The Middle East

on the World Today

A LEAPFROG operation has put Russians into the Persian Gulf, the historic center of Soviet aspirations. The arrival of Soviet arms in Basra in December, followed by the inevitable training mission in Baghdad, has political rather than military implications. Playing on the neutralist line, the U.S.S.R. has found it a simple matter to follow up its new trading arrangements with sales of matériel. Meanwhile the return to Iraq of long-banished agents like the Kurdish general, Mulla Mustafa Barzani, ensures more active trouble among Iraq’s Kurds.

About one million Kurds populate the Iraqi section of Kurdistan, the Ottoman area now split four ways between Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. Their territory adjoins the Kirkuk oil center, and for this reason they have particular importance in Iraq. A considerable share of Development Board funds has been channeled during the last six years to this region for roads and health and welfare services. Thirty years ago, the Kurds’ importance was acknowledged when the League of Nations, in awarding Mosul province to Iraq, stipulated that the Kurds should be given administrative control in their own region, that Kurdish schools should be maintained, and that Kurdish should remain their official language.

This recognition and relative prosperity have given the Iraqi Kurds more of a stake in the country than has been attained by their cousins in surrounding Muslim countries. Nevertheless there has always been a tendency on the part of young Kurds to question the allegiance to Baghdad of some of their powerful tribal leaders. Among these restless elements Soviet propaganda for an independent Kurdistan has had the greatest effect.

Premier Kassem has anticipated fresh Kurdish restiveness and gone to considerable lengths to counteract it. The revolutionary government’s provisional constitution reaffirms that Arabs and Kurds are partners. The Arab sword and the Kurdish dagger are combined in the new symbol of the Iraqi republic. Kurdish opposition to PanArabism is obviously one of the reasons for Kassem’s great caution with regard to closer ties to the United Arab Republic.

The Russian strategy

The Russian game at the moment is not so much to stir up a real separatist movement in Kurdistan as to work through potential dissidents and other malcontents within the revolutionary government. One evidence of initial success in this tactic is the extent to which Baghdad’s radio and press now parrot Moscow propaganda.

Premier Kassem’s attempt to preserve the national character of the revolution and his resistance to Ba’ath Socialist pressures for immediate union with the UAR make great sense in Baghdad, where real neutrality and a social revolution on the Kemalist pattern are his primary goals. This independent stand, however, is being subtly misinterpreted by Pan-Arab enthusiasts with a measure of success which threatens to undermine Kassem. Having attracted Russian support on the grounds that Iraq will be easier to subvert in isolation, he is being pictured by the Ba’athists as a tool of Moscow, endangering the Arab movement.

Moreover, communications and relations with the United States are now so bad in Cairo that even American support of Kassem’s independent revolution is being painted as helpful to Communism for the sake of disrupting Arab unity.

In spite of the bizarre cacophony which fills Middle Eastern air waves, there are signs of healthier activity on the economic front. Domestic problems have begun to dominate the UAR scene following last summer’s revolutionary spasms, and it is possible to report a new determination by Arab leaders to organize more effectively their own welfare and economics.

Chambers of Commerce delegates from thirteen Arab countries met in Cairo in December to discuss ways of competing with the European Common Market. Ideas of economic union dormant since 1951 were revived with more than usual urgency by these business leaders. Immediately following these meetings, the first Asian-African economic conference brought in addition unofficial delegates from thirty-eight countries for sessions on common problems.

Resisting attempts of Soviet delegates to turn this gathering into a propaganda forum, the Egyptian government financed it and kept it on the assigned subjects. These, staggeringly difficult in themselves, dealt with elimination of “harmful" competition within the Afro-Asian world, effects of the European Common Market on Asia, easing of transfer payments, and other technical issues. Egypt’s insistence on being the host paid the expected good political dividends. The intention was to focus on Cairo as a successor to Bandung.

At the first Arab Oil Conference, scheduled for Cairo in April, technical exhibits and papers will deal with the problems of the producing countries. At the same time, a greater participation in the transportation and marketing aspects of petroleum is sure to be stressed. Among the outsiders invited are Venezuela and Iran.

Industrial development and the Nile

Meanwhile, the Arab League Economic Committee is driving once more for establishment of the long-contemplated regional Development Bank. Its proposed charter provides for subscriptions from member states in proportion to their present shares in the league budget. Its aims are to finance or guarantee the financing of development works and to encourage participation of private capital as well as investment by nonmember states, such as the Arab sheikdoms. Initial capitalization would be $56 million, and operations would be patterned after those of the International Bank, but with control in Arab hands. The refusal of Lebanon and Iraq to join in this common-sense proposal two years ago, when Egypt began actively to promote it, prevented earlier action. Its revival now seems possible as a by-product of the changes of government in those countries.

Egypt’s determination to get on with Nile River development is still plagued by politics. The Russian loan offer nevertheless helps to focus Egyptian attention on its great unsolved agricultural problem. Enough Egyptian prestige and Soviet money are now committed to the Aswan Dam project to ensure a start on it once agreement is reached with the Sudan on division of the Nile waters.

The difficulty here is that since achieving its independence, the Sudan has permitted its own claims to Nile water to become an issue in domestic politics. The recent military coup was designed to forestall a sellout to Egypt on this issue in the name of Arab nationalism by opposition Sudanese politicians. The coup appears to ensure an equal bargaining position for the Sudan, as the discussions are resumed on how to divide the waters which can be saved by both sides if their separate plans for dam building are reconciled.

In Cairo it is emphasized that Egypt’s industrial development depends on completing the coffer dams and diversion tunnels of the proposed High Dam by mid-1960. Some $50 million a year of Suez Canal revenues are to go to the project, and further participation by German, Italian, and Japanese interests is hoped for. In the present state of relations with Britain and America, help is not expected from those sources. But Egypt aims to keep the project international in character.

Egypt calls the tune

The second great domestic preoccupation in Cairo is with making the machinery of the UAR government work. Since the formation of the republic just a year ago, President Nasser has insisted literally on his conditions for unification: suspension of political parties and economic unification. A central administration has been established in the former Heliopolis Hotel, purchased for the purpose. Party activity has been suppressed, to the great distress of the Ba’ath Socialists. Redistribution of estates in Syria has been decreed on the Egyptian pattern. Syria’s merchants are being organized on unfamiliar lines, exports and imports controlled from Cairo. Martial law has been decreed along with land redistribution, indicating considerable unrest in rural areas. Reluctant Ba’ath officers have been posted to remote stations.

It seems to many Syrians a heavy price to pay for being rescued from Communism. One great difficulty is that Syria has been a going concern economically, with a higher living standard than is possible in Egypt. It has ten times more arable land per capita than Egypt, and the two economies have been competitive. Syrian businessmen resent interference in their free economy, isolation from the European business contacts, and centralization of the new planned economy in Cairo. A drought has added to their worries, as has the Lebanese war, which seriously cut their trade. For the first time in recent years there has been a Syrian budget deficit. This has, of course, compounded the difficulties of establishing an integrated economy with Egypt.

The stresses within the UAR and President Nasser’s innate caution in Arab affairs appear to be guiding his present policy in relation to both Iraq and Jordan. Looking at Jordan, he can see only economic liabilities, plus embroilment with Israel, if the Hussein government is overthrown by outside forces. Moreover, there are signs that Hussein himself may be willing to broaden his support by permitting some measure of return to constitutional processes. The ending of martial law and freeing of some political prisoners in December indicated a change in tactics. His own position was successfully if artificially enhanced by the dramatic plane incident in which he was allegedly attacked by Syrian MIGs en route to Europe last fall.

Whoever contrived Hussein’s “escape” did him a great service. He appears again as a hero; and the scapegoat of the local Ba’athists is now his first minister, Samir Rifai. Even Jordan’s dependence on Western bounty is no longer considered so invidious. Realists in Cairo recognize that without it Jordan would collapse.

The collapse of Jordan would increase the chances of war. All sides prefer a stalemate. In Israel, approaching an election year, Rightwing activists are campaigning for a march to the Jordan. But responsible elements see the perils in any such course and propose instead a demilitarization of the west bank and UN occupation. The Arab reply is that other demilitarized zones, notably in the Huleh area, on the Syrian border, and El Auja, have lost their neutral character as UN forces have yielded to Israeli pressures. They note, too, that Israel has yet to admit UNEF patrols to the Israeli side of the border with Gaza.

The impoverished refugees

On the refugee issue, the Israeli government has made a new gesture in offering compensation to Arab refugees willing to resettle outside of Israel. This is the first such offer made without the prior condition that general peace be established. It has taken much diplomatic pressure and heart searching in Tel Aviv to extract even this offer, regarded as a real concession in Israel. Yet the offer lacks the one component that might make it negotiable. That is the option in principle of return to Palestine. This is the one key to the political deadlock which Israel cannot bring itself to concede.

UN maneuvering on the refugee question still revolves about this issue of choice between return and compensation. With the charter of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) due to expire in June, 1960, the last General Assembly was obliged to consider substitute remedies. The United States, which continues to pay 70 per cent of the UNRWA budget, asked a new appraisal of the whole refugee situation.

The U.S. proposal threatens to resurrect many disturbing facts long since buried in UN files. Of these the chief fact is that it is the refugees themselves who are most determined about going home even after ten years in camps. Beyond this is the undoubted fact that no Arab government will waive the minimum concession to the justice of their position — namely, the right of choice of return. The U.S. proposal could lead to the shattering of many convenient myths about the refugees, and it cannot fail to re-emphasize the bitter truth reported by every disinterested observer, that the problem of the refugees is still not money but politics.