by Salim Mujais
It took almost a decade, two presidential elections, the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, and major cataclysms in the Middle East before the SSNP could resurface in Lebanon without fear of overt persecution. Divergent views between the leaders released from jail and new cadres that emerged during the long clandestine period, and the need to review the SSNP’s political and ideological platform in view of current events necessitated a series of congresses and amendments to the constitution that only exacerbated internal discord within the Party and the struggle for power and eminence. While politically the SSNP may have deviated from its ideological base, questioning the tenets of its ideology during this period was a new phenomenon born of the pervasive activities of Marxist groups and effects of the cold war. The ascendency of Israel and the unbridled Western support of its aggression and expansionism was giving leftist ideologies fresh appeal and some SSNP intellectuals were not immune to its influence.
The internal unrest was further accentuated by the infiltration and influence of agents of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Syrian regime leading to conflicting loyalties. This led to further splintering of the SSNP. It was with a troubled body and soul that the SSNP confronted the Lebanese civil war. Its traditional right-wing enemies in the Christian militias exerted every effort to expunge the Party from their areas of control.8
The political platform of these militias to create a Christian enclave allied with the Jewish state was in striking opposition to the ideology of the SSNP aiming at national unity and the relentless opposition to the state of Israel. Thus, the SSNP was ideologically driven to oppose the alliance of Christian militias, but the so-called Patriotic Front with which it allied itself was no less sectarian with its Druze Chief and Muslim militias. It also suffered at the hands of its allies the killing of some of its leading figures.9 Until the Israeli invasion of 1982, the SSNP played an auxiliary role in the war except for a few geographal areas where its constituency was influential. After the Israelis occupied Beirut and forced the election of the Christian warlord Bashir Gemayel as President of Lebanon, the SSNP delivered the two most decisive events in the history of that period.
Israeli military might had crushed the Palestine Liberation Organization and forced its evacuation to North Africa. All other factions were subdued and the Israelis felt comfortably in control. On September 24, 1982, a lone SSNP member walked into a sidewalk café in the fashionable area of Hamra in Beirut in broad daylight and emptied his revolver into a gathering of Israeli soldiers. That single heroic act is credited in inspiring and launching the Lebanese resistance movement that ultimately forced the Israelis to withdraw from Lebanon. SSNP members, men and women, were responsible for some of the most spectacular attacks on the occupying Israeli forces and their local allies for the next decade. Their courage and heroism served as a role model for other factions of the Lebanese resistance movement.
16th September 1982, Phalange militants massacre Palestinians in the refugee camps at Sabra and Shatila, Lebanon.
The other decisive event was the elimination of the Phalange warlord, and President-elect Bashir Gemayel on September 14, 1982, before his swearing-in ceremony. This was accomplished by installing a bomb in the building in which Gemayel held meetings of the leadership of his militia. The blast killed Gemayel and scores of his closest advisors and lieutenants, gravely disrupting the Christian-Israeli political agenda.10 While Bashir’s older brother Amin was hastily voted in as president, he was too corrupt and ineffectual to carry forth his brother’s agenda.
The SSNP emerged from the Lebanese civil war with a narrative of heroism and a decisive role in disrupting and preventing the Israeli blue print for a truncated Lebanon. Nevertheless, it was saddled by accusations of being a client of the Syrian government that allegedly secured it parliamentary and ministerial seats. Internal discord and factionalism also continued to plague the SSNP including occasions of internecine fighting. As the guns went silent, SSNP affiliated intellectuals were again engaging the cultural stage in Beirut, Damascus and Amman. SSNP branches among Palestinians in occupied Palestine and the diaspora remerged. The advent of the PLO had completely eclipsed them, but the disenchantment with the PLO after Oslo was making room for a new generation of SSNP adherents among the Palestinians. The SSNP resumed its proselytizing activities and while its strict membership did not grow dramatically, its halo effect was substantial. Indeed, internal discord has always created a barrier to the growth in active membership, but adherents to the ideology of the SSNP have always outnumbered card-carrying members by several folds.
Baathist regimes have been particularly unsympathetic to the SSNP perpetrating the antagonism born in the bloody battles of the 1950s. By the mid to late 1970s, tentative friendly relationships between limited circles in the Syrian government and some SSNP groups emerged. In the course of the Lebanese civil war, particularly in the wake of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, these tentative relationships were cemented by the struggle against a common enemy. Supporting the SSNP in Lebanon and allowing it to operate freely in Syria are two different things. The former predates the latter by decades. While censorship of SSNP core literature was slightly relaxed, organization of a distinct constituency was still frowned upon, and public displays of SSNP emblems was generally discouraged. All of this changed with the advent of the Syrian civil war. Again, the position of the SSNP in its various factions was an intersection between ideologically driven positions and political necessity. The sectarian groups that dominated the insurgency were a grave threat to the concept of Syrian nationhood and the survival of a Syrian entity. Whatever the grievances against the Syrian regime, the SSNP was bound ideologically to resist the ferocious political-religious agenda of the various factions of the insurgency. This was also consonant with the rapprochement that had been building over a few decades between the SSNP and the Syrian regime.
SSNP Fighters break through ISIS lines in Palmyra, Syria.
The Syrian regime recognized that the SSNP constituency was a natural ally against the Islamic military groups and their narrative of a future Islamic state. This ally, however, could not under the circumstances, fight anonymously. Its emblems and symbols were a necessary component of the counter-narrative of a secular resistance to religious fanaticism. No example in the entire Middle East could compare to the secularism of the SSNP. After half a century of absence, the flags and emblems of the SSNP were again visible in Syria. They were carried into battle by the men and women of the “Nusur az-Zawba’a” (the Eagles of the Hurricane or Whirlwind), the military organization of the SSNP in Syria,11 and draped the coffins of the fallen martyrs and lined the paths to their funerals. Official branch offices were opened publicly throughout Syria where the SSNP had a constituency. Training camps for youth and fighters were organized and traditional SSNP celebrations commemorating the founding of the SSNP and the martyrdom of Saadeh, where the flag of the SSNP waved side by side with the state flag, were attended by Syrian regime officials. The leader of one of the SSNP factions was appointed as reconciliation minister in the Syrian cabinet. While these developments are felicitous from the perspective of the SSNP, it is difficult to predict how far the regime will allow the growth of its ideological rival.
The SSNP is in the ninth decade of its existence. It is widely spread in the homeland and the diaspora. It has more adherents to its ideology than active members, a reservoir of support it can readily draw upon when it resolves its internal discord and reunite its factions. It has been persecuted by each and every government in Greater Syria, its literature banned, its leaders imprisoned and killed, its members incarcerated and tortured, their livelihoods destroyed, their life plans shattered. Through nine decades of incomparable strife, the SSNP continues to re-emerge as the mythical Phoenix. Observers can agree that some of the woe that befell the SSNP is of the making of its leaderships, their errors, adventurism and naïve assumptions. Indeed, two of the most damaging waves of persecution in 1955 and 1962 were precipitated by inopp
ortune acts by the SSNP leadership. Despite it all, it survives. Why?
Saadeh described the SSNP as consisting of “an idea and a movement concerned with the life of the nation.” It is in the details of the idea and the characteristics of the movement that we need to seek the answer to our question.
Despite repeated reversals, waves of suppression, assassinations, executions, and the attempts of French and British occupation forces and the various governments of Greater Syria to eradicate it, the SSNP continues to re-emerge because its ideology must have resonated with the needs and aspirations of a perpetual constituency. In its core, this ideology rests on three complementary components: an assertion of the existence of a Syrian nationhood, a declaration of the rights of this nationhood, and a vision of the future for this nationhood.
In its ideology, the SSNP institutionalized a pre-existing belief in Syrian nationhood and provided a framework for its survival. The SSNP’s vision of the course of Syrian history is continuously validated and reinforced by historical and archeological research and studies. Its interpretation of the Syrian past has proven to be more robust than any of the alternatives. The ideological framework addresses the various dangers that threaten this Syrian nationhood and as these dangers mount and intensify the SSNP ideology becomes more relevant. Indeed, during the life span of the SSNP these dangers have never abated, but indeed intensified. National strife, sectarians discord, divisive tendencies, loss of national territories, and ferocious colonialism are worse today than at the time of the founding of the SSNP, and the political program delineated to combat them remains at its core sound, relevant, and necessary.
The ideology of the SSNP also defines the rights of the Syrian nation and the rights of Syrians communally and individually. This twin championing of national rights and individual rights is perpetually relevant particularly when both are endangered and threatened. National rights are threatened by the territorial encroachments of neighboring states (Turkey for example), an aggressive settler colonialism (Israel), and great imperialist powers. No political group has offered a more cogent framework for the definition of national rights, alertness to the real dangers, and firmness in how to confront these dangers than the SSNP. Individual rights are threatened by constitutions and laws framed by religious dogma, archaic traditions, patriarchal social structures, and the corrupt political elite. No political group is more determinedly secular, modern, and progressive in its approach to equality of all citizens, and justice for all citizens than the SSNP. Finally, the ideology of the SSNP offers a vision for the future of the Syrian nationhood that is never anachronistic or dated because it is open to the agency of human intellect in its finest iterations.
As a movement, the SSNP has suffered from the inadequacy of its leadership, the dissipation of its human resources, and blind adherence to antiquated forms in its discipline, all endangering its survival. Yet all observers agree that the Party has created within its ranks a unique social model of the elimination of sectarian and ethnic ailments that plague Syria. The SSNP is proof that the religious and ethnic divisions of Syria can be eliminated with the agency of its ideology, a sustained experiment of progressive social transformation with no equal in the modern Middle East. In a society where religious and ethnic divisions are perpetually roiling the masses, the success of the SSNP in creating a modern equalitarian community within its ranks and in the broader context of the more numerous adherents to its ideology must represent a powerful draw.
Another aspect of the movement that has contributed to its longevity is that it has inaugurated in Syria the age of ideologically committed heroism. The noble heroism of the SSNP founder and leader in his life and his martyrdom remains an inspiring symbol that draws new elements into the constituency. Antoun Saadeh the man was easy to kill, but his death made Antoun Saadeh the symbol, the noble hero, the martyr, nearly invincible. Critics could attack his ideas and policies, but his integrity and devotion to the cause are unassailable as they are stamped with his blood. The emulation of the noble heroism of the leader has created an ethos in the SSNP that is difficult to squash. It permeates the image of the Party of itself and informs its indoctrination policies and literature.
An additional factor of possibly lesser importance than the above but of complementary effect is the intellectual school that Saadeh founded and SSNP intellectuals developed. It would not be superlative to state that this intellectual school has influenced friend and foe across the entire spectrum of cultural activities in Syria, the former by creating the impetus to innovate and the latter by challenging their notions and driving them to attempt to refute it.
Saadeh once stated that if he were to be abandoned by all his comrades and the community he created disbanded, he would carry the message to generations yet unborn. Many such generations seem to have heeded his call.
* * *
1 Finer, S. E. The man on horseback; the role of the military in politics. Praeger, New York, 1962.
2 Joshua Landis: Early US policy toward Palestinian refugees: The Syria option. In The Palestinian Refugees: Old Problems--new Solutions, edited by J. Ginat, Edward Joseph Perkins, University of Oklahoma Press, 2001.
3 Sami M. Moubayed, Steel & Silk: Men and Women who Shaped Syria 1900-2000, Cune Press, Seattle, 2006.
4 “The political atmosphere of Syria now assumed a pathological character. Under the direction of Abdul Hamid al-Sarraj, chief of military intelligence, treason trials, arrests, plots, and counterplots became the normal order of the day. Conspiracy hunts, long-term imprisonments without formal charges, and the use of torture to obtain confessions became ordinary procedures of security. Hundreds of political refugees flocked to Lebanon and neighboring countries.” Sharabi, Hisham, Governments and politics of the Middle East in the twentieth century. Princeton, N.J., Van Nostrand [1962], page 130.
5 Yusuf al-Khal, Adonis and Khalil Hawi are three SSNP-affiliated poets that played a leading role in modernizing poetry in Arabic since the middle of the 1950s. Robyn Creswell: The Man Who Remade Arabic Poetry, The New Yorker. December 18 & 25, 2017.
6 Erika G. Alin, The United States and the 1958 Lebanon Crisis: American Intervention in the Middle East. University Press of America, 1994.
7 Adel Beshara, Lebanon: The Politics of Frustration - The Failed Coup of 1961, Routledge, London, 2005.
8 On March 26, 1976, the Christian militias massacred unarmed SSNP members and their families in the village of Aintoura northeast of Beirut, a phenomenon that will repeat itself throughout the war.
9 Muslim militias and rogue elements allegedly were responsible for the death of the leading figures Bashir Obeid (senior SSNP leader) and Kamal Kheir Bek (poet and prominent anti-Israel activist) on November 5, 1980 and Habib Keyruz (senior SSNP leader) on October 22, 1987.
10 Immediately following Gemayel’s death, his militia forces attacked the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila on the outskirts of Beirut, and between September 16 and September 18, 1982, massacred thousands of unarmed civilians of all ages and gender while the Israeli Defense Force watched but did not interfere. While the massacre was depicted as a reaction to the assassination of Bachir, it represented a continuation of a policy of ethnic cleansing that the Christian militias had repeatedly exercised during the Lebanese civil war. Massacre of large numbers of civilians had been done by Bashir forces in 1976 in the shanti-town of Qarantina in Beirut, and the captured Palestinian refugee camp of Tel-Zaatar. PLO forces were guilty of similar acts in the town of Damour south of Beirut in 1976.
11 The organization first emerged in 1976-1978, during the Lebanese civil war, and gained visibility for some limited activity against Israel. The label, however, was dormant for a few decades and resurfaced during the Syrian civil war.
Appendix
THE PRINCIPLES AND AIM OF THE SSNP
BY ANTOUN SAADEH, BASED ON THE FOURTH EDITION, 1947
THE BASIC PRINCIPLES
THE FIRST BASIC PRINCIPLE
Syria is for the Syrian
s and the Syrians are a complete nation.
When I began to give serious thought to the revival of our nation and observe the irresponsible political movements rampant in its midst, it became forthwith certain to me that our most urgent problem was the determination of our national identity. Although there was no consensus of opinion concerning this problem, I became convinced that the starting point of every correct national endeavor must be the raising of this fundamental philosophical question: Who are we? After extensive research, I arrived at the following conclusion: We are Syrians and we constitute a distinct national entity.
The confused conceptions of our nation implied in the statements such as ‘we are Lebanese,’ ‘Palestinians,’ ‘Syrians,’ ‘Iraqis,’ or ‘Arabs’ have contributed to the breaking up of our national identity and cannot serve as the basis of a genuine national consciousness or of our national revival. Thus, the assertion that the Syrians constitute a nation complete in itself is a fundamental doctrine, which should put an end to ambiguity and place the national effort on the basis of clarity without which no national revival in Syria is possible. The realization of the complete nationhood of the Syrians and the active consciousness of this nationhood are two essential prerequisites for the vindication of the principle of national sovereignty. For, were the Syrians not a complete nation having right to sovereignty and to the establishment of an independent state, Syria would not be for the Syrians in the full sense, but might be subject to claims of sovereignty by non-Syrian entities pursuing interests conflicting with, or that likely to conflict with, the interests of the Syrian people.