D'BTAT IN SYRIA
By T. F. Santy
The coup d'état in Syria, which toppled the Khaled el Azem government on March 8, exactly one month after the Kassem government fell in Iraq, testifies again to the unrest and ferment in the Arab world.
In 1958 the Syrian bourgeoisie, confronted with rising revolutionary agitation among the masses, sought to strengi:hen their position by uniting Syria and Egypt in the United Arb Republic. But as Nasser subovdinated their interests more and more to those of the Egyptian bourgeoisie, they turned their backs on Arab unity and, exploiting errors committed by Nanser, provoked a split, taking Syria out of the UAR in September 1961.
Among the Arab masses, however, two aspixations are quite
iiss
strong -- Arab unification and socialism. These santiments have received notable reinforcement in the recent period. After the split with Syria, Nasser came out for "Arab socialism" in a sense approaching that of the Baath (Socialist party of Arab Renais-— sance) which was organized some twenty years ago in Syria ad which extended its influence into Iraq end Jordan.
The coup d'état in Iraq last month was largely the wors of partisans of the Baath. Last week's coup d'etat in Syria was carried out by the Aflek wing of the Baath, the current whith favors reaching an understanding with Egypt. The new head of the Syrian government, Salah Al Din Bitar, was one of the founders of the Baath and a leading member of the Aflek tendency.
The "anti-Communist" aspect of these coup d'états must be condemned. In Iraq the blocd purge is still continuing, th-ee members of the Central Committee of the Communist party having been executed March 7 by hanging according to press dispatecies. (Hussein Il Radwi, secret of the party; Mohamed Hussein \bou Gleich and Hassan El eerie.)
Terror or repression waged against any sector of the labor movement weakens and undermines the anti-imperialist struggle as a whole. That is why the recent coup d'etats have brought 2=xpressions of smug satisfaction from American imperialism. "From the Western standpoint," the International Edition of the New York Times declared editorially March 12, "the most important Pastor is that all these revolutions are vehemently anti-Communist. ‘The Communists are being hunted down, jailed or even executed."
The fact that the Communist parties of these countries could be victimized at all, however, shows what disastrous policizs they have been following. In Iraq, for instance, the Communist < was so strong that it could have taken power, had it wished, shortly after the 1958 uprising. The extreme isolation and weakness of the Communists today is due to the fact that they subordinated the struggle for socialism to the narrowest temporary needs of Soviet diplomacy and thus went against mass movements which consequently fell completely under the domination of bourgeois or petty~ bourgeois leaders. This occurred, too, with the Syrian Comnunist. party under the leadership of Kaled Bagdache.
With the wictory of the Baath party in Syria, the question has again come to the fore of welding together the genuinely politically independent Arab countries -— Egypt, Syria, Ira, Yemen and Algeria. Aside from the confusion which unquestionably exists as to the basis on which this can be achieved, it is only thanks to the considerable social progress made in these countries that the question of Arab unity can be considered at all as a conerete issue.
Moves toward unity cannot help but strengthen the revolutionary forces in the other Arab countries (Saudi Arabia, Jordan, ._Morecco, Tunisia, Libya) and foster new developments in the -
=a independent countries in the cirection of a genuine socialist transformation.
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