2 - Formation of the United Arab Republic

Summary

No one wanted unity. Even ‘Abd al-Nasser didn't want it … Who at that hour could dare say we do not want unity? The people would tear their heads off.

Afif-al-Bizri

On 11 January 1958, as a self-appointed Syrian delegation of army officers arrived in Cairo to negotiate an unprecedented political union with Egypt, Nasser had his sights set beyond the Arab world, entertaining his friend and ally Indonesian President Sukarno in the temperate climate of Aswan. It took a month of heated negotiations with the Syrians before Nasser was able to exact terms he considered favourable for union, following which he declared: ‘Today Arab nationalism is not just a matter of slogans and shouts; it has become an actual reality.’ Indeed the formation of the United Arab republic (UAR) marked the first time that a country had voluntarily sacrificed its sovereignty in the name of Arab unity. ‘Qawmiyya’ (pan-Arabism) had triumphed over ‘Wataniyya’ (nationhood) and decades of unfulfilled Arab rhetoric had finally become a reality.

The Anglo-American intelligence community was all too familiar with the political scene in Syria. Indeed, it was here that the CIA led the first military coup in the Arab world: the 1949 bloodless putsch by Colonel Husni al-Za'im. Za'im only lasted a few months before he was overthrown and executed by rival officers, following which Damascus saw a series of coups and countercoups culminating in union with Egypt in 1958. Due to its strategic position across oil pipelines, connecting the Persian Gulf with NATO member Turkey, Syria was central to Western calculations in the Middle East. In the enthusiasm for covert action that marked this era, SIS and the CIA conspired to execute a coup in Damascus in 1956 that was foiled by the Syrian intelligence services. In 1957, a second CIA plot, codenamed Operation Wappen, tried and failed to engineer another military overthrow in Syria, eventually forcing the notoriously weak President Quwatly to seek support from the Soviet Union. In turn the Syrian Ba'ath party appealed to Nasser for salvation from Communist infiltration of the Syrian government.

Despite the involvement of Western intelligence services in post-war Syria, few recent works have untangled the perceptions of the intelligence community's assessment of the motivations and implications of this dramatic symbol of Arab unity.