A Challenge To Nasser

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30291, 18 November 1963, Page 14

A Challenge To Nasser

The attempted coup in Iraq attracts attention to both the strength and the weakness of a growing political force in the Arab world. In the relatively short time aince it upset the Kassem regime in February, the Ba’ath (“ Renais- “ sance ”) Arab Socialist Party has become a major factor in the Middle East, offering the first major challenge to President Nasser and his design for Arab unity under Egyptian domination. At first, President Nasser seemed sympathetic to the Ba’athist revolution in Iraq, though experience in Syria should have warned him. In April, he and the Ba’athist leaders signed the Cairo Union Charter, which proclaimed a federation of Arabs from the Nile to the Tigris, intended as the precursor of Arab unity from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf. The Ba’athist-Nasser agreement collapsed after only 14 weeks because President Nasser tried to insist that he should rule and that Syria should return to dependence on Cairo. Since then, the Ba’ath and President Nasser have moved further and further apart and the Ba’athist leaders have been attacked in one of the propaganda campaigns that the State-con-trolled Egyptian press and radio prosecute with virulence.

Vagueness surrounds the Ba’athist organisation, membership, source of funds, and indeed political philosophy. It has been quietly developing for a decade, chiefly among young intellectuals and

army officers. The movement was given some public shape at a congress in Damascus, attended by delegates from all over the Arab world. Full IraqiSyrian unity was promised, and other Arab States were invited to join a union with Ba’ath's “ collective leader- “ ship ” as the ruling power. President Nasser was criticised for his wish to dominate the Arab world, for his “ personality cult ”, and for subversive activities in other States. The party declared itself anti-Com-munist, and gave the impression that the Ba’ath type of socialism was the moderate kind favoured among middle-class Arab intellectuals.

Opponents thought the Ba’athist movement would fail in Iraq quite quickly, chiefly because it lacked popular support, and because its seeming obsession with power politics had blinded it to the urgent needs of the common people. It has shown a remarkable capacity for survival, and for advance. Since nothing in Middle East politics succeeds like success (as the career of President Nasser bears witness), the Ba’athist influence could spread from Iraq and Syria. “Die main danger to the Ba’ath is internal dissension, of which the clash in Iraq was an example. It also has many critics in Iraq, and the proNasser element is still strong in Syria. Its decline could be as rapid as its rise; but if it does survive, the Ba’ath, as a genuine pan-Arab party, could transform Middle East politics.