The Red Bankroll

MIDDLE EAST

In the first postwar decade, Joseph Stalin's meddling in the Middle East was largely limited to Russia's immediate neighbors, Turkey and Iran--where he had scant success. But the ubiquitous Khrushchev boldly leapfrogged smack into the area, sending legions of comrade plenipotentiaries armed with aid, or ready to aid with arms. Today, from the great shell of the Aswan High Dam rising from the Egyptian Nile to T-54 tanks rumbling down the boulevards of Baghdad, with swarms of MIG jets on patrol over Syria or strafing Royalist rebels in Yemen, the Soviet presence in the Middle East is evident where it had never been known before.

Khrushchev's successors have picked up where Nikita left off. To Ankara last week came the first Russian parliamentary delegation in 31 years to visit Turkey, headed by the Presidium's prestigious Nikolai Podgorny. For months the Russians had paved the way for the visit with Premier Ismet Inoenue. Once they were pals of the Greek Cypriots, but more recently they seemed to sympathize with the Turks, their historic enemies, in the Cyprus dispute, and Podgorny was all smiles and promises. "You ask, and we give you everything," he said, "investments, financing and Cyprus support." Scarcely a month before, another Presidium luminary, Aleksandr Shelepin, had breezed into Cairo to reassure Nasser that the new brass would honor Nikita's commitment for $280 million in credit to fuel Egypt's new five-year plan. Moscow in recent weeks has been sidling up to Pakistan too, using as bait support against India over Kashmir.

Measuring Up. Moscow has pumped into--or promised--the Middle East nations some $1.4 billion in economic aid since the ruble offensive began (v. some $3 billion in U.S. aid to the same nations since 1945). Another $1 billion has gone into equipping the armies of Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Predictably, it is in these four nations that the Soviets have directed the great bulk of their Middle Eastern economic aid as well. Among their notable aid successes--and failures--in the four:

. EGYPT has received the lion's share ($835 million) of Moscow's Mideast aid largely because of the showcase Aswan Dam, estimated to cost ultimately $1 billion, of which the Soviets are putting up nearly 30%. Aswan is the world's most striking aid project, and the Russians are breaking their backs to do the job right and on time, and are largely succeeding--even at the expense of Siberian dam projects, delayed because Russia's top engineering talent is in Egypt. The Russians are also expanding the Helwan steel complex and the Suez refinery for Nasser, and reclaiming 35,000 acres of Nile delta land; but one of Helwan's two coke boilers burned out after only two months' use, and the other is looking dangerously scorched.

. SYRIA had been promised $193 million from the Communist bloc, $150 million from Russia alone. But all but $15 million of that was proffered prior to the nation's fling at union with Egypt from 1958 to 1961. The satellites built a number of small projects: cement plants, sugar refineries, a grain elevator and an airfield. But the Russians have been foot-dragging on their own big projects for two chemical factories and a railroad as Syria's manifest political instability (18 governments in 15 years) dawned on them, and completion of the Russian projects is still years away.

. IRAQ and Moscow have equally disappointed each other. Little of the $184 million in Soviet credits (bloc countries have put up another $34 million) has been used, despite grandiose plans for a 60,000-ton steel plant. A telephone exchange and a broadcasting station are successfully in operation, but of a dozen other plants promised, only a shoe factory and a food processing plant have been built, and the latter is having what is euphemistically described as "operating difficulties." The Soviets blame the Iraqis for procrastination and noncooperation. The Iraqis blame poor Soviet engineering standards, citing as an example the Baghdad-Basra railway--new last April, but so poorly ballasted that it has never been used.

. YEMEN was ruled by leftist, Nasser-leaning Crown Prince Mohammed al Badr when the Russians first moved in to build a $15 million Red Sea port at Hodeida in the feudal land. When Al Badr turned conservative in 1962 under Republican attack, the Soviets reversed themselves to back the opposition headed by Abdullah Sallal, built him an airport and 150 low-cost houses, promised $72 million more in various projects. None have even been begun, since Moscow is plainly worried that it may have switched to the wrong horse in midstream. All told, Moscow has offered $142 million in aid, and other Red nations another $60 million plus.

Not a Red Cent. Moscow's balance sheet shows more red than black in its efforts to make political capital out of credit in the Middle East. Not a single recipient of Russian help has gone Communist. Nasser, the biggest taker, periodically pays his political debts with a verbal swipe at the U.S., but in fact is largely playing his own game in the Middle East with Russian marbles. Cairo is caught in a serious financial squeeze that shut down stock exchanges last week, endangers Nasser's ability to pay his ruble debts or his other borrowings. In strife-torn Yemen and coup-prone Syria, Russian aid has been largely dissipated in a sea of domestic troubles, but Syria has obliged by going markedly Socialist (see following story'). Iraq used Soviet weapons to dispose of Moscow's man Kassem. Pro-Western Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, whose oil revenues make it easy to turn down aid, have all refused to accept the merest Red cent.

These harsh lessons have not been lost on the Soviets, who have learned the truth of the oldest Middle Eastern proverb: "You can't buy an Arab; only rent him." As a result, the Russians are becoming more selective in their aid, smarter in getting more for their money. In Iran they are collaborating in sensible, largely unpolitical, neighborly ventures: planning dams on their common border, stocking the Caspian Sea, which the two countries share, with sturgeon to keep the caviar flowing. In Turkey, too, they have proposed a joint border hydroelectric project. But for all their frustrations in the southern Arab nations, the Soviets have nonetheless succeeded in creating a Russian presence and influence where it never existed before--as well as in arming Arabs, which they may yet live to regret.

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