Year 1960 - Part 9: Rushdi al-Kikhya's Reconciliation Visit to Abdul Hamid al-Sarraj

Monday the 6th

Rushdi al-Kikhya visited me today, together with Dr. Rizkallah al-Antaki, our own colleague from the party and from the Faculty of Law, to offer their own greetings for Eid al-Adha.

I was delighted at their visit, for I know Rushdi's own fine character and his sincere belief in his own nation's unity.

Al-Antaki invited us to lunch at the "Abu Zaid" restaurant in Bloudan, and, unable to excuse myself given my own state of health, I forced myself to go along with them. Mr. Rashad Barmada was with us as well.

Chance led us past the palace being built by Mr. Sabri al-Asali, dismissed from the deputy presidency of the Republic over his own involvement in foreign dealings, reported by Radio Baghdad from the records of the Mahdawi court.

The palace occupies a place of real distinction, among the palaces of the money barons, the Saudi Hassan al-Charbatly and the Syrian Abdul Hamid Diab, one of the owners of the notoriously disreputable "Five-Man Company."

While we were touring the palace, its own owner arrived.

Our presence caught him by surprise, but he greeted us warmly all the same, and, so that no doubt might creep into our own minds over the sources financing the palace, he said he had collected a debt owed him by a client, in the amount of 64,000 lira, and had recovered 44,000 of it from Deputy Nawfal Elias (of his own former National Party), the price of a plot of land he had persuaded him to buy for him in Lebanon, only for the man to betray him and "sit on" the money, until he pursued him and finally secured this sum.

He had also borrowed a hundred thousand lira from friends and from the banks.

He invited us in for coffee at his own home, where we sat and talked of everything except politics, perhaps because of my own presence as a member of the government. But politics addicts whoever takes it up, working on him just as a drug works on an addict.

And so we returned to politics.

Al-Kikhya asked his friend al-Asali: have you all not thought of drawing up a memorandum along the lines of the Homs Conference memorandum? He was referring to the memorandum the political parties had once submitted to Adib al-Shishakli, to correct the course of government.

It would be a fine thing, he said, if such a memorandum were submitted now, since it might open a general dialogue with President Abdel Nasser, and lead to a reassessment of the situation, in pursuit of a more cohesive front, provided it was done within the framework of the Union.

I am convinced that Rushdi was hinting at exactly this, since he moves only within the framework of the Union, a position al-Hourani's own circle no longer accepts, having taken to publicly disowning any role of their own in bringing it about.

We knew al-Asali well, and knew him to be an exceptionally soft-natured man. He found something to say about the Egyptians' own "seizure" of good Syrian cotton in exchange for inferior Egyptian cotton.

In this, he was referring to a specific incident, around which a great deal of dark rumor had been spread.

When Khalil al-Kallas was Minister of Economy, he issued a decision banning the import of certain kinds of iron into Syria, and malicious voices immediately interpreted this ban as an "Egyptian directive," meant to allow the Southern Region to sell us its own inferior iron, then import fine grades of its own, paying handsome customs duties on it, only to later find some way to sell this very imported good back to us, or to others, reaping profits at our own expense. Sabri al-Asali took to spreading this very story.

He repeated it to us again, right there in his own home.

I explained the matter to him as it truly stood, as agreed between myself (Minister of the Treasury), Khalil al-Kallas (Minister of Economy, who had actually issued the decision), and El-Kaissouni (central Minister of Economy and the Treasury).

In short, this arrangement called for the Southern Region to hand over free quantities of fine Egyptian iron, given to us at no cost, which we would sell in our own local markets, collecting its price and spending it on our own regional needs, as a form of aid from the Southern Region, which itself suffered from a shortage of cash liquidity in the first place.

The "former vice president" felt a real embarrassment at this, for he had, in fact, been vice president himself, and the discussion and approval of these very matters had taken place with his own full knowledge and in his own presence, in the Council of Ministers.

All he could say, to cool his own embarrassment, was: I heard this story from the people, and it falls to you to explain these facts to the public, so that they do not fall victim to propaganda that misleads them.

He was right in this, for twelve radio stations were working against the Union, not to mention Saudi money, the intrigues of the Baghdad Pact, and the conspiracies of the King of Jordan, who had begun to feel the noose tightening ever more closely around his own neck.

We bid him farewell, two lines of the blind poet of Maarra running through my mind:

"They call him a jurist, though this jurist is but a sham, a mere ally of endless disputation, and disputation itself is a wound.

They bring you every manner of absurdity, yet all they seek, in their own vanity, is to be called men of learning."

Had the President, then, done him any injustice, in shielding him from friends who had fought so hard to see him brought before the courts? And once again, may God have mercy on this same blind poet, who said:

"There is not one among you who has ever repaid a kindness,

nor one among you ever grateful for a favor received."

Wednesday the 8th

We returned to work after a break that brought no real rest at all, given the sheer number of visitors and petitioners. I was struck by a decision and a law both bearing the date of the second day of Eid al-Adha.

Does the President work through the feast itself, then, approving decisions and laws even on holiday?

The decision concerned the formation of the preparatory committee for the National Union's general congress, No. 7, dated 5 June, reading as follows:

The preparatory committee for the general congress of the United Arab Republic's National Union shall be made up of:

Kamal El-Din Hussein

Ali Sabri

Kamal El-Din Rifaat

Abdul Hamid al-Sarraj

Amjad al-Tarabulsi

President Abdel Nasser then, on the 9th of this month, summoned the members of the National Union, once elected.

The congress approved the formation of the National Assembly, made up of 400 members from the Egyptian National Assembly and 200 from the Syrian Chamber of Deputies, chosen by the President.

This figure meant taking the great majority of the former members, with the rest drawn from the new members of the National Union. I learned that the President had delegated to Abdul Hamid al-Sarraj the task of choosing the Syrian deputies, and I took the occasion to discuss with him the nomination of a number of men I knew personally.

The man was already familiar with them.

I recommended to him Messrs. Rafiq Bishour, Rateb al-Hasami, Abdul Hamid Duweidri, Hassan Abdel Karim, Shukri al-Shihabi, and Jamil Khalalo, all former deputies, and nominated Mr. Ali al-Hassan (of Aleppo) and Ibrahim Abu Haidar, a former member of the Court of Cassation. He approved them all. I confess they are my own friends, but they are known, too, for their own good reputation.

The decision naming them was issued, and they were summoned to a meeting held at the National Assembly's headquarters in Cairo, where they unanimously elected Anwar Sadat as speaker of the assembly.

As for the law, it was the Narcotics Law.

It was issued as No. 182, dated 5 June 1960, and published in the Official Gazette of the United Arab Republic on 13 June. On this subject, as the French proverb says, I have a story of my own to tell.

This is the trade of organized crime, moral collapse, the corruption of the young, the spread of disease, the sowing of the seeds of ruin, and open defiance of the law.

Its victims are wretched, miserable souls, capable of doing what no one else would do, even to the point of murder, just to secure their own share of the drug.

Theft is the least of their sins, and they begin by robbing their own homes and those of their own relatives, selling off whatever they can for a pittance, to buy the deadly poison with it.

I grieve for that young woman, from a fine, upstanding family, whom a scoundrel "led astray," making her the sweetest of promises. She responded, only to end up a victim of consumption herself, becoming an addict, and then a victim of blackmail, forced by her own tempter into "dealing" cocaine among her own fellow university students.

Until she finally fell into the hands of justice, a wretched victim.

God granted her an understanding judge, one of our own students from Damascus University, working in the state of Kuwait, where she had fallen. He trusted my own personal recommendation for her and her family, and pulled her back from behind bars. She then vanished, with her own mother and relatives, across the Atlantic, to be lost forever in some unknown world. I have heard she has slowly begun climbing back up its own ladder, in honest repentance.

I was struck by a passage written by Sydney Smith, which I quoted in one of my own works,[1] on the subject of drug addiction, which reads:

"The use of narcotics generally leads to addiction, at which point despair and misery engulf the addict's own life and that of his family, exposed to the gravest of dangers, and the addict himself falls prey to psychological anxiety, physical wasting, and mental disturbance.

Statistics show that a large proportion of addicts suffer from insanity or other mental afflictions, and that some of them are driven to suicide under the weight of their own despair and shattered nerves. It has been established that narcotics are among the chief causes of many kinds of crime, including theft, violence, and moral offenses."

Narcotics have troubled the international community deeply, leading to several conventions aimed at mutual cooperation in combating them. The most recent of these is the convention known as the "Single Convention," concluded in New York on 30 March 1961, entering into force on 13 October 1964.

Syria is considered a country of export and transit for certain kinds of narcotics, hashish and opium especially, though all the evidence suggests that domestic consumption within it has never reached the level of a general epidemic.

This Narcotics Law provided severe penalties for smugglers, reaching, in certain cases, the death penalty.

Even so, what one observes, both here and abroad, especially in the United States and, now, in Russia, is that drug smuggling is worsening at an alarming rate.

Both great and small nations are working to combat it.

But the affliction is a grave one, and the best protection against it remains parents watching over their own children, arming them with awareness, faith, and the wisdom to choose their own companions well.

I recall once asking a smuggler, brought to my office by the Syrian Customs Directorate, whether he did not fear falling into the "trap," forced to pay enormous fines.

He answered me with complete candor and shamelessness, saying:

If even one shipment gets through safely for every nine that are confiscated, I still come out ahead.

Naturally, they take their own precautions, choosing intermediaries through other intermediaries, none of whom know one another. For this reason, those thrown into prison are usually wretched minor players, and the big names are rarely ever caught.

Smugglers, too, have often maintained close ties with certain anti-narcotics officials, ties that bring them handsome sums of money, at the expense of the state's own honor and the people's own health.

The Narcotics Law under discussion here has since been repealed, replaced by a new law, No. 2, dated 12 April 1993.

Article 93 of this new law provides for the death penalty:

"For anyone who smuggles narcotic substances, manufactures them, cultivates any of the plants listed in Schedule No. 4, smuggles these plants at any stage of their own growth, or smuggles their seeds."

As a further measure of severity, this text bars granting mitigating circumstances to an offender in the case of repeat offense, or where the crime is committed by officials tasked with combating narcotics, or where a minor is used, or where the offender takes part in an international gang, and so on.

Likewise, the death penalty is imposed on anyone committing these crimes in educational institutions, places of worship, military camps, or prisons.

The law allows the court, on its own initiative, to suspend the sentence of a mere user and place him in a clinic for treatment, and likewise allows the user himself to come forward to an official authority for treatment voluntarily, in which case no public prosecution is brought against him (Article 43, Paragraph F).

The final paragraph of Article 37 of the 1960 law had already embraced this same humane solution, the lawmaker proceeding from the view that this "user" is a sick man in need of treatment, rather than a criminal in need of punishment.

Friday the 10th: Al-Kikhya Visits al-Sarraj

Abdul Hamid al-Sarraj despises Rushdi al-Kikhya, and Rushdi al-Kikhya holds the very same hatred for Abdul Hamid al-Sarraj. I considered then, and still consider now, Rushdi al-Kikhya the most upright politician in Syria. He withdrew from all political activity from the very session of the Chamber of Deputies in which we voted to approve the Union, a session he attended specifically to cast his own vote.

He had already submitted his own resignation from membership in that very chamber.

I took it upon myself to try to bring the two men together, and asked al-Kikhya whether he would be willing to visit al-Sarraj at his own home, rather than his office, and he expressed his own gratitude were such a visit to take place.

When I asked al-Sarraj to receive us at his own home, he agreed, his eyes fixed on the ground as he did.

We visited him, and al-Kikhya spoke at length of the slanders fabricated against him, and of his own retreat into private life at home. He criticized certain conduct by security officials, which angered al-Sarraj somewhat, but when he spoke of engaging in no political activity at all, neither he nor any of his own former party colleagues, al-Sarraj grew visibly at ease.

Al-Kikhya took care to affirm that the Union was a national necessity beyond all dispensing with, a trust resting on all our shoulders, and that anyone seeking to harm it was a traitor to everything he held sacred.

We bid farewell to "Abu Firas," as he would come to be called once blessed with his son Firas, giving up the nickname that had followed him his whole life, "Abu Hamdo."

I came away from this meeting well satisfied.

For Rushdi al-Kikhya remains a man of real political weight in this country, even from the shadows.

Monday the 13th: A Teachers' Union

Those working in the field of education in the Syrian region now have a union of their own, headquartered in Damascus, established under Presidential Decision Law No. 187, dated 15 May 1960 (published in the Official Gazette on 13 June of this month).

Article 2 of this law provided as follows:

"The union shall work to raise the standard of education and spread culture, including the establishment of various educational institutes and contributing, alongside other associations and institutions, to establishing such institutes,

to look after its members' own professional and material interests,

and to cooperate with the ministry in studying matters of education."

And so teachers, at the primary, secondary, and university level alike, will now have a legal standing of their own, looked after by a union made up of members they themselves elect by free ballot, working to raise their own material and moral standing, and to make their own voice heard in reforming education, raising its own standard, and cultivating the nation's own children in a manner joining theory with practice.

In the thinking of those overseeing the country's highest policy, this law falls among the body of public institutions on which the future state of institutions itself will rest.

Monday the 20th: The National Union Congress Sessions

The National Union congress held several sessions, beginning on Monday and ending on the evening of Wednesday the 22nd of this month.

This National Union is noble in its own aims, humane in its own composition. Gamal Abdel Nasser intended it, in establishing it as the sole political body, to bring citizens together in common endeavor, free of the troubles the former political parties had brought with them.

I do not know whether it will succeed or fail. I was "raised," myself, on a belief in multiple political parties, and in the philosophy behind their existence, representing, as they do, the social and economic strata of society.

Al-Sarraj gave an address at one of the sessions, in his own capacity as Secretary of the National Union, and launched an unfair attack on the former political parties.

I do not claim that the former parties were all pages torn from the Quran itself, but some of them stood at the very peak of patriotism and sincerity.

Besides, every one of them went along with the Union, and dissolved themselves willingly and gladly. For this reason, I found this digging up of old graves strange, serving no purpose or necessity at all.

I myself gave an address on the financial situation, and my own personal views on tax reform, so that it might achieve not merely equality of rates, but equality of sacrifice.

The days ahead will reveal whether the National Union experiment succeeds or fails. I sincerely hope it succeeds.

Just as it succeeded, so our "friend" Josip Broz Tito, the very originator of this idea, always assures us, in the Yugoslav federation.

---

Endnotes:

[1] In-Depth Studies in Comparative Criminal Jurisprudence, 2nd edition, p. 126.