SYRIA: Chasing Out the Demons

NEAR the farming village of Shra, 200 miles north of Damascus, thousands of Syrian fellahin crowded onto a dusty field last week for a joyous ceremony: 3,927 men were to receive titles to the land they and their ancestors had always tilled for the enrichment of others. Brightly dressed sword dancers swung their great curved sabers in a fierce ballet. A spare, bearded mullah on the edge of the crowd intoned verses from the Koran. The peasants greeted each statement by Minister of Agrarian Reform Ahmed Abdel Karim with a rhythmic chant: "Down with feudalism! Down with imperialism! Down with dictatorship! Down with Communism! Down with Nasser! Down with Nasser! Down with Nasser!" The mullah shrilled his enthusiastic agreement: "In the name of Allah, chase out the demons."

Disappearing Twitch

For four months the moderate government of President Nazem El-Koudsi and Premier Bashir El-Azmeh has been chasing the fellahin's imposing list of demons, all the while warily returning Syria to relative normalcy after seven coups d'etat in 13 years. Koudsi himself is a product of Coup No. 6, when nationalistic army officers last fall shattered the abrasive union of Syria and Egypt--and the Pan-Arab dreams of Gamal Abdel Nasser--with a swift, bloodless revolt. Elected Syria's President in December, he was then deposed and jailed by the army officers in March (Coup No. 7) for chasing one of the demons, feudalism, with insufficient vigor. Recalled by the bickering officers two weeks later, Koudsi asked Dr. Bashir El-Azmeh, a Damascus chest surgeon, to form the government that has managed to pick a safe course ever since.

From the outward look of Syria, reported TIME Correspondent George de Carvalho last week, the regime has managed well. As if in reply to the mullah's chant, the drought that lasted straight through the four years of the United Arab Republic was broken the day after its dissolution, and the rains are now bringing the best wheat and cotton crop in a decade. Says an embittered Nasser supporter: "Rain last year would have saved Nasser, and drought this year would have brought him back." Gone with the drought is the Nasser-era police state whose oppression created the "Syrian twitch"--a quick, nervous glance over the shoulder. Although Syrian prisons hold fewer than 500 "subversives"--many of them saboteurs sent in by Nasser--Syrians can no longer be jailed for more than 48 hours without formal arraignment. A degree of press freedom has been granted, and the politics-loving Syrians are now entertained with three newly licensed opposition papers which often speak out against the government.

Water & Oil

Gone, too, are the doctrinaire economic rules of Nasser's "Arab socialism" that grated on the traditionally free-wheeling Syrians, who love nothing more than driving a good business bargain. The bazaars of Damascus are again bustling after a long stretch of relative austerity. Says Premier Azmeh: "By its very nature, Syria lives on commerce. The Egyptians tried, but you cannot fight nature. We favor free enterprise and private business; we are against feudalism and exploitation. We want economic freedom combined with social justice." A forward step is the Euphrates dam, being built with West German Marks, which will irrigate 2,200,000 acres of land and produce enough power to meet all industrial needs. Syria's deposits of oil and gas are being effectively developed for the first time. At the same time, the Azmeh government has distributed about a quarter as much land to peasants in two months as Nasser did in 3 1/2years.

Syria is still no model of stability. The regime rules with no real legal basis, since Koudsi was elected by a Parliament that has since been dissolved. The constitution that Nasser threw out has never been replaced. Although the government of Koudsi and Azmeh claims independence, it continues to rule by the leave of a quietly watchful six-man army committee. Still, political observers agree that the regime has won considerable popular support.

The Syrian Communist Party--once one of the Middle East's strongest--is still banned, along with all other political parties. But the Russians themselves are working hard to increase their influence. The main tool is a lavish foreign-aid program, an estimated $500 million Soviet investment split between military aid (MIGs, tanks, rifles) and such projects as the first railroad linking Syria's Mediterranean port of Latakia with the Jezire agriculture district of the northeast. The Soviet embassy, largest in Damascus, is headquarters for a community that includes a 200-man military mission and 300 technicians.

Bombs & Diatribes

But Syria's greatest external threat is still Egypt's Nasser; he has never recognized the present government, and publicly treats the Syrians like so many Israelis. Egypt does not allow mail from Syria into the country, and Radio Cairo continues to fire daily diatribes at Damascus. In the past three months, pro-Nasser forces in Syria have tossed more than 100 bombs and staged several minor coup attempts. The young Nasserite officers of the Aleppo garrison, who rose against the Damascus government last April, have been separated and shifted elsewhere by the more moderate generals in control; but Nasser's propagandists still exhort the army to "revolt against reaction, feudalism and imperialism." Syria has reacted with a formal complaint to the Arab League, demanding action to stop Nasser's "aggression and interference." Most Syrian leaders favor the goals Nasser claims to seek --Arab unity, social justice, agrarian reform--but they are less than enthusiastic about Nasser methods or Nasser domination. Even the leader of the powerful Baath socialist party, once a violent Nasser supporter, is disillusioned with Egypt's boss.

"Syrians will never again accept tyranny," says Premier Azmeh. "What we need is simply democracy, to meet the people's aspirations. When the people feel that their needs are being met, they will support the government wholeheartedly, and there will be no more instability and no more coups d'etat." For a man in Azmeh's situation, this is a worthy if not entirely realistic point of view.

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