by Adel Beshara
There is an amusing passage in Abdullah Qubarsi’s memoirs where the author describes how a band of SNP fighters heading to the front picked up a civilian officer of the party from his hotel room in Damascus and took him along for the ride even though he had no previous military experience.75 The officer was conducting business in the Syrian capital even as the rebellion was taking place!
Following Sa’adeh’s disappearance on the evening of 6 July, his followers had ample time to mount a rescue mission. Why it did not cross anyone’s mind to attempt to save him is anyone’s guess and rests squarely with those in the party’s hierarchy who were privy to his disappearance but failed to report it. After Sa’adeh’s execution, the party was consumed with frustration and finger-pointing directed mainly, but not entirely, at Maaruf Saab, Sa’adeh’s political advisor, and his wife Adele, whose residence was Sa’adeh’s last pick up point. Quoting Juliet El-Mir Sa’adeh:
Party officials used to drop in at the house [where I was staying] and there would be heated debates between them and the members. At times the debates would take place among the officials themselves, and it was entirely about recent events – how this or that person proceeded and what action he should have taken and why he didn’t take it. Among those who came under close scrutiny from the party members and trustees was Maaruf Saab. Some queried why the appointment with Husni al-Zaim was allowed to go ahead in the first place and why he didn’t report it to the trustees. What’s more, why did Maaruf Saab feign the meeting at the [Presidential] Palace to trustee Abduallah Muhsin, even though the latter told him that he had significant news concerning Sa’adeh and that it was vitally important that he got it before the meeting? Maaruf Saab’s answer to Abdullah was that the meeting had been cancelled and that Sa’adeh’s whereabouts were unknown or that he could not divulge it to anyone. Delighted by the news of the cancellation, trustee Abdullah then left.76
Adele Saab evidently aroused the suspicion of party members when details of her misconduct came to the fore:
Maaruf Saab and his wife were also given a tongue-lashing from Abla Khoury, who turned up at the Saab’s residence and explicitly told Adele that she [i.e., Abla] had been sent by her uncle Faris el-Khoury to pass to Sa’adeh extremely sensitive information.
Adele: Sa’adeh is not here.
Abla: But I cannot emphasize enough the importance of the matter especially that it is from my uncle Faris. I must speak to him at once.
Adele: I can’t help you. These are orders from Sa’adeh himself.
Abla: Then ask him yourself and come back to me. Tell him that it is important and potentially dangerous and comes from my uncle.
Adele: Don’t waste your time. It is impossible to report to him.77
Abla left the Saabs fuming with anger and cursing them for their arrogance.
The effect of such reckless behaviour was to spawn an atmosphere of the deepest despair in party ranks. It raised doubts about the sincerity of Sa’adeh’s field helpers during the uprising and about their contribution, consciously or unconsciously, to his downfall. The fact that party leaders failed to inquire into the nature of the transgressions and punish the perpetrators has provided an even greater cause for suspicion. Paradoxically, in the end, the main suspects, George Abdul Massih and Maaruf Saab, were promoted to the highest offices in the party after Sa’adeh’s death, and a third, Adib Shishakli, later on became a Syrian president. For some, though, that makes the case for conspiracy even stronger.
This brings us to the other side of the theory: why did the perpetrators betray Sa’adeh and what exactly did they expect to achieve? For some it was for political expediency: the conspirators provided opportunities for Sa’adeh’s demise in order to seize control of the party and pursue their own political agendas. Others place more emphasis on character motives: out of envy of Sa’adeh’s charismatic leadership or out of resentment for his disciplinary ideological style. Whatever the reason, both sides back up their claims by drawing on the political and ideological deviation that surfaced inside the party after Sa’adeh’s death. Such deviation, however, is typical of movements that lose their prophetic leaders unexpectedly: “In the case of prophetic leaders, lines and processes of succession are usually cloudier. Conflict may quickly engulf a movement’s top echelons as secondary figures scramble for the mantle of leadership. Because prophetic leaders are less likely to routinize their authority than administrative leaders, the movement may falter in factional infighting.”78
As so often the case, it is difficult to ascertain with exactitude the validity of this theory. While it tends to adhere to reasonable standards of critical thinking based on eye-witness accounts, the evidence on which it rests is patchy and open to various interpretations. The theory offers no factual evidence to condemn anyone and the allegations depend on unverifiable data. On the existing evidence we cannot lightly condemn the “perpetrators” for hypocrisy and spite; and even if our final verdict should be unfavourable, it is wrong to pass it without attempting to penetrate to some degree into the minds and motives of these men, to try to understand why they could, and thought they should, commit a crime so seemingly damnable.
In any subjective theory as this, it is often more than difficult to analyse precisely human motives and to distinguish the genuine from the specious: no man knows his own heart well enough for that. Within Sa’adeh’s inner-circle there were many who, while they might feel the meaner motive, were nonetheless sincere when they joined themselves to the party, and who gave true life and meaning to its cause. It would be unfair to penalize these people for the selfish actions of a few and to do so while the confessions themselves contain inherent improbabilities. Yet it would be equally unfair to let the issue pass before we have all the facts needed to establish the truth.
The proportion of misconduct by Sa’adeh’s confidants was high and inexcusable, especially where intrigue was common and always potentially dangerous. However, only time will tell whether it was part of a greater scheme aimed at Sa’adeh’s destruction or if it was purely the result of individual incompetence and ineptitude. For now, the trail is not clear enough to substantiate or disprove either possibility.
5. A Victim of Circumstances
Detractors of conspiracy theories and some scholars discount the presence of a deliberate plot against Sa’adeh. Rather they see his execution largely as a domestic Lebanese issue, the culmination of a power play between competing interests in which Sa’adeh played his cards and lost. He was, in other words, a victim of circumstances over which he had no control nor adequate resources and experience to deal with. His death is thus explained as basically the result of false impressions and bad politics.
The most recent exposition of this theory can be found in Eyal Zisser’s solid and illuminating study on Lebanon’s independence era:
Rather than being the villain of the piece, Sa’ada thus was to some extent a victim of circumstances. The weakness of the Lebanese regime, its irritability, the panic to which it was then becoming subject – all these had as much to do with Sa’ada’s trial and execution as his own actions. Yet he was no innocent victim: he entered in the confrontation with open eyes and willingly allowed Khuri’s rivals to exploit him. Moreover, he did not hesitate to challenge publicly the Lebanese political system and to question the right of the Lebanese
state to exist. In doing so, he hastened his own end.79
In Zisser’s view, Sa’adeh advanced his own demise by positioning himself outside the political establishment and in the direct line of fire between the incumbent regime and its opponents. Internally, that included Chamoun and Jumblatt as leaders of a new alliance precipitated by the fraudulent election in 1947. Externally, the opponent was the Zaim regime in Syria: “The Lebanese regime soon came to think of itself as facing a common front formed by Za’im in Syria, its traditional rivals at home and its new adversary, Sa’ada.”80 Zisser goes on to paint a political picture depicting the Khoury regime in a state of panic exacerbated by “Za’im
’s overt support for Sa’ada, and his conjectured covert support for other opponents of the regime.”81 Another worry for the Lebanese establishment was Britain, thought to be backing both the Lebanese opposition to secure the Lebanese presidency for Chamoun, and Sa’adeh out of a shared interest in Greater Syria: “It was against this background that, in the summer of 1949 [sic], the government decided to take action against the PPS.”82 It was a decision taken “from an overall sense of being threatened”83 by the aforesaid forces.
Next, Zisser purported to show that Sa’adeh “was no more than a pawn on a chessboard on which a larger game was being played.”84 Each player in this game had his own agenda but none really cared about Sa’adeh. The players on his side of the chessboard backed him against the Lebanese regime but purely out of self-regard rather than for the ideas he represented. Thus, they discarded him when he ceased to be of any service to them – all of which was made easier by Sa’adeh’s trusting nature, political inexperience, and misapprehension of events:
True, [Sa’adeh] had chosen the road of confrontation, but he may not have understood what course events were bound to take. He may have deluded himself that, as in the past, the Lebanese government would recoil from serious action; or else he may have believed in the promises given him by Za’im as well as by Chamoun and Junbalat.85
Before examining Zisser’s thesis, some factual corrections are in order:
The contention that the PPS anthem opened with the words “Syria, Syria above all” is untrue.86
The assertion that the Lebanese public “unquestioningly” accepted the claim of the Khoury regime that Sa’adeh had planned to bring down the regime is questionable.87 It is belied by Zisser’s observation that Sa’adeh’s death “elicited harsh reactions in Lebanon.”88
True, the cabinet convened the evening of the Jummaizeh incident on 9 June, 1949 to proclaim the PPS an illegal organization,89 but according to Farid Chehab the decision to ban the PPS was taken during a secret meeting held before the incident.90
There is no evidence to suggest that Sa’adeh entered into an alliance with Chamoun and Jumblatt. In fact, he didn’t.
The main problem with Zisser’s thesis is that it raises more questions than it answers. It doesn’t really tell us, for example, why the Lebanese government persisted with the execution of Sa’adeh after he was extradited from Syria. If the matter was as simple as the picture painted by Zisser, why didn’t the regime attempt to use Sa’adeh as a bargaining chip after it had resoundingly crushed his rebellion? Would the regime have responded differently had it been a person other than Sa’adeh? Given the alarming nature of the crisis, did any other external forces, apart from Syria, become involved? Zisser’s thesis thus requires more elaboration. The thrust of his analysis seems to be on the confrontation between Sa’adeh and the Khoury regime rather than on its dramatic outcome. At one point Zisser states: “Altogether, it is more than doubtful whether Sa’ada posed an actual threat to Lebanon.”91 Yet he doesn’t clearly explain how and why the Khoury regime came to regard him as a threat. Nor does he explain why the regime refused to accommodate Sa’adeh after the PPS leader openly accepted Lebanon’s existence and allowed his supporters to participate in local elections. If the main issue at stake was “the wish of Khuri’s opponents – whether domestic, or in Za’im’s time, Syrian – to turn Sa’ada into an instrument to serve their own purposes,”92 then it is necessary to explain why the regime did not attempt to lure Sa’adeh from its principal internal opponents (Chamoun and Jumblatt) or from President Zaim later on, by pacifying the PPS leader: both Khoury and Solh were master-players in this game. Finally, how could a regime that enjoyed wide international recognition and support, particularly from the United States, Britain and France, feel threatened by a quasi-militia?
The real threat to the Khoury regime during this time came from its principal domestic opponents, not Sa’adeh. The SNP leader did not command enough electoral support to topple the government. Like the communists, his support was cross-sectional, not sectarian. This placed them outside the confessional system of Lebanon. In contrast, Chamoun and Jumblatt were integral members of the system and true sectarian leaders in their own right, a pre-requisite for electoral success under the Lebanese confessional system. They were primed more than Sa’adeh to bring down the Khoury regime. By Zisser’s own account, both men approached President Zaim and openly cooperated with his regime during the same period. Zisser notes that “that Za’im’s promises to the Lebanese opposition had included the supply of arms and army personnel.”93 Why, then, did the Khoury regime take forcible action against Sa’adeh and not against them? As early as 1948, the Lebanese Phalange had contemplated an armed Maronite revolt against Khoury, with Israel’s help. A year later, on 17 July, 1949, Lebanese security forces captured a large cache of “machine-guns, pistols, ammunition and hand grenades . . . secreted in the garden”94 of their central headquarters. Likewise, in 1948, a disgruntled Druze chieftain called Nouhad Arslan staged an unsuccessful military coup against the Khoury regime that claimed as many fatalities as Sa’adeh’s short uprising, a single Lebanese gendarmerie. It was apparently planned and executed with the knowledge and moral support of a senior Maronite clergy who was himself openly stirring sedition against the Khoury regime. Yet on every single one of these occasions the government dealt with matters in a conciliatory way as though nothing serious had happened. The main drawback in Zisser’s explanation is the lack of attention to regime duplicity in dealing with potential threats.
Zisser’s thesis that the Lebanese government had acted out of despair is also seriously flawed. On the eve of Sa’adeh’s trial, the fear that stemmed from Zaim’s tactical embracement of Sa’adeh was extraneous to the questions at issue. It was relevant up to a certain point during the early phases of the power struggle between Sa’adeh and the Khoury regime, but became virtually extinct prior to Sa’adeh’s trial. At that juncture the regime in Lebanon was under no threat over Sa’adeh from either the Lebanese opposition or Syria: the Lebanese opposition had no real interest in Sa’adeh and Syria’s relations with Lebanon were on the mend and getting better. In fact, with the international and regional order on its side, the Khoury regime was in a commanding position to conduct the trial without any “fear” or “panic” at all. It could not have acted out of “political despair” either because theoretically despair is a state of mind for someone who is the victim of circumstances rather than their master.
All in all, the “victim of circumstances” or “politics of despair” theory is useful as an historical framework. It provides an essential context by which to reconstruct and evaluate the chain of events prior to the trial, but it does not provide adequate explanations as to why the Lebanese State behaved the way it did at the trial. The theory is based on circumstantial evidence that does not always connect. It is also myopic in that it devotes little space to the various forces that influenced proceedings from outside. Thus, it has the effect of overemphasizing the power struggle in the affair and a concomitant failure to be critical of the role of peripheral players. Beyond these general themes, the material obviously leaves open many lingering questions. Anyone with little or no familiarity with the saga would be able to gain from it at least a cursory understanding of what happened but not answers to the questions that continue to intrigue scholars to this day.
Why Was Sa’adeh Really Executed?
Whether Antun Sa’adeh’s drastic course of action was morally and ethically appropriate will remain a matter of opinion. But his intention, to fight back against a regime that had tried relentlessly to silence him and to cow his supporters into submission, has to be appreciated in order to understand why he was executed immediately. It is also crucial to the overall irony of his saga, namely this: why would a regime lay itself open to charges of injustice and improper use of the courts by seeking to eliminate a political adversary who, in its own estimation, was a mere social deviant? Until now, all attempts to answer this question have ce
ntred largely on Sa’adeh’s threat to the regime’s grip on power. Of course, there never had been any doubt about that. However, one cannot depend exclusively or even mainly on this explanation because it leaves far too many questions unanswered: Why did the Khoury regime expedite the execution rather than assure Sa’adeh a more dignified passage to his end? Why did it adopt a hands-off approach with respect to its other adversaries and not with respect to Sa’adeh? And why did it not attempt to negotiate with him after he was captured and handed over to the authorities?
As is true of similar occurrences, Sa’adeh’s elimination cannot be understood without critical analysis, and critical analysis reveals that he was killed for reasons primarily related to state repression: why and how political authorities use coercive power when faced with potential or existing challenges and challengers. State repression may be defined as a set of intentional actions, brute or cunning, attempted by the power-holders to contain challenging and threatening claims by “unruly” groups or individuals. It involves
the actual or threatened use of physical sanctions against an individual or organization, within the territorial jurisdiction of the state, for the purpose of imposing a cost on the target as well as deterring specific activities and/or beliefs perceived to be challenging to government personnel, practices or institutions.95
Three points are especially noteworthy: (1) not all state challengers are repressed at all times. Each state may have some threshold of tolerance to challenge depending on the issue, size, timing, persistence, and unity of the challenger; (2) while challengers perceive state repression as a barometer of political opportunities,96 state repressive effort is dually an indicator of how threatening the challengers appear to the state power-holders;97 and (3) variations in state repression are conditioned by challenger power as much as they are by existing resources. In other words, the kind of response that challengers will receive from the state has much to do with the breadth and depth of the challenger’s influence on the larger society.98