Shifting Fortunes

In a letter to the Moslem wise men of Egypt's 1,000-year-old Al Azhar University, a distraught Iraqi electrician wrote: "I vowed to sacrifice my son for Arab unity. Now that it has been achieved, should I carry out my vow and kill my boy?" An Al Azhar scholar replied that he was moved by the writer's faith, but warned that Moslem law forbids human sacrifices. Therefore, "your vow carries no obligation and should not be executed."

Lowered Flags. There was a more material reason for the electrician to abstain from filial murder: Arab unity has been loudly trumpeted by Egypt, Syria and Iraq, but it has hardly been consummated. On the surface, everything seemed to be proceeding according to plan. Syria and Iraq lowered their national flags and raised instead the official three-star banner of Gamal Abdel Nasser's United Arab Republic. Ministers raced from capital to capital discussing plans for merging foreign services, school systems, airlines and textbooks. Military delegations brooded over the vital amalgamation of the three armed forces. Jurists were hard at work on a draft of a new federal constitution to be jointly voted on next September.

Neighboring Jordan seethed with an unrest that might dethrone King Hussein and force the nation to join an Arab union. Cairo's press headlined that Hussein was challenged by his army. Syria and Iraq papers reported "spreading revolution" and "guerrilla war with pitched battles." In Damascus a band of Jordanian exiles, led by handsome, hotheaded ex-Colonel Ali Abu Nuwar, 40, set up a rival "government." Abu Nuwar had nearly toppled Hussein in 1957, but because of old friendship, the King spared Abu Nuwar's life and banished him. Ever since, Abu Nuwar has repaid the act of mercy by promoting anti-Hussein conspiracies.

"Even Deal." As the pressures mounted, Radio Baghdad called Hussein the "hireling king" and the "grandson of Uncle Sam," warned that flight was the only escape from "the noose the people are preparing for you." Instead of decamping, King Hussein last week closed his border against Syrian arms and agents, toured the old city of Jerusalem, Al Birah and Ramallah, where he chatted with army officers and inspected troops in their sandbag dugouts facing the Israeli positions along the frontier. In his determination to stay in power, Hussein jeered at Israel, partly to pacify the Palestinian Arabs, who make up two-thirds of his 1,800,000 subjects, partly because Israel's support for Jordan independence is a political embarrassment.

The problem threatened to involve the U.S. Washington had given Hussein assurances of support. With next year's U.S. election campaign to think about, President Kennedy had to concern himself with Israel as well. In Washington, New York's Republican Senator Jacob Javits led a band of colleagues in calling for a sharp change in the U.S. policy of " 'dealing evenhandedly' with friend and foe alike in the Middle East," and attacked continued financial aid to Nasser.

Not an Inch. At week's end, however, Jordan was still intact, and it was the Arab unity movement that was reeling. It had to do with a Cabinet crisis in Syria between the majority belonging to the Baath Socialist Party and the minority of strongly Nasserite ministers. The struggle had been brewing for two months, and pro-Nasser ministers frankly told newsmen that they intended to overthrow the Baathists. The Baath counterstrategy, as enunciated by its founder, Michel Aflak, was: "Do everything to preserve unity, but don't give an inch, and don't surrender any power."

When rumors of a pro-Nasser army coup last week swept the volatile Syrian capital of Damascus, Baath acted. More than 100 army officers were dismissed or clapped in jail. In retaliation, all six Nasserite ministers handed in their resignations. Deputy Premier Nihad El-Kassem, who had led a Syrian unity delegation to Cairo last March and had sobbed with joy on Nasser's shoulder, cried, "We are giving up our responsibilities because we have not been given the means to carry them out."

The Cabinet walkout was intended to bring the Baathists to heel, and it well might. Isolated in power, with the street mobs sympathetic to Nasser and the army of uncertain loyalty, Baath's only available allies are the merchants and landowners, who most oppose Nasser's social objectives. Their embrace could be as fatal to Baath as Israel's would be to Hussein.

During the crisis, Nasser was off on a good-will visit to Algeria, but, for once, Egypt's press and vituperative radio showed surprising self-control--neither mentioned the Syrian struggle or the Nasserite resignations. At week's end, Cairo's military leaders abruptly canceled a scheduled meeting to plan the merger of Arab armies.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.