Outright Assassination

by Adel Beshara

  The greatest calamity befalling Syria [he wrote in 1925] is the zuama who have none of the qualifications for leadership. They are men who, if the truth is to be said, lack all political, military or economic knowledge . . . and if they happened to discuss a substantial national problem, they do this like children.29

  With this attitude, common to the vast majority of revolutionaries and reformers at all times, Sa’adeh came to espouse a radical view of change. The term he used for that is nahda, a notion of change not only in the institutions and power structure of society, but also in its ideological foundation, and the beliefs and myths that stem from it. In other words, the crucial issue for Sa’adeh was not to substitute one government for another, or to speed the forthcoming birth of a new system that society could produce in its present condition. Nor was it a question of giving society an additional impetus to speed up its progression towards the realization of goals to which it was clearly progressing. The issue for him was that of changing the whole life of a nation whose development had stopped long ago, and whose objective potential for movement in new directions had shrunk and dwindled away to almost nothing.30

  Once again Sa’adeh inveighed against the status quo in his country arguing that its institutions were unsuitable to the task of national revival and that, therefore, an alternative arrangement was required for that purpose. He had in mind a highly disciplined political party operating outside of and, if necessary, in opposition to the existing structure. The Syrian National Party (later the SSNP),31 which he secretly established in 1932, was consciously designed with that objective in mind. Sa’adeh then raised the political stakes by bravely exposing worrying trends about the state of thinking amongst his political opponents. His tone was furious and often brutal. His critique of religious and sectarian “nationalism” was particularly scathing. Sharp, lucid, mordant, realistic, and astonishingly modern in tone, it poured ridicule on what he considered to be naively personal and communal interpretations of nationalism. Sa’adeh also rejected the class-reductionist interpretation of Marxism by defining nationalism as a state of mind for all social forces in which the nation is a “stake” for the various classes.32

  Behind his assault on the prevailing political doctrines stood more complex emotions connected with his own self-image as the redeemer of Lebanon. As early as 192133 he had posed the question of whether Lebanon’s interest would be better served by preserving its independent entity or by absorbing it into a union with Syria. And as far back as then the answer was a foregone conclusion: Lebanon is an invaluable part of Syria, no different, certainly no less important, than the rest of the country. A separate Lebanon thus represented one of those demands that Sa’adeh was either reluctant to accept, or unable to fulfil. After the Syrian National Party was founded, he would again break ranks with the Christian Lebanese by denying the sovereign impenetrability of Lebanon’s frontiers. “It is clear,” he asserted, “that the Lebanese question can only be sectionally justified. The Lebanese question is not based on the existence of Lebanon as something independent, or on the existence of a separate Lebanese homeland, or even on an independent Lebanese history. Its only basis is religious party partisanship and theocracy.”34

  Such pronouncements aroused feelings of atavistic insecurity among the Lebanonists, who felt that Lebanon had a special mission in life and that in order to fulfil this mission Lebanese political independence must be preserved at all costs. In 1936 a campaign was spearheaded by the Jesuit newspaper al-Bashir in coordination with Bkirki, the fortress of Lebanese Christian nationalism, to deter Sa’adeh from pursuing his political objectives. While portraying themselves as the true patriots and creative defenders of Lebanon, its architects sought to project Sa’adeh as a traitor who had not been adequately socialized to comprehend the moral principles and realities of the socio-political order. The campaign was relatively successful but did not in the least shake Sa’adeh’s belief in his own views. The SNP leader went into damage control explaining that neither Lebanon’s destruction nor its merger with Syria was part of his intention. Emphasizing the difference between Lebanon as a “political question” arising from a religious motive and Syria as a “national cause” he stated:

  Our Social Nationalist ideology is a social thing and the Lebanese entity is a political thing and we do not confuse the two. If utility or political conditions required that the Lebanese entity needed to become an actual, physical entity, the question from this aspect remains a purely political one and there is no justification to turn it into a national issue. Because of this, those who consider the Social Nationalist Party a party that exists solely to demand Syrian unity err or misunderstand its cause. Those who try to panic the ultras among the Lebanese by saying that the party wants to annex Lebanon to Syria are deliberately making false propaganda.35

  Later, Sa’adeh was able to point to numerous factual errors in the Lebanonist nationalist discourse. “If the [Lebanese] Christians refer back to their scripture, the Bible,” he asserted in reference to the Phoenician thesis, “they will find that it is defined as the Phoenicia of Syria, not the Phoenicia of Lebanon.”36 Again, “The Maronites, they being part of the Syrian people that is centred in the interior of Syria, are Syriac rather than Phoenician in their original tongue and in culture and blood.”37 With clever use of their deficient historical knowledge of Maronitism, Sa’adeh was, in fact, able to question the Lebanonist discourse as a whole. In several simply and beautifully written accounts, he laid bare the anxieties of Lebanese particularism in a world where impassioned nationalism had managed to flourish.38

  Alongside his well-reasoned critiques of Lebanese particularism, on another front in 1936, Sa’adeh opened fire on the political establishment and showed that its world-view would lead to national suicide. His targets, again, were the zu’ama,39 who had worked their way back into the system and were presenting themselves as “national leaders”:

  Some people took up the leadership of the popular dissatisfaction and exploited it in order to obtain the positions they sought, and they bolstered up this leadership by the remains of family power derived from the principles of a bygone age – principles which consider the people as herds to be disposed of by certain families, dissipating the interests of the people for the sake of their personal power. And when these so-called leaders found that the family and the home were not sufficient in this age to uphold leadership, they resorted to certain words beloved by the people – the words of liberty, independence, and principles – and they played upon these words, words which are sacred when they indicate an ideal for a living nation, but which are corrupt when they fire a means for assuming leadership and a screen behind which lurk ambition and private aims.40

  Sa’adeh then opened merciless war on the ruling elite and the “opportunists” in the state who were endangering the whole future of the national movement and who aimed to produce only servile entitism. As soon as he was finished with the Christian Lebanonists, he began a series of articles which took the struggle right up to the political establishment with all the explosive power of original and genuinely revolutionary thought:

  There is a limit that every government has to stop at as regards the determination of general and ultimate destiny, which is the destiny of the people and not the government. Any government that attempts to bind the destiny of the people to its own destiny is a government in breach of state interests . . . the Lebanese government has developed into an intelligence bureau and ordinary Lebanese can no longer feel safe in his home, or work, or community.41

  This conception meant, in fact, that the entire edifice of the Lebanese political establishment was corrupt; it meant, as well, that those who were in charge of it were corrupt and thus lacked credibility. Sa’adeh was able to analyse the Lebanese political establishment, its theoretical foundations and system of clientele and patronage politics, no longer as an irrational jumble of accidents, nor as the fulfilment of definite ideas and notions, but as a systematic politically explicable de
velopment sustained by leaders soaked in opportunism and self-interest. Ultimately, this fight on two fronts, the clear demarcation of the line of nationalist activism from opposing tendencies, and at the same time concrete explanations of practical tasks, would earn Sa’adeh many enemies. He was derided and denounced on all sides, not merely by direct opponents, but also by the majority of the politically inexperienced masses that he aimed to educate. That would include the pan-Arabists of Lebanon and the francophone Lebanese nationalists, who saw him as a threat to the integrity of Lebanon and to the basic political and ideological foundations of the state.42 The real charge against Sa’adeh, however, was left to the state, which reacted with indignant rage.

  The Political Establishment vs. Sa’adeh

  Sa’adeh’s political debut in November 1935 presented an instant problem to the political establishment in Lebanon. His vision of a Syrian nation, independent and sovereign, clashed directly with its effort to solidify the Lebanese entity within the French-created 1920 demarcation lines and as a separate state from Syria. It could not have come at a worse time for the central authorities, who were on the verge of a crucial victory brought on by the readiness of the Lebanese Syrian unionists43 to join the political system after years of boycott and intransigence. There had been the occasional attempts to exclude these “unionists” from the political process but in general, these attempts, which the French initiated after the Great Syrian Revolt of 1925, “did not neutralize the apparatus of the state in relation to [them], but instead tried to neutralize and marginalize them in relation to the state.”44 With Sa’adeh the converse was applied: the French-Lebanese political leadership did not attempt to neutralize and marginalize Sa’adeh in relation to the state, but instead attempted to neutralize the apparatus of the state in relation to him. They did this by utilizing the legal system to frighten Sa’adeh into submission, thus illustrating to the general public the presumptive willingness of authorities to play by the legal rules. However, it soon transpired that the challenge he posed to them was not a mere spontaneous idiosyncratic deviation by a resentful individual, but a calculated act that was both organized and part of a program of resistance.

  In 1936, a public statement entitled the “Blue Declaration,” issued even as a Syrian delegation was in Paris negotiating with the French Government for the conclusion of a Franco-Syrian Treaty, raised the stakes between Sa’adeh and the authorities even higher. In the “Blue Declaration” Sa’adeh re-affirmed his faith in Syrian nationalism and again questioned the integrity of Lebanese separatism:

  The Lebanese question is a complimentary part of the broad Syrian cause. It is therefore impermissible to treat it as an independent issue. Just as the Syrian delegation in Paris has no right to represent the Syrian cause in its broad sense and, conversely, the right to represent the Lebanese question, likewise sectarian desires in Lebanon are not entitled to that right.45

  The authorities responded by encouraging the growth of confessional parties, notably the Phalanges Libanais46 and the Najjadah.47 Sa’adeh became the object of a character assassination and was smeared as a treasonous tool of European Fascism. One newspaper, al-Masa’, continued to publish slanderous reports about Sa’adeh based on unconfirmed reports about his activity until incensed SNP members gave its owner “a good lesson.”48 The French were not amused and charged Sa’adeh with inciting rebellion. In the last week of February 1937, government security forces clashed with his followers at a political rally in the Lebanese mountain town of Bekfeyya. In retaliation, the government arrested Sa’adeh for a third time on a charge of inciting the people against public order.49 But with parliamentary elections looming, the Lebanese Prime minister freed Sa’adeh after obtaining from him an agreement to respect and uphold the existence of the Lebanese state. Actually, Sa’adeh gave that agreement on the condition that Lebanon’s statehood would remain a matter for the will of the people to determine. The French accepted this condition to pacify him while dealing with more urgent problems brought on by Alexandretta’s transfer to Turkey.

  In the ensuing period of “peaceful coexistence”50 between Sa’adeh and the authorities, the SNP leader was allowed, for the first time, to issue a newspaper and to speak more openly about his political views. The authorities allowed this to happen because they thought that compromise might work better with him than confrontation: they were wrong again. Sa’adeh turned his newspaper, an-Nahda, into a forum against the French Mandate and its “stooges” in Lebanon and Syria and forced open a long-delayed and still unfinished debate about Lebanon’s future. Though not instantly anti-France, the paper moved quickly in that direction.

  Early in 1938, the French again swung the cleaver in Sa’adeh’s direction. With war in Europe fast approaching, the general suspicion that Sa’adeh was on the Nazi payroll picked up again. The evidence was clearly lacking but Sa’adeh’s anti-liberal and anti-parliamentary tendencies, his focus on discipline, youth and nationalism, the cult of leadership and the swastika-like emblem of his party provided enough material to condemn him as a Nazi agent. The well-rehearsed accusation was trotted out, but only as an overture to a deadlier assault on him.

  The intensity and sometimes ferocity of the conflict had a telling effect on Sa’adeh. He continued to work steadily and unobtrusively among the young intellectuals and the few groups in the country that shared his concern for the national interest, but his hold over public opinion remained marginal and indecisive. At some point in 1938 Sa’adeh caught wind of a government conspiracy against him and planned his escape. Some in Lebanon alleged that Sa’adeh’s physical extermination was intended, but the Lebanese authorities denied that. Nonetheless, as a precaution, the Supreme Council in the party advised Sa’adeh to leave the country, which he did clandestinely in 1938.51 Two days later, government security forces raided the headquarters of his party, confirming what the party had suspected all along.

  The Calm Before the Storm

  The outbreak of the Second World War brought immediate changes in every sphere of life, in Lebanon as well as Syria. Various measures were taken to ensure the safety of the two states and bring them under tight control. In Lebanon the French High Commissioner, General Weygand, dissolved the Chamber, dismissed the ministry, suspended the Constitution and delegated the administration to a Secretary of State directly responsible to the President of the Republic.52 Moreover, suspect organizations were dissolved and some of their leading members were arrested: some were sentenced by military tribunals to exceedingly long terms of imprisonment on charges of subversion and conspiracy. Sa’adeh’s supporters and top aides were among the arrested. They were exonerated of the charge of subversion but indicted on the lesser charges of operating without a permit and causing public disorder. Sa’adeh was sentenced in absentia to ten years imprisonment and a further ten years of exile. The sentence was upheld in 1940 by the Vichy-appointed High Commissioner in Beirut.

  After the Allied takeover of Lebanon and Syria was completed in 1942, the new Free French administrator brought new persecution against Sa’adeh’s followers as part of a general drive against independence-seeking movements. As a result, in the 1943 presidential campaign the SNP broke away from its original policy of neutrality in Lebanese electoral politics and sided with Beshara Khoury: Emile Edde was seen as a symbol of French influence.53 In exchange Khoury promised to release all SNP detainees if elected to the Lebanese presidency. Khoury did become President in 1943 but before attending to that promise, he was arrested by the French High Commissioner, along with Premier Solh and government ministers, for attempting to annul France’s special privileges in Lebanon. In the ensuing struggle, Sa’adeh, who was now domiciled in Argentina serving out an imposed exile, instructed his followers from abroad to support the Lebanese government.54 For its part, the government, on its reinstatement some days later, released all political prisoners and allowed the SNP, along with other parties, to resume political activity: the issue of Sa’adeh’s return was deferred, though.


  The new direction freed the government from an important responsibility and reinforced its reputation as democratic and forward-thinking. This is not to suggest that goodwill was exclusively or even mainly the reason behind the government’s action: (1) the government lacked both the strength and the adaptability of the French to engage the SNP; and (2) its army, which was still officially tied to the Troupes Speciales du Levant,55 was small and ill-equipped to deal with political disturbances. Moreover, using repression as a domestic policy tool after the SNP had given formal expression to its attachment to Lebanese independence would have undermined the government’s image and furnished the French with an excuse to stay longer in Lebanon.

  With these objectives clearly in mind, the Lebanese leadership in 1945 reached a formal compromise with the SNP whereby they agreed to legalize the party in exchange for a pledge from the latter to work within the framework of the National Pact.56 As a complementary condition, the SNP leadership was required to tone down the party’s pan-Syrian rhetoric and turn the party into a “Lebanese” organization. The deal advanced in great strides so much so that by 1946 the SNP looked almost indistinguishable from other Lebanese parties and nothing like the SNP of the previous decade. Outwardly:

  The word ‘Syrian’ was removed from the party’s name. It was now called the National Party.

  The flag of the party was modified and its colours changed.

  The party’s head office in Beirut began to exercise greater autonomy from its branches in Palestine and the Syrian Republic.

  The party’s manner of salute was toned-down.

  Inwardly, the party was “directed more toward the domestic problems of independent Lebanon than to the national problem as defined by Sa’adeh.”57 It capped off its transformation with a direct attack on the Greater Syria Scheme: