poorest food, and slept in a hut, standing before us as we spoke, without windows, in the most wretched condition.

This minimum wage is renewed by a committee in the seat of each province, chaired by a delegate of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor, and made up of a member representing the Ministry of Agriculture, a member representing the Ministry of Justice, a representative of the employers, elected by their own provincial syndicates, and a representative of the workers, likewise elected by their own provincial syndicates.

In this way, the setting of wages was no longer left to bargaining, and to the exploitation of the worker's poverty and his need for housing.

It should also be noted that, before the Union, a law had already been issued forbidding the eviction of peasants, a law Mr. Akram al-Hourani had pursued and fought hard to see enacted.

To prevent the landowner from holding power over the agricultural worker's livelihood, Article 160 forbade him from halting the cultivation of the land as a form of strike, while, in exchange for this restriction, the same article also forbade the agricultural workers from striking, so that they in turn could not exploit the landowner at harvest time.

Articles 198 and 199 set the employer's share of the season's produce, in exchange for providing the land:

If the land was irrigated, the owner's share was set at no more than 33 percent; if irrigated by flowing water, the owner's share was set at no more than 20 percent; and if the land was rain-fed, the owner's share was 20 percent.

Article 200 set the sharecropping gardener's share, in exchange for his work on irrigated land used for growing cotton, at no less than 25 percent.

As for the cultivation and tending of orchards set aside for fruit trees and vegetables, Article 201 set the sharecropping farmer's share at no less than 20 percent of the fruit trees' yield, and no less than 65 percent in the case of vegetables.

The cost of water always remained the employer's responsibility.

This law had been one of the dreams of the socialists, one the Union fulfilled for the peasants, in order to raise them to the level of free, materially self-sufficient citizens.

Thursday, 25 September 1958: Oversight of Private Schools

The President of the Republic issued Decision No. 160 of 1958, placing private schools under the oversight and inspection of the Ministry of Education, within the limits and restrictions set out in this law and the ministerial decisions issued to implement it.

I had previously held the Ministry of Education twice, once in 1951 and again in 1956, and we had exercised oversight over these schools then as well. This republican decision now made this right of the state explicit and official.

No one can dispute the soundness of this measure, nor that it was necessary, so as to guard against the drift of the young generation, whether to the right or the left, toward a particular party or sect, and to watch over the upbringing of pupils in a manner consistent with the highest national goals.

Saturday, 26 September 1958: The State of Emergency Law

The President of the Republic issued Decision-Law No. 162 of 1958, concerning the state of emergency, consisting of twenty articles.

This is one of those laws that is odious where the freedoms of individuals are concerned, but which is nonetheless necessary in difficult circumstances, for the preservation of the homeland's safety.

Yet, like medicine, it must never be taken in a dose greater than what is needed for the cure.