Year 1960 - Part 5: The Ministry of Supply Law and General Afif al-Bizri's Account of His Resignation

Saturday, 26 March

Our own country has a few bad habits in its own markets, namely bargaining and haggling.

In our own childhood, our families used to teach us that if we wanted to buy something at the market, we had to walk in from one end and go all the way to the other, asking whoever had what we wanted about its own price, paying attention to quality as well, and once we knew who sold the best goods at the cheapest price, we would go back to him.

We were expected to show real shrewdness, and, apart from foodstuffs, whose prices were more or less fixed and known, it was customary to offer the seller half the asking price to begin with, and then the back-and-forth would start, the seller coming down a piastre, we going up a piastre, until this "haggling" ended in an offer and an acceptance meeting in the middle, and the "bargain" was struck.

This "haggling" was most common of all in the fabric and clothing markets.

But there were shops belonging to merchants known for their own integrity, who held to a fixed, single price, so that their own customers would stand in "line" in front of them.

Over time, these unfortunate habits began to fade, though I do not think they have entirely disappeared even now.

I ran into this very custom in the United States myself.

I was buying some things at a shop in New York in 1959, and my wife hesitated over one item. The merchant took her hesitation for concern over the price, and lowered it for her by a tempting margin, then lowered it again by another margin.

We learned, from our conversation with him, that he was an Eastern Jew who had emigrated from somewhere near our own region, and that civilizational progress no longer allowed for this kind of "shrewd dealing."

For this reason, the more advanced countries have taken to fixing set prices on all goods, forbidding sellers from tampering with prices except during designated seasons, when they may obtain the state's own permission to lower prices for a week or more.

The Arab Republic decided to keep pace with this civilizational march, establishing a Ministry of Supply, by Republican Legislative Decree No. 122, dated 26 March 1960, defining its own tasks and powers, and, on this same day, the Pricing Law No. 123 was issued, granting the Minister of Supply and Domestic Trade the right to require the owners of public establishments serving their own patrons and guests "meals, food, or drinks" to post the prices of what they sold, or the cost of admission, and to require retail merchants and vendors to post the prices of what they offered for sale, and to require producers, importers, and shopkeepers to provide statements on the cost of producing or importing any essential good or item, and to submit samples of goods to the ministry.

Article 16 set out the method for the friendly, and, where necessary, compulsory, requisition of goods, items, and properties held by merchants, so that the Ministry of Supply could put them "to the purpose for which the requisition measure was taken," this on pain of nullity (as indicated in Article 12).

Article 22 forbade "any producer or trader, whether importer, distributor, broker, wholesaler, or retailer, from acting to influence prices or the market's own supply, whether by withholding goods, items, or tools of any kind from circulation, refusing to deal in them on the customary terms of their own trade or industry, or publishing forged or false news or announcements."

Article 23 forbade any merchant, producer, or importer from refusing to meet customers' own requests, unless these took an unusual form, or from closing his own shop for an illegitimate reason, if he dealt in food or other essential goods, or from concealing or smuggling goods and materials.

Articles 29 through 36 set out the penalties imposed on violators of this law's provisions.

It is worth noting that Article 44, Paragraph 2, allows supply-control officers to refer supply violations "in a state of emergency, partial or general mobilization, or a state of war" to military courts.

Because of abuses committed by some supply officials in their own dealings with merchants, Legislative Decree No. 2, dated 19 March 1990, was issued, allowing the martial-law governor, since we remain under martial law even now, to suspend the provisions of this paragraph, that is, to return jurisdiction over supply violations to the ordinary courts.

In every case, the courts are required to rule "on an urgent basis" on supply violations (Article 44, Paragraph 1).

I do not know why these civilized measures never achieved a reasonably real success. We often hear of irresponsible conduct by pricing officials acting in their own interest, exploiting the law's own severity to impose illegitimate levies under threat, referring anyone who fails to meet their own demands to military justice.

The weak purchasing power of state employees' own salaries may well play an active role in the worsening corruption among some of those legally empowered to draw up these "reports."

Tuesday, 22 March

Today, praise be to God, people's own faces are full of hope, for rain has fallen upon their faces and their eyeglasses, and the earth has grown wet, shedding the ugly, dusty gray garment it had worn since the start of winter, one this terrifying garment never once let a drop of rain dampen.

For months now, despair has hung on every face, a lump caught in every throat, and with these very drops, hearts have grown lighter. We are an agricultural country, and agriculture is the very backbone of our economic, political, and social life. On it rest the army's own guns, thanks to it universities are built, and from its own bounty people eat and drink.

And through trading it on the international market, we import the products of world civilization, cars, television and radio sets, medicines, clothing, and watches.

For this reason, the state's own concern for the peasant is a duty it owes both to this fine class of people and to the whole country.

Loyalty to one's own country calls for building dams, and preserving every drop of water within it, for the great majority of our own Arab world suffers from a shortage of water.

I once read a study, documented with figures, warning us that the wars to break out in our own region will be fought over control of water sources, not oil reserves, and that they are due to break out by the end of this century.

Wednesday the 23rd: Abolishing Interest on Drinking Water

A law was issued today exempting the water authorities of Aleppo, Hama, Homs, Latakia, and elsewhere from the interest charges weighing on them.

These interest charges had been crushing them and limiting their own activity.

This law was met with relief by the directors of these authorities. As I told the President in the session where it was approved, over the objection of some ministers, people in some of our cities pay for their water twice over, once for the water itself, and once again in interest.

The total interest owed by Aleppo's own authority came to two and a half million lira, an enormous sum, even for a public authority. With this law, the people of Aleppo would go on paying for their water, but without paying interest of this "usurious" character on top of it.

Thursday the 24th

My friend Dr. Abidin Hamada, a professor of history in the secondary schools, is one of those who loves me and whom I love in turn. Our friendship has remained "strong" despite his own habit of falling out with nearly everyone he knows.

I always felt he loved three people in this world: himself, Dr. Ezzat al-Nass, and me. (Or so, at least, people generally say of him.)

I had sent him, in the 1950s, as cultural attache to Switzerland, and issued a decision transferring him to my own office in Cairo, so that he could draw two salaries at once. He also traveled far and wide with the cultural delegation I sent to Prague, capital of Czechoslovakia, which later became the two states of Czechia and Slovakia, once they separated from one another.

He visited me this evening, and told me what he had heard from Lieutenant General Afif al-Bizri about his own resignation. The general told him the following:

"I was taken by surprise one day when a list of transfers among the officers of the First (Northern) Army arrived, without my own knowledge. I boarded a plane at once and flew to Cairo, and met with Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer, and told him: these transfers were issued without anyone's opinion being sought on them. The Field Marshal said: this falls within my own authority as Minister of Defense, and I have exercised my own rights. I asked him: does this action mean you no longer trust me? He said: not at all. I asked him: is the President aware of these transfers? He said: yes, and if you wish to see him, please do, he is expecting you.

Al-Bizri went on: the President received me graciously, and told me: yes, I approve of everything the Field Marshal did. I asked him: does this mean I am now expected to submit my own resignation? The President said: not at all. But if you do submit it, I will accept it at once."

Lieutenant General Afif never actually submitted his resignation, though he heard of it announced on the radio.

He told the man he was speaking with: I fled to Iraq, fearing they might assassinate me and then broadcast to the world that the killer was a Syrian nationalist.

There is no doubt he chose Iraq as his own refuge because the communists held the reins of power there at the time, and Afif himself stood accused of communism. But I heard him say, more than once, that he did not hold to it as a doctrine, being simply opposed to Western colonialism.

In the last years of his life, he took to reading books of Islamic mysticism, and wrote a book on "Jihad in Islam."

Sunday the 27th

Today is the first day of the blessed Eid al-Fitr. As is the Muslims' own custom every year, one country celebrates the feast while another is still fasting.

We celebrated, while Iraq did not, and Jordan celebrated, while Egypt did not. This same dismal state of affairs repeats itself at the end of every Ramadan.

Indeed, a group of people will celebrate the feast alongside whichever Muslim country happens to celebrate it first.

Were we to ask astronomers about sighting the new moon, they would tell us they can pinpoint the moment of its own birth to the very second, for hundreds of years into the future, without the slightest possibility of error.

For the heavenly bodies move through space according to natural laws God Himself set for them, laws that cannot be overturned by a single man's own testimony, merely because he swears he "saw the crescent."

For several years now, confirmation of Ramadan's start has come to us from Hama, whose own people still laugh over the story of the one-eyed man who came to bear witness before the judge, and stepped straight into the fire pit, so that the judge rebuked him, saying: shame on you, how can you claim to see the crescent moon, when you cannot even see the fire pit right in front of you?

Enlightened men of religion write of the need to be rid of this old tradition, relying instead on the observatories tracking the movements of the heavenly bodies, and on astronomical calculations.

And in this very year (1995), we found ourselves still fasting while countries to our right, our left, and our south were already celebrating the feast.

The "progressives" have tried to interpret God's own words:

"So whoever among you witnesses the month, let him fast it" [Quran 2:185],

as meaning that this "witnessing" need not be by the naked eye alone, but might equally be through an eye wearing glasses, or one looking through the lenses of astronomical observatories, and through astronomical calculation itself.

But the strict traditionalists reject any interpretation that takes the text beyond the naked eye alone.