Chapter 8, Part 3: Al-Nadhir, the Arab League and the Road to Evacuation, 1943-1946

Among the secrets of that election campaign is what Nasuh Babil recounts about President al-Quwatli. He says that al-Quwatli let the rulers of Iraq understand, through his friend Mikhail Ilyan, that he would never conclude a treaty with France, and so satisfied them. But at the same time he undertook to the French General Collet that he was ready to conclude a treaty with France guaranteeing it "its traditional rights, and that in the village of al-Shuqayf near Bhamdoun",[1] and so satisfied France as well.

If this account is true, it does not weigh in Shukri al-Quwatli's favor on the scale of moral principles.

In the debates of the Chamber of Deputies al-Kikhya's leanings began to show ever more clearly. They were leanings bound to alarm financial reaction in particular, and it set about blocking the road to his political movement. What the spinning and weaving company in Aleppo did was to found the so-called "Constitutional Bloc" and finance it, so as to entrench itself behind it and stand at its back.. Al-Qudsi says in his memoirs (the second tape) that the spokesman of this "Constitutional Bloc" was Raif al-Mulqi, the deputy for Hama, from whom his colleague al-Hourani began to distance himself because their directions differed.

During this term, which lasted four years, al-Kikhya held a prominent position of leadership in political life. He took strong stands against government deviation, and made plain his intention of fighting family domination and feudal reaction. At that time he was in the closest touch with Ahmad Qanbar, who published the independent newspaper al-Nadhir in Aleppo. In the period when we lived through it, al-Nadhir was a solid platform of patriotism in the country. The articles published in it were sober and calm in character, but they were strong in denouncing deviation and those who deviated. It stood out for its pure patriotic direction and for rising above the petty matters that filled most of the columns of the newspapers of those days in pursuit of trivial gain.. When al-Nadhir agreed to publish an article by a young writer, the fingers of the educated would point to him as someone who had begun to set his feet on the road to fame.. In those days I sometimes wrote for an Aleppo newspaper, al-Ittihad, but my eye was always on a column in al-Nadhir that I would "occupy" one day.

That day came ten years later.. on my return from my studies in France.. What gave al-Nadhir its standing, in Aleppo circles especially, was that Qanbar was a man with a political and social cause.. He always kept his eminent position in journalism, because his line remained independent and he kept his integrity and his clean hands.

He was the victim of a wicked assault on one grim day in the days of hateful family bigotry, because he had shaken the plush seats from under those who sat in them without deserving them.

The reaction among the people was strong.. so much so that the assault was like a general referendum on the standing of al-Nadhir and its owner.

When the Minister of the Interior, Saadallah al-Jabiri, appointed a new municipal council for Aleppo in 1937, he chose its members from among the sons of the families alone. Al-Nadhir came out carrying the news under the following headline: "A Council for the Balance of the Families". It caused a great stir among the people. The minister flew into a rage, and his favor never returned to Ahmad Qanbar. Ahmad Qanbar told me recently that the choice of this headline was made at the direction of Rushdi al-Kikhya, who wanted to drive the nails into the coffin of family rule and turn the people against it.

Ahmad Qanbar always enjoyed a good reputation, and his people remembered the great services he had rendered with the point of his pen to the independence movement, and in the following parliamentary term they raised him to the seat of deputy for his city. Al-Nadhir remained, until the day its owner closed it in 1955, a platform for the clean word and the sound direction. In all this it was the opposite of most of the newspapers of those days, which sought "material gain" with no regard for the dignity of the means.[2]

During this second term important achievements were made, Syrian and Arab. In it an agreement was reached between the Syrian government and General Catroux, on 22 December 1943, to hand over to Syria the powers the French authority had been exercising over the machinery of government. In it, too, an agreement was reached on 5 June 1944 to hand over to it all the common interests. And in it the Alexandria Protocol on the establishment of the League of Arab States was agreed on 7 October 1944.

This agreement was crowned by the signing of the Charter of the League of Arab States by the heads of the Arab governments on 22 March 1945.

The Soviet Union and China were quick to recognize the Syrian government and establish diplomatic relations with it on 24 July 1944, and France was stunned.

Despite all these developments, which pushed Syria to the forefront of events, France went on doing all it could, in secret and in the open, to obtain a bilateral treaty with the Syrian government that would preserve its "historic" influence in the Arab East. But Syria met the malicious French methods with outright refusal.

The unanimity of the Syrians and their rallying around their political leaders played a decisive part in confronting the French desire, hidden at times and open at others.

In those months of 1945 the Second World War was about to end with the Allied victory over Hitler's Germany on the western front. France feared that after the victory its "ally" England would turn its whole attention to it and uproot it for good from the Arab East, so it thought of sending forces from France to Syria and Lebanon to back up its small force stationed there. The French forces numbered 6,000 soldiers, most of them from the colonies, and about 20 thousand of the "Special Troops" made up of Syrians and Lebanese. All of them together counted for nothing next to the huge British force.

France turned to Britain once again, hoping for its help in rescuing its "historic rights" in Syria, and managed to conclude an agreement with it. But no sooner had the news of this agreement spread than the Syrian government moved against it, and Rushdi al-Kikhya submitted a draft resolution to the Chamber on 27 December 1945, whose text I set down below for its historical importance:

"To the Honorable President of the Chamber of Deputies

I propose that the Honorable Chamber adopt the following resolution:

The Syrian Chamber of Deputies, having examined the joint statement and the agreement concluded between Britain and France concerning the Middle and Near East, and having heard the statement of the Syrian government, the report of the Foreign Affairs Committee and the statements of the deputies, resolves as follows:

1. Any agreement concluded between one state and one or more other states that concerns Syria without its opinion and consent having been sought, we reject absolutely.

2. The government shall urgently submit a protest against this agreement to all the Allied states and to the United Nations Organization.

3. The government shall take all the measures necessary to resist any move that infringes the sovereignty and independence of the country.

4. The government shall urgently call on the Council of the Arab League to consider this important matter, which is not confined to Syria and Lebanon but extends to all the Arab countries, and to take the measures that will lead to the implementation of its resolution on the evacuation of foreign armies from Syria and Lebanon."

Al-Kikhya explained his view to the Chamber, set out the aims of this resolution and called for practical steps "because the committee's report confined itself to expressing an opinion.. A final and firm stand must be taken, because public opinion is waiting on tenterhooks".

The government supported the proposal, and the Chamber of Deputies approved it unanimously.

The Syrian government carried out a skillful move when it declared war on the Axis powers, which were preparing to surrender, in March 1945, so that it would have a say in the peace negotiations, and to make France understand that it was an independent state, master of its own decisions.

The President of the Republic, Shukri al-Quwatli, declared in the Chamber of Deputies that the Syrians demanded the realization of the Greater Syria plan on two conditions: first, that the republican system be preserved, and second, that Damascus remain the capital of the new state.[3]

Even so, "Free France" sent a note to the Syrian government on 4 May 1945 informing it of its intention to send the supporting force to its territory. But the Syrian government firmly refused this request and protested against it, saying in its note of reply, which it sent to the representative of the French command, that "this act is one of the things that offend the independence of Syria". This note of reply is dated 5 May.

The Syrian government informed the representatives of France's allies (America and England) in Damascus of the matter and asked them to prevent these forces from being sent.

At once the British Prime Minister, Churchill, acted and sent a letter to de Gaulle the same day, telling him that Britain recognized France's interest in the Levant, but that it was still at war with Germany, and that the commitments it had made locally obliged it to intervene when necessary, especially if the lines of communication with India were threatened by the outbreak of unrest.. France must therefore not send these forces, and must hand over the local forces to the Syrian and Lebanese governments.

France pretended to bow to the British demand, since it could not resist it, but it told the Syrians that it was ready to hand these forces over to them on condition that they agreed to preserve its historic rights and give it suitable air bases.

The Syrian people rejected these demands and surged forward in support of the government's stand in stormy demonstrations.. and in its bloody clashes with the French forces.

The famous massacre at the Chamber of Deputies took place on 29 May 1945, and the French General Olivat-Roger opened artillery fire on the houses of Damascus. Britain sent France an ultimatum on 31 May 1945 demanding that it stop firing and return to barracks. The French forces gave way to the British ultimatum against their will, and the people tore the French flags down from their places.. A wave of overwhelming joy burst out amid the people's cheering and their cry: We are free, we are free.

History will remember Shukri al-Quwatli's unyielding stand in the face of the French threat, and his refusal to accept any treaty.. because the country wanted an independence bound by no restriction or condition.

The Council of the Arab League stood with the Syrian government. On 6 June 1945 it adopted a resolution holding France responsible for the events, demanding that it evacuate its forces from Syria unconditionally, and threatening to take the measures that Article Six of the Charter of the Arab League imposes on the League's states to repel any aggression against one of them.

The Syrian and Lebanese governments lodged a complaint with the UN Security Council, asking it to intervene to make France withdraw all foreign forces from their countries without any condition.

De Gaulle resigned from the French presidency on 20/1/1946, even though he had truly taken part in liberating his country. In this honorable stand he differs from leaders we shall meet in the days to come.

The UN Security Council met on 15 February 1946, and our teacher Faris al-Khouri headed the Syrian delegation. The Council was made up of 15 members. The members voted on a resolution requiring the withdrawal of foreign forces from Syria and Lebanon, with the other problems to be settled by negotiation. But the Soviet Union used its veto for the first time and so blocked the resolution, which was treated as if it did not exist, so that Syria would not be bound by any foreign restrictions.

The British and French governments decided to abide by the resolution and carry out its provisions. The last soldier left the country on 17 April 1946, and Syria decided to make this day a national holiday.[4]

In his speech on Evacuation Day, President al-Quwatli praised America, England and the Soviet Union, which had always supported our independence and hastened to recognize it in practice. And so the principles of freedom, democracy and equality triumphed and became living realities. It is not strange that a war blazing on long fronts should cast its dark shadows over our region, for throughout the world it was the gun that spoke, not the tongue or eloquence.

The state of mutual blockade between the warring parties was reflected on the Middle East by the logic of spilled blood. From this starting point the activities of Syrian politicians were heavily affected by the stifling general atmosphere, and their concerns were confined to local issues.

What, then, occupied the mind of Rushdi al-Kikhya and claimed his attention, as a member of the Chamber of Deputies who carried on his shoulders the causes of his nation and his country, and as leader of the opposition, whose right and duty it was to debate the governments' policy abroad and at home, and especially with the two powers that held the military stage and its operations and pulled the political stage between them, namely England and France in Syria?

At the national level: al-Kikhya's face was an Arab face, true in its features and clear in its lines.

And at the domestic level: he was faithful to the trust he had taken on, to watch over the interests of his people and to call governments to account for their mistakes and for the misconduct of some of their members, or of exploiting officials under their administration or protection, or behind the back of their supervision.

If we examine the positions recorded in the minutes of the Chamber of Deputies and in the studies published by specialist writers on those years, we find that Rushdi al-Kikhya dealt, in his parliamentary proposals and debates, with everything that concerned his people and touched their basic issues, from general policy to vital questions, and that he paid particular attention to clean government. Some of these subjects he had already raised in the previous term, and some were new, arising from the events that broke into the life of the country.

To shed light on al-Kikhya's activities in this period, I have devoted five sections to them, which I review below:

Endnotes:

[1] Sahafa wa-Siyasa (Journalism and Politics), p. 170, cited above.

[2] Qanbar answered his Lord's call in January 1997, in his city of Aleppo.

[3] Awraq Jamil Mardam Bey (The Papers of Jamil Mardam Bey), p. 377.

[4] In al-Hayat newspaper of 30 April 1999 I read an article by our friend Dr. Maarouf al-Dawalibi in which he spoke of the efforts he made in 1945 with General de Gaulle to persuade him to agree to the unconditional evacuation of the French forces from Syria. He says that he succeeded in these efforts through the Foreign Minister, Monsieur Bidault. The article is worth reading.