The Syrian Social Nationalist Party

by Salim Mujais

  Following the outbreak of the Second World War, the French authorities proclaimed martial law, and banned the SSNP on October 7, 1939 and unleashed a campaign of persecution against its membership.33 Hundreds of SSNP members were arrested and held in detention camps without trial. The French claimed that the SSNP was collaborating with France’s enemies and as proof claimed that Saadeh was in Berlin. Saadeh who was by then in Argentina obtained proof of his whereabouts from the French embassy in Buenos Aires and he dispatched this to the SSNP in Lebanon which debunked the French claim.34 In the midst of this campaign, the French resorted to subterfuge to track and arrest members of the SSNP leadership. Claiming interest in negotiating with the SSNP, the French authorities promised immunity for representatives that the SSNP might send to negotiate. However, when Nehmeh Thabit presented himself at the appointed place, he was unceremoniously arrested.35 The remaining members of the leadership relocated their headquarters to the rural region of al-Kura in the north of Lebanon taking advantage of remote cabins and caves in the area.36

  The misfortunes of war did not alter the attitude of the French imperialists vis-à-vis movements of national liberation. As the persecution continued after the armistice between France and Germany in June of 1940, the SSNP maintained its acts of defiance and resistance issuing public statements and distributing pamphlets on a regular basis in the latter half of 1940.37 It also continued in the practice of impromptu public speeches at any opportunity in various areas particularly in the urban centers of Beirut, Damascus and Aleppo.38 In August of 1940, the military French court issued sentences of imprisonment and exile against a large number of SSNP leaders tried in absentia. The sentences ranged from 10 to 20 years of imprisonment followed by equal periods of exile to be served consecutively!

  French efforts at apprehending SSNP leaders were successful and replacement leaders were arrested sometimes within days of assuming office, particularly following any conspicuous acts of defiance. When the lead executive of the SSNP issued a communique exposing the efforts of France to ship the Lebanese gold reserve to France, he was arrested within 2 days!39 Because of the impossibility of maintaining a full cadre of leaders, the SSNP experimented with administrative solutions reducing the number of functions and empowering single individuals with broad executive privileges.40 The hinterland branches were equally disrupted by the repression but continued to operate exploring new alliances with opposition groups in their areas, particularly the party of Dr. Shahbandar who had been recently assassinated.41 In response to the difficult conditions, decentralization of authority began to take root.42

  As the imminent confrontation between Vichy forces and the British in Palestine and Iraq approached, concern over the fate of the political prisoners galvanized their families to lobby for their release. The effort was led by Nehmeh Thabit’s sister Claudia, herself an active member of the SSNP. Several political notables and clergy approached General Dentz interceding on behalf of political prisoners interned in Southern Lebanon at the concentration camp of Mieh wa Mieh and the fortress of Rashaya, in the direct path of any invading force from Palestine. Dentz was facing serious shortages in military equipment and personnel. He was also having serious problems with defections, not only by French officers and soldiers defecting to the de Gaulle camp, but also from paramilitary forces made up mostly of contingents of ethnic minorities (Circassians, Druzes etc.). Indeed, the defections of Circassian paramilitaries prior to the British assault on June 8, and Druze paramilitaries during the fighting contributed significantly to the rapid deterioration of the Vichy front south of Damascus, and accelerated the advance of British forces towards the Syrian capital.

  Faced with the intercession of the Lebanese notables and clergy, Dentz found a suitable solution to his problem that would simultaneously provide him with paramilitary forces and trim the ranks of nationalist opposition. He requested as a term of the release of the political prisoners that the SSNP marshal its forces to support the Vichy war effort. An SSNP representative met with French officers to coordinate activities and receive arms and instructions. The reluctance of French officers to dispense weapons to a group only recently considered an enemy of France, and the policy of the French to equip paramilitary forces with obsolete weapons and limited ammunitions, may have saved the SSNP from certain disaster. Paramilitary battalions were expected to bear the brunt of the attacks of the Allies and were positioned immediately north of the border with Palestine.43 Vichy forces were sacrificing paramilitary troops to protect the withdrawal of their regular forces, and indeed the paramilitary forces lost over 70 per cent of their combatants. A similar fate would have awaited the SSNP!

  SSNP prisoners were released on June 11, 1941, two days after the start of hostilities.44 The reprieve was temporary. As soon as the Free French were in control, they re-initiated the repression and most of the released were back in prison by August of 1941!45 The extensive nature of this new wave of arrests with over a hundred SSNP officials in prison at the Mieh-wa-Mieh concentration camp south of Beirut alone, with numerous others in the prisons of Beirut, Tripoli, Beit-eddine and Rashaya, seems to have dampened any apparent militant activities for most of 1942.

  While in captivity, the SSNP leadership submitted multiple memoranda to the British initially asking for the release of lower rank detainees to lessen the burden of the war on their families, and arguing for the cessation of persecution of the SSNP which had been proven to have no ties to any forces hostile to the Allies, but to no avail. The British, of course, held the upper hand militarily despite the efforts of Catroux and de Gaulle to retain Vichy troops and functionaries, without success. Many of the troops elected to be repatriated.

  The Free French had promised the independence of Lebanon and Syria and a negotiated end to the Mandate. The Spears mission would hold them to that promise.46 British Major-General Sir Edward Spears, who had been a great supporter of the Free French movement, clearly deciphered French intentions to delay the negotiations and maintain the Mandate unchanged until the war was over and the British had left northern Syria. He proceeded to undermine French policy and embolden local politicians both in Beirut and in Damascus. One of his maneuvers was to press the French to hold parliamentary elections. It was not until January 1943 that France agreed to reinstitute nominal constitutional privileges in the so-called independent states in return for control of a liberated Madagascar.47

  Despite the protracted years of persecution, the SSNP retained a sufficiently important political base in certain areas of Lebanon to exercise a crucial role in swaying the results of the Lebanese parliamentary elections away from the pro-French camp of Emile Eddeh. This converged with the mounting influence of General Spears that not only led to the election of a new president and formation of a new cabinet, but also encouragement of that cabinet to wrestle more independence from the French. The support of the SSNP for the faction of Bichara Khoury in the election did not translate into any immediate concrete gains. The Party leaders remained in prisons under the direct control of the French military. The support did establish, however, a political bond that would be strengthened by future events.

  The defeat of the French supported candidates in the August 28 elections gave Spears a further tool to use in his quest to unseat the French. He encouraged and induced the Lebanese government of Bichara Khoury to have parliament amend the constitution eliminating all clauses that allowed the Mandate its legal fig leaf. Heleu, the French Commissioner, who had advised against such a move, was incensed and ordered the arrest of the Council of ministers and the president of the republic.48 Some of the Lebanese leaders succeeded in evading arrest and escaped to the Shouf area where the SSNP had a strong base that undertook to provide armed protection and repulse incursions by the French military at the cost of their lives. In addition, the arrested Lebanese leaders were taken to jails filled with SSNP members who provided them with encouragement, moral support and critical information through their established networks. This strengthened the d
etermination of the Lebanese officials to resist French intimidation. Their steadfastness, the failure of military raids to snuff out centers of rebellion, and most crucially overwhelming British pressure and a stern ultimatum, led the French to capitulate.

  The SSNP had supported the anti-French faction electorally, undertook to confront French troops, and supported imprisoned Lebanese government officials. It would finally reap the rewards of its actions. The resolution of the Lebanese crisis brought about the release of all SSNP political prisoners. This release was not only a manifestation of the gratitude of the ruling faction for services rendered, but also a realization that an alliance with the SSNP may prove beneficial in the end. Pro-French groups remained powerful and the French tenacious and determined to reinstitute the Mandate or some form of control as soon as British influence could be neutralized.

  POLITICAL ACCOMMODATIONS

  The alliance between the Lebanese political faction of Bichara Khouri, Riad Solh, Camil Chamoun, and the SSNP leadership of Thabit, grew over time. Evidence of this can be seen in the legalization of the status of the SSNP as a legitimate political party, which allowed it to operate freely within Lebanon in the spring of 1944. Senior government officials were frequent participants at SSNP rallies and were celebrated in SSNP demonstrations. Happy with the reprieve from constant persecution, the SSNP leadership of Thabit made substantial accommodating gestures towards Lebanese political leaders likely lured by the promise of participating in government in some important capacity. Recognizing that the “Syrianism” of the Party was not compatible with the aims of its alliance partners, the SSNP leadership resorted to a decentralization of the SSNP organization and chose to operate in Lebanon under the generic name of the “National Party.” This was coupled with various initiatives consistent with this new persona such an abridged printing of the Party Principles consisting of only the reform principles, prohibition of the Party salute (Hail Syria), a redesign of the Party flag to exclude the now iconic Zawba’a, and the marginalization of non-aligned SSNP leaders.

  The new political conditions offered the SSNP the opportunity to rebuild its ranks and rejuvenate its energy. A dynamic revival of its militant spirit was possible. However, the new political strategy, born of its Lebanese alliance, thwarted this opportunity. The Party was now advancing only its reform platform and calling for the strengthening of the Lebanese state. It still dabbled in Syrian affairs issuing memoranda supporting pacification of ethnic unrest in the hinterland, opposing Jewish settlements in Palestine, and condemning the “Greater Syria” project of King Abdullah of Jordan. These activities, however, were not threatening to its allies and the leadership continued to focus its energies on the Lebanese political arena. The decentralization scheme offered SSNP dissidents outside Lebanon an opportunity to secede and a group of SSNP leaders in Damascus rebelled against the Thabit leadership. While the latter was pursuing firmly a Lebanon first agenda, it had no intention of allowing the growth of opposing factions within the ranks of the SSNP even outside Lebanon. It used the pretext of breach of Party discipline to censor the dissidents and relieve them of their positions. In correspondence with Saadeh, Thabit would characterize them as rebellious individuals seeking personal advancement.

  The National Party grew numerically in Lebanon, opened regional offices and cultural clubs, held rallies, public lectures, and celebrations, founded a publishing house, and issued a daily newspaper aptly named Sada an-Nahda (Echo of the Renaissance). Indoctrination efforts were diluted and toned down. Saadeh would later describe this phase as the “militancy of afternoon tea parties.”

  Another development of equally far reaching consequences was the emergence within the leading body of the SSNP of intellectuals who had a less than solid understanding of the Party philosophy and basic ideological tenets. Having acceded to sensitive leadership positions through individual brilliance and literary ability, they started to expound within the framework of the Party a doctrine derived particularly from the works of Kierkegaard and the Russian philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev. These developments did not come to Saadeh’s attention until after the end of the war when contact with the Party in Syria was reestablished.

  RE-ESTABLISHING CONTACT

  Throughout the war, direct communications between Saadeh and the SSNP in Syria were interrupted. He tried to piece together a coherent narrative of the fate of his Party from snippets appearing in both the Syrian and foreign press. The information was meager and fragmentary, but Saadeh staunchly defended his comrades in the face of attacks in the press, adducing the motives for their actions from the principles of the SSNP and policy precedents prior to the war.49 al-Huda, for example, claimed recurrently that the SSNP leaders were released from prison in June 1941 by the Vichy French because they were aligned with Germany and Italy. Saadeh refuted the allegation by pointing out, correctly, that Vichy had kept the SSNP cadres incarcerated throughout the period of its control and did not release them until a few days before its defeat at the hands of the British army, despite the presence of the German commission in Beirut.

  It was not until early 1946 that Saadeh had any contact with the SSNP leadership in Syria when he received, via the Gold Coast Directorate in Africa, a letter sent to his brother’s address in Brazil. He wrote back to Nehmeh Thabit in January asking him to establish regular contact urgently.50 The SSNP leadership in Beirut deputized Ghassan Tueini who was traveling to Boston to pursue studies in political sciences to contact Saadeh and to brief him on the conditions of the SSNP and Syrian affairs in general.51

  Immediately after receiving Tueini’s first letter in February of 1946, Saadeh replied to him welcoming the contact and giving him general instructions to facilitate his mission.52 Saadeh directed Tueini to start his report from the time of the verdicts of the French Military Tribunal, suggesting that direct contacts with the SSNP may have been operational until that time. He asked him to focus on the following items:

  The Syrian Nationalist idea, its acceptance and diffusion in all the regions of Natural Syria since 1938;

  The general political conditions in the country since the British occupation of Northern Syria;

  The “National Party,” the reasons for its appearance in Lebanon in its current form and the guarantees for its ongoing activities and how the other branches of the Party react to its appearance;

  The internal conditions of the Party from the administrative and morale perspectives;

  The positions of the British, Russians, the French and domestic parties vis-à-vis the Party;

  The declared international political position of the Party;

  The return of Saadeh [to Syria]: the timing, venue (secretly, publicly or forcefully), and the likely positions of foreign powers, local governments, and domestic political groups in the various regions of Syria.

  After examining the general report sent by Tueini, Saadeh observed a clear deviation from the balance he had established between political realism and adherence to a principled national strategy. Tueini had suggested that it was time for the Party to shift its emphasis from ideological to political matters, since ideological emphasis had led to a fossilization of political thinking. Tueini expressed what appeared to Saadeh an erroneous revisionist version of the foundational phase of SSNP history, particularly since a number of new leaders and party intellectuals were expressing views consonant with Tueini’s report, aimed at establishing a new direction for the SSNP. According to Tueini, the earlier stance of the SSNP of focusing primarily and excessively on the idea of the nation and its elaboration had resulted in “academic rigidity,” and the Party needed greater political flexibility. To remedy this state, the Party undertook a new approach based on its reform principles, giving precedence to political action over ideological debate. This flexibility enabled direct participation in political life in various Syrian states.

  Saadeh took exception to this interpretation and proceeded to educate Tueini on the early history of the SSNP and the rationale for its policies a
nd earlier positions. He warned Tueini that a proper study of the history and traditions of the SSNP was necessary to avoid experimentation by new leaders not versed in the policies and standards of the Party. Without a proper understanding of the Party’s history, there was a risk of ‘perpetual inventions’ that wasted resources and led to deviations from the unity of thought and action that was a hallmark of the SSNP. Saadeh acknowledged that the entry of the Party into the political field and obtaining a permit to operate publically as a Lebanese party, and the establishment of semi-decentralized administrations in the rest of the Syrian regions, would result in problems that invited careful consideration. Saadeh recognized that the years of hardship and administrative disintegration of the Party because of incessant wars had led to some hasty measures.53

  THE “NATIONAL PARTY”