SYRIAN SCENE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25856, 29 May 1945, Page 4

SYRIAN SCENE

ARABS AND FRENCH NEW ZEALANDER’S IMPRESSIONS By Ronald Jones Thousands of New Zealanders will have read with more than common interest of the French guns trained on the streets of Aleppo. The growing unrest in Damascus and the reports of incidents in the tiny ( but more familiar, outpost communities of Homs and Hama, will recall for many, a land in 1942 poignantly reminiscent of parts of New Zealand, but close to famine and denied even the most superficial development of natural resources that should have placed it in advance of either Palestine dr Egypt. Though only slightly despoiled by the conflict in 1941 when the British and the Australians drove the Vichy French out, Syria was the poorest country in the Levant when the New Zealand Division rolled across the Palestine border and dispersed along the green and fertile D’Kaa Valley, and among the mountains of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon. Any doubts that existed concerning the cause of the poverty that was everywhere so apparent were dispelled by closer acquaintance with the sturdy Arab communities of the mountain regions. The French Outlook

There was no mistaking the vehemence with which muktar and nomad alike placed the responsibility at the door of a French Colonial Administration that was resented to the point of bitter hatred, and whose complete disappearance was eagerly awaited. The peculiar distinctiveness of the French attitude to the involuntarily subject peoples of Syria and Lebanon was obvious. The impression left was of a careless misrule that afforded scant profit to the rulers, and encouraged no confidence among the ruled. Deep down in the French heart the traditional principles of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity persisted in a battered form, even in the face of abuse, chicanery and graft. Apparent in most of the French soldiery of -all ranks, and in the hordes of petty administrators with whom the New Zealanders came in contact fn Damascus, Beirut, Aleppo, and in the quaint little fortress and frontier towns, was a half-developed conviction that all men were their brothers. In theory, at least, race, creed, or skin pigmentation mattered little. Mankind in the French colonial vocabulary was defined academically as a brotherhood. Friendliness, even though more than a little tinged with condescension, was the keynote of personal relations with the Arabs. The Frenchman ate, drank and played with those whom he regarded as his subjects, but always he was suspicious of anything savouring of independence of spirit or action. There must be no encroachment on authority, no attempt to throw off the yoke of subservience. Any suggestion of such things was countered with typical impatience, if not actual harshness. With the exception of the proud and aloof Arab elements of the desert regions, the French contrived remarkably to inculcate in Syrian and Lebanese alike most of their curious prejudices, a policy in strong contrast to the British method of benign separatism, so forcibly demonstrated in India, Palestine, the Sudan, and even yet in parts of Egypt. The Englishman has carried his England to the Levant, but keeps himself largely apart. On the other hand, the Frenchman has taken Paris with him, and almost demands that the native races shall become a part of it. Intolerance and harshness, extending often to unashamed tyranny, have been an inevitable result, and in the case of Syria and Lebanon led to the vigorous political revolt that produced complete independence in 1942. New Zealanders’ Function By no means the least important function of the New Zealand Division in Syria was to establish and fostei amicable relationships with elemehts of the Arab world who. for years had been viewing European influence with growing suspicion and distrust. Vichj France had encouraged-the fear that Syria would be used as a pawn in the Axis bid for domination in the Middle East, and it was to the credit of British policy, and the plan of which the division’s sojourn in the mountains was a part, that a reconciliation was effected. The independence, honesty, and pride of the Syrian Arabs in the face of extreme poverty and terrific political handicaps were readily remarked and appreciated by the troops, and when the British Tenth Army had completed its programme of relief and public services a community of interest developed between the British forces and the people which was at once the wonder and the envy of the Fighting French units that had replaced the Vichyites. The British Army provided sorely-needed medical services almost from Palestine to the Turkish border. Military medical officers were attending as many civilian patients as soldiers. The strictest controls were also applied to a crippling black market system, and, most important of all, the British effected what the French Administration had studiously ignored—an equitable distribution of food, particularly flour, in the control of which New Zealanders were widely employed by the Spears Wheat Mission to supervise the growing, harvesting, and milling of all the wheat crops in the country. Intrigue was rife, as was only to be expected in a country so unsettled and bordering on a neutral State that was still being cozened and coaxed by Germany, but intelligence, field security, and diplomacy succeeded in hastening the advent of the peaceful and contented conditions that were necessary for the resumption at Damascus of the independent government which the Syrians now consider to be in danger. Nothing emphasised the backwardness of Syria more than the obsolete and crude methods of agriculture still in. use. Just across the border in Palestine the header-harvester and the tractor were common sights. In Syria the reaper and the gleaner still bent aching backs to an almost endless task. The Egyptian fellaheen, himself an ardent lover of what was good enough for his father’s father, made infinitely better use of what Nature provided for him than the Syrian Arab, and the communal farms of the Jewish Zionist Movement threw into bold relief the pathetic attempts of the farmers of Lebanon to struggle against the handicaps of maladministration and almost non-existent marketing facilities. Food hoarding and black marketing had reduced Syria and Lebanon to a state approaching famine and whether rightly or wrongly, the Arabs blamed the French colonial administration for it. ■ . . To-day in the face of returningFrench troops the Syrians are prepared to defend their national integrity, and it may be supposed that the determination of a proud and naturally selfreliant people has not been lessened by the proportion of coloured West African troops that has been included in the French forces.