The Syrian Social Nationalist Party

by Salim Mujais

  The Early History of the SSNP

  The early history of the SSNP will illustrate how this ideologically based political organization undertook to transform the political, intellectual, and cultural framework of Syrian society. We will examine the challenges it faced from a rapacious constellation of enemies, foreign and domestic, how it had the strength to challenge and confront them, and the high price it paid in suffering and sacrifices towards its goal. The resilience of the SSNP came from two sources: its principled outlook and the commitment and devotion of its leadership and ranks. Its trajectory over the first two decades of its existence was dotted by spectacular events, but it mostly consists of assiduous preparation and building towards grand achievements that are recurrently thwarted by enemies that are more powerful.

  CLANDESTINE BEGINNINGS (1932-1936)

  During the First World War, Saadeh witnessed the horrendous conditions that engulfed his homeland and brought woe and misery to his people. Reunification of his family after the war brought him to Sao Paulo, where under the tutelage and example of his father his political views took a sharp focus between 1920 and 1924 as reflected in his writings in al-Majalla and al-Jarida, two publications edited by his father Dr. Khalil Saadeh in Brazil. In 1924, he founded in collaboration with other young Syrians in Brazil a secret political group named The Syrian Patriotic League dedicated to the independence of geographical Syria. The League became public in 1925. However, the manner of its unveiling and the deviation from organizational efforts to ostentatious publicity led him to withdraw from its ranks. He later founded The Free Syrians Party in the latter part of 1926 and in 1927 initiated collaborative work with the New Syria Party based in North America.

  After the partial initial success of that endeavor, he determined that the renaissance should take place in the homeland where events on the grounds would foster the acceptance of new principles. He returned to Syria in 1930 with a clear purpose of initiating a political movement that would undertake the revival of Syria along the principles he was formulating. He thought to study the affairs of the homeland before undertaking any plans, so he settled temporarily in Damascus, as he believed it was the apparent center of patriotic movements. The dominant political force in Damascus was al-Kutlah al-Wataniyah (translated as the National Bloc) whose leadership was composed of absentee landlords and commercial bourgeoisie. It cajoled and ruled the non-literate urban and rural masses. Saadeh made contact with the members of al-Kutlah al-Wataniyah through Jamil Mardam, one of the leaders of the group who was well acquainted with his father.

  Overall, however, the French had managed to subdue the populace and the politicians of the Syrian hinterland by the brutal suppression of any sign of insurgency 1 and a policy of arrest, exile, intimidation or bribery. The French High Commissioner wrote in 1934, “Politics is asleep. Minds have turned to administrative, economic and financial affairs. There is hardly any talk of parliament or the treaty. As a result the nationalist party, not knowing who or what to attack, is becoming weaker and disintegrating” 2.

  Saadeh stayed in Damascus for a year and a half during which he was in personal contact with members of al-Kutlah, but finding no way to cooperate or reach an understanding with them he decided to relocate to Beirut. He moved to Beirut in the winter of 1932 and got in touch with the American University to give German language lessons. After intense discussions with a select number of university students who showed affinity for the principles he expounded, he formulated the basic principles for political action and proceeded to build the party towards the end of 1932.

  Two main streams of political thought were prevalent in Beirut. The concepts of Arabism and Phoenicianism were malleable ideologies that lent themselves to multiple interpretations. Various sectarian communities seized upon them as a source of legitimization of their own interests. Arabism was used as an umbrella for wide coalition building among Sunni politicians and Phoenicianism as a means of creating ethno-national distinctiveness for the Christian Maronites. The communities, however, were divided on these issues and the policies pursued by the Mandate played an influential role in shaping alignments. For the majority of Maronites, Arab nationalism represented the latest incarnation of Muslim hegemony. Members of the other Christian communities did not care to play a subordinate role in a Maronite-dominated state and hence were not eager to embrace Phoenicianism.

  Saadeh was determined not to allow political and personal expediencies to undermine the national revival plan. When it came to creating a political organization, he was extremely careful and circumspect. The political scene at the time was overrun with traditionalists, city notables, clergy, and cronies of the colonialists. The existing political forms of national militancy were inadequate to carry new ideas. Saadeh reasoned that the nucleus for the movement required a core of youthful, energetic, and educated individuals that would spearhead the growth of a national organized movement. Thus, the founding of the Party was in secret among university students. Saadeh was not founding an elitist group in perpetuity.

  After numerous individual discussions, Saadeh gathered a group of five individuals and officially declared the emergence of the political organization. Over the next few weeks, however, he noticed some disquieting behavior on the part of two members of the group. Fearing a re-enactment of the experience in Latin America, he decided to eliminate the risk carefully. The group had no charter yet, therefore Saadeh had no authority to dismiss members. In secret agreement with the other three members, Saadeh convened the whole group, expressed his discouragement of being able to move the political agenda forward, cited the immense obstacles, and announced his intentions of dissolving the organization and postponing the political work indefinitely. A few days later, he contacted the chosen three and the organization was off to a timid start.

  There were multiple reasons for adopting a secret format for the SSNP. First, secrecy was necessary to test the seriousness of intent of participants. A clandestine organization offers no immediate gratifications for participants as far as social visibility, prestige, or electoral gains. The mission of the Party was to undertake a broad and radical social transformation of the Syrian nation. Such a task required a degree of commitment and militancy in Party members that was hitherto unaccustomed in a nation where modern political institutions were nonexistent. Furthermore, a long history of subservience to foreign occupation and intellectual and economic stagnation had left a population with no direction, no true self-identity, and no belief in self-worth. To prepare a militant organization capable of leading the struggle for the revival of the Syrian nation, it was essential to take the Party and its membership through a phase of formative calm indoctrination. Second, secrecy was necessary to protect the nascent organization from the dangers of premature confrontations with traditional political forces and the French Mandate before its internal structure had reached a defensive cohesiveness that would ensure its ability to weather the turmoil of open militancy. Since the ideology of the SSNP was opposed naturally and predictably to the concept of a foreign mandate, secrecy was essential to avoid compromising the safety of party members. Under the mandate law, French authorities had the right to arrest any group of individuals meeting in a number of five or more if it suspected that the meeting had ‘belligerent intentions’. It was inevitable that reactionary elements in the Syrian political system would be threatened by the emergence of a disciplined national movement aimed at eliminating the basis of their political power, and at setting principles for the conduct of national policies that supersede sectarian politics. During this formative period, the emphasis of the SSNP was on the active recruitment of youthful and educated elements of the Syrian community in urban and rural areas alike. The spread of the Party was based on personal contact and was initially slow, but soon grew to reach over one thousand members by the time Saadeh was apprehended by the French authorities in 1935.

  FIRST GENERAL MEETING

  For reasons of secrecy, the SSNP held very few meetings during the c
landestine period. A limited administrative central meeting was held in December 1934. The first general meeting was held on June 1, 1935 and attended by 300 party members representing the central and regional administrative staff of the SSNP 3. The meeting was crucial to consolidate the esprit-de-corps of the organization, imbue it with a sense of its own strength, and ensure alignment on goals and principles. The meeting was held at the villa of Nehmeh Thabit, the head of the Council of Directors (Majlis al-Umud). The agenda included a general report on the state of the SSNP summarizing the activities of the directors, poems by Salah Labaki and Yousef al-Dibs, and finally a speech by Saadeh.

  The general report 4 gives a unique detailed glimpse of the status of the SSNP after 3 years of clandestine activity. From the report we learn that the SSNP by that time had branched across the entire Syrian coastal area from Haifa to Alexandretta and into the major cities of the hinterland including Damascus and Hama, as well as many villages in the Lebanese mountains. The growth of the Beirut branch was particularly accelerated comprising almost half of the Party Membership. The SSNP had also instituted a youth program and lowered the minimum age of membership from 18 to 16 years. Arrangements had been made to use an existing nominal organization called Hizb al-Islah al-Jumhuri (Republican Party of Reform) as a front for SSNP meetings. A regular inspection system was in place with Saadeh and other SSNP leaders regularly visiting Party branches throughout the country.

  During the meeting, Saadeh delivered his first official policy speech in which he laid down the basic political and operational strategy of the SSNP. Besides being a piece of great oratory, the speech was the first major policy address delivered by Saadeh to the members of the SSNP. It is a comprehensive speech that deals with a wide range of topics meant to consolidate in a single document all the policy issues confronting the party: social unity, assessment of local political leaderships, defining a framework for foreign policy and foreign propaganda, implications of the principles of the party to political life and finally presenting a heroic vision of the future imbued with hope and strength.

  Like all political organizations, the SSNP needed to create its own iconography and symbols that embody its image and central messages, emblems that will be readily recognizable as representative of the SSNP. Work developed on several fronts covering the party flag, 5 salutes, and party anthem.6 In addition to these visual symbols and external manifestations, the SSNP adopted other traditions such as the use of Arabic numerals in lieu of Hindu numerals. Later SSNP commentators have sought historical argumentations in support of this choice.7 The rationale for the adoption, however, as expressed in the early SSNP literature was more of a modernistic rather than nationalist fervor.8

  Saadeh delivering his speech at the first general meeting of the SSNP on June 1, 1935, wearing the official party uniform and behind him the SSNP flag

  INFILTRATION BY FRENCH INFORMANTS

  New evidence suggests that the infiltration of the SSNP by agents of the Government was more pronounced and earlier than suspected. The French authorities and their Lebanese surrogates were aware of the existence of the party as of November 1934. They appear to have learnt of Saadeh’s activities from the President of the American University of Beirut, Bayard Dodge, who had been alerted to the issue by the Dean of the school of Arts and Sciences. The Mayor of Beirut was receiving detailed reports of conversations, meeting minutes, official party forms and documents, and other information in the month leading to the arrest. An informant had forwarded to the Mayor on October 16, 1935, a detailed list of the party leadership

  Saadeh and several of his lieutenants were arrested early in the morning of November 16, 1935. He was taken to the headquarters of the Sureté Générale where interrogations were initiated immediately.

  The arrest was a rigorous test for the will and determination of the party leadership. Within days of the arrest, reports started appearing in the local press accusing the SSNP of relations with foreign governments. The accusations were naturally directed at Italy and Germany. The German Consul rapidly took steps to deny the allegations, and addressed an official complaint to the secretary general of the High Commissioner expressing his displeasure with the persistent stream of accusations proliferating in the local press.9

  Saadeh arrested by French Mandate security forces on November 16, 1935

  The discovery of the SSNP naturally attracted the interest of foreign consulates.10 Overall, these consular reports do not reveal any intimate knowledge of the SSNP beyond what could be gathered by any effective consular representative.

  Newspapers in Beirut were particularly vehement in their attacks on the new party. The first was La Syrie, the semi-official organ of the Mandate as well as the Francophone L’Orient. Sawt al-Sha’b (Voice of the People) the communist organ and al-Bashir, the mouthpiece of the Jesuits were expectedly opposed. Moreover, when a press release was distributed on December 3 defending the SSNP, al-Bayraq (The Flag) decried the “syrianess” of a party with predominant Lebanese membership and voiced its concern for the independence of Lebanon. Similar concerns, but with less vitriol were voiced by al-Maarad (The Forum).11

  Newspapers outside the French Mandate area were sympathetic. In Jerusalem, the newspaper Palestine published on Nov 27 an article defending the party signed by a SSNP member, and another Jerusalemite paper al-Karmel al-Jadid (The New Karmel) had favorable op-ed pieces on Dec 4 and January 18.12 The Jewish press as exemplified in the English daily The Palestine Post reported on November 18 the discovery of the SSNP and continued to report on the development of the case throughout 1936.

  News of the discovery of the SSNP made it to the Foreign Press in the US and France. The New York Times declared “United Syria Plot Bared – Union with Palestine and Lebanon Sought – Many Arrested.” 13 By January of 1936, news of the SSNP and its program were appearing in French periodicals. The Cahiers du Bolshevism reported on the Parti Populaire Syrien under its Bulletin Colonial.14 The Parisian periodical L’Oeuvre voiced its concern for the stability of the Mandate and its program and repeated a litany of accusations of foreign subsidy and alignment with anti-French European powers.15

  It is remarkable that the discovery of the existence of the SSNP drew the public attention it did considering that the Lebanese political scene was consumed with the presidential electoral campaign pitting Emile Eddeh against his archrival Bishara al-Khoury. The elections were to take place at the beginning of January 1936. In Damascus, triggered by the death on November 21 of the elderly political leader Ibrahim Hananu 16 a general strike was imminent.

  On the 20th of November, and likely as a response to the discovery of the SSNP, the French High Commissioner issued a series of decrees strengthening the control of state elements and the powers available to quell any rebellion.

  The interrogations of Saadeh and his colleagues lasted six weeks and were conducted, as was usual under the Mandate, under the leadership and supervision of a French examining magistrate assisted by a Lebanese judge and a Lebanese court clerk.

  Many of the forty arrested members were soon released on bail pending the trial after intervention from various groups such as the Lebanese Bar Association, particularly since a few of the assrested SSNP members were lawyers. The release afforded Saadeh the opportunity the address the pressing needs of the organization that was nearly decapitated by the arrests. He sent decrees from jail carried by the released members of the SSNP appointing an executive committee headed by Salah Labaki.

  The investigation was concluded on January 4, 1936, and the detainees were referred to trial under the charge of organizing a secret political party aimed at disrupting political order, jeopardizing the security of the state, and aiming to change the form of government. The detainees were charged with holding secret meetings, collecting money, and forming illegal commercial interests and militias.

  A HISTORICAL TRIAL

  The trial was initially scheduled for January 16, but was postponed because of the Lebanese presidential elections
. A new president, Emile Eddeh, was elected on January 20. The trial started on January 23, 1936. Saadeh, members of the Majlis al-Umud (Leadership Council) and other members of the SSNP were to be tried by a joint French-Lebanese tribunal.

  Early that morning 17 Saadeh and the only two members who were still under arrest, Nehmeh Thabit, the President of Majlis al-Umud, and Zaki Naqash, the Amid al-Harbiyah (Minister of Military Affairs), were led to the courthouse. Three judges presided, led by a French judge assisted by another French judge and a Lebanese judge. The attorney general, a Frenchman, represented the state. The defendants and their lawyers represented the intellectual and political elites of the country. Saadeh’s lead lawyer Hamid Frangieh, for example, was elected recently to parliament and was well connected in the traditional Christian political establishment.18

  Saadeh during his first trial in January 1936 by the French Mandate court with two of his lieutenants

  The presiding judge started the proceedings by calling the name of the accused: “Antoine Saadeh!” Saadeh did not respond nor stand. The judge called again: “Antoine Saadeh!” None of the accused responded. Confusion swept through the courtroom and attendees who knew Saadeh were wondering what was transpiring. Saadeh’s lawyer looked at him and said: “The presiding judge is calling you.” Saadeh answered: “I did not hear the judge call my name.” The presiding judge noted the conversation and asked the defense lawyers to approach the bench. He was told by one of the lawyers: “The accused is present but did not answer the call because he was not called by his name.” The presiding judge then asked, “What is his name?” Whereupon Saadeh informed his lawyer to tell the judge that his name was Antoun Saadeh. The judge looked upon the calm demeanor of the young man before him and instructed the court record keeper to correct the name to Antoun Saadeh. Then he called “Antoun Saadeh.” Saadeh stood up and answered “Present!”