The Day of the Ba'ath

...Yet M. Aflak spoke with such directness that had there been before him the advance text of Nasser's address, it would have made little difference...

...M. Aflak gave me the impression that he felt he was dealing from strength, that he could exploit an issue—nationalism — which Nasser could not even mention...

...And "the beauty part" of this gambit is that the more Cairo denounces the Ba'ath, the stronger becomes the resistance of other Arab "revolutionary" regimes to the Nasser design for Egyptian primacy...

...even, it is whispered, in Egypt...

...His most prominent feature is a large, hooked nose, which becomes surprisingly proportionate to his face when he smiles, absently, almost shyly...

...To drive home this point, M. Aflak told me that during the final negotiations the sessions adjourned to Nasser's home where, the Syrians were told, the discussions would be informal, with no minutes and therefore greater freedom in exchanging ideas...

...If Nasser died, what would happen to 'Nasserism...

...The translators were noisy and competitive, since each young man felt that certain nuances were being lost by the other chap, or else M. Aflak wasn't making himself too clear and what he was saying needed amplification...

...that while the Egyptian Rais was the dominant Arab figure and might even have the streets on his side, the Ba'ath ideology had captivated Arab intellectuals, or what M. Aflak called "enlightened Arab opinion," by its terseness: socialism, democracy, unity...

...He lives in one of the middleclass neighborhoods in the eastern section of the city, the Mazraa, in a house without a real address, and taxi-drivers have difficulty finding it...

...tails, Nasser loses...

...He is now Yemen's representative at the UN in New York, a far cry from the fleshpots of San'a...

...The unresolvable difference for the Syrian Ba'ath is Nasser's insistence on a one-party state, which, in practice, would mean Egyptian satellization—27 million Egyptians to seven million Iraqi and five million Syrians—of the merged countries...

...Against a Ba'ath which claims to be for real unity, real democracy and real socialism and which is now making its own external alliances as party and government, Cairo propaganda can only be ineffective...

...If you want to understand our feeling of confidence," said one Ba'ath leader, "it is because if Aflak died tomorrow, there would still be a Ba'ath...

...In Yemen, where the republican government is benefiting from Cairo's military support, the Foreign Minister was so staunch a Ba'athist that he had to be fired...

...M. (and, as a Sorbonne graduate in history, the m'sieu is inevitable) Aflak is founder and Secretary-General of the Syrian Ba'ath party...

...Now in the twentieth year of its existence, it is reportedly spreading in the Arab world...

...socialism is everything...

...It only went to prove that Nasser couldn't be trusted...

...For Ba'ath members, including Prime Minister Bitar, who is a Moslem, the religious question is minimal...

...Questions were asked of us in such a way as to elicit certain answers...

...In one corner of the room, propped up on a table, was a child's large doll with the usual garish maquillage...

...For us, nationalism isn't something negative or simple...

...The morning I saw him, he was laid up with a bad leg, the aftermath of a triumphal tour in Algeria with Syrian Prime Minister Salah elBitar, a Sorbonne classmate, who over the years has been in and out of the same jails with M. Aflak...

...For Egypt there is no nationalism...

...If the Ba'ath (Arabic for "renaissance") party has survived its two decades of exile, it is largely due to M. Aflak, a youngish 53, whose thinning hair is beginning to grey...

...AN INTERVIEW WITH MICHEL AFLAK The Day of the Ba'ath By Arnold Beichman Damascus Michel Aflak is a small man, standing about five feet four inches in the bedroom slippers he was wearing when I called on him recently...

...It came as a great surprise," said M. Aflak with that ever-faint smile, "to find out—now—that these informal conversations held in Nasser's home in a small room no bigger than this were secretly taped on tape-recorders and then manipulated...

...Two were from Lebanon, where, they said, there were many members...

...Slowly and gently his shoulders rose...

...Cairo propaganda against Arab kings and sultans may be effective...

...Hanging on each of the three walls was a Chinese scroll painting which after a first glance became invisible...

...From the outset of our conversation it was quite clear that the present Syria, under Ba'athist rule since March, and the present Iraq, under Ba'athist rule since February, are through with Arab unity à la Nasser...

...The question of singleparty authoritarian states hardly troubles Algeria, for example, where Premier Ben Bella insists that he will run the country without direction from Cairo...

...He is now busy campaigning against Ba'ath and his propagandists have raised an issue out of the fact that M. Aflak is a Christian (by family origin, he is of the Greek-Orthodox faith), and how does it look in an Islamic world to have a French-speaking Christian, etc., etc...

...one from Jordan and the remaining two were Damascenes...

...I told Nasser at our last meeting that he puts forward socialism in place of democracy...

...The Ba'ath is now having its moment, particularly in Syria, where it is running what once might have been a sideshow, but which has now ranged this once paper organization against Nasserite power...

...Heads, Aflak wins...

...The Ba'ath, on the other hand, being loosely organized with no real formal structure or rigidly enforced party discipline, stresses "nationalist democracy," implying that merger need not, and should not, mean submersion of an historic or recently acquired national identity...

...Arnold Beichman, a frequent contributor, writes for many journals here and abroad, including the Spectator, where this article also appears...

...Egypt overstresses socialism,' said M. Aflak...

...The transcript, M. Aflak told me, was "incorrect and there is a great deal of omission and falsification...

...Our conversation was held some days before Nasser's anniversary speech on the founding of his government in Egypt, which it was then expected would deal with the breakdown in April of the tri-partite negotiations for union...

...It will certainly make other Arab leaders think twice before they sit down with the Rais to discuss anything in confidence...

...His is a second-floor walk-up apartment in a building of drab hallways and scrawled-over walls...

...Far more visible, indeed, were five young Ba'athists who were making a Sunday visit to the shrine...

...Thus, M. Aflak could not have been less concerned at the publication of the so-called minutes of the unity negotiations which the Cairo press has been publishing for several weeks...

...Yet if anything happens to Syria now, the easiest target to blame will be Nasser...

...This Aflak appeal to nationalism is a masterful stroke and accounts for the success of his visit to Algeria and the far less successful visit of Nasser last June...

...Did M. Aflak think there was a question of good faith involved in spreading concealed microphones around Nasser's living room...

...We want union which guarantees the people socialist laws and democratic liberties...

...While to cauliflowered Western ears these words may have the ring of cant, the crucial word "democracy" is the barrier which Nasser cannot hurdle...

...How long the Ba'ath can stay on top in Syria is a real question, because "revolutions" are more frequent in this cradle of "Arabism" than in a Latin American banana republic...

...slowly and gently he turned his hands, palms upward...

...He speaks quietly with few gestures, slowly, but in complete sentences which for him need little revision or redrafting...

...As these debates rose and fell, M. Aflak sat quietly, his head occasionally bowed to hide the faintest of smiles...

...In some Arab countries to accuse a man of being a Ba'athist is to ensure a jail sentence or, at best, exile...

...Nasser took what he wanted and then re-edited and falsified the record...

...They were there to listen and to argue and to help translate M. Aflak's Arabic into English...

...Thus M. Aflak insisted to me that there are "other Arab revolutionary forces" who have something to contribute to Arab unity—in Algeria, Iraq, the anti-royalist groups in Morocco, Yemen and Aden, where the leaders praise President Nasser as a lion, but where none of them wants to enter his den...

...With his nationalist appeal against Nasser's trumpet-call for Arab unity, M. Aflak is constructing a ring around Egypt of Arab and North African countries which will pay lip service to wahida arabiya, but which will carefully avoid the line of march to Cairo...

...In Aden I recently met trade-union leaders who professed Ba'ath principles...

...It is hard to believe on seeing this bantamweight that here is the man whose obstinacy has frustrated Gamal Abdel Nasser's dream of a united Arab world with Egypt as primus inter pares...

...More importantly for the Arab world, the word also means nationalism or national identity...

...In fact, I was told by one official that there was not one coup d'état on March 8, but five, including one led by a pro-Communist general who is no longer a general...

...It is not "democracy" only in the normal sense of a multi-party, parliamentary system with guarantees for voluntary organizations like trade unions...

...The Ba'ath founder wore a rosecolored bathrobe over pale-blue pyjamas...

...Egypt doesn't have a correct and sufficient estimate of the role of nationalism and unity...

...Yet in Jordan there is a significant, although underground, Ba'ath group...