United Arab Republic (1963)
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| Official language | Arabic | |||
| Capital | Cairo | |||
| Form of government | republic | |||
| Residents | 43 million | |||
| surface | 1,620,757 km² | |||
| president | Gamal Abdel Nasser | |||
| Members | ||||
| Existence period | April 17, 1963 - July 22, 1963 | |||
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The United Arab Republic ( VAR ; Arabic الجمهورية العربية المتحدة, DMG al-Ǧumhūrīya al-ʿarabīya al-muttaḥida ) from 1963 was a planned amalgamation of the Arab states of Egypt , Iraq and Syria , which was based on the previous Egyptian-Syrian Union of the same name. In contrast to the former Egyptian-Syrian unitary state, a federal merger was planned in 1963.
prehistory
By the end of 1961, the United Arab States had also been a confederation between the United Arab Republic and the Kingdom of Yemen . After Syria left the VAR (September 1961), the Yemeni king had also announced that he would leave, whereupon Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser also declared the VAS to be dissolved (December 1961). However, the successor to the king, who died in September 1962, was overthrown by republican officers under Abdullah as-Sallal who wanted the newly founded Yemeni Arab Republic to join Egypt.
In Syria there had already been a first (unsuccessful) coup attempt to restore the Union in March 1962, but it was not until the spring of 1963 that military coups took place almost simultaneously in Iraq (February 8) and Syria ( March 8 revolution ) As a result, the Arab-socialist Ba'ath Party came to power, which had already advocated the annexation of Syria (and Iraq) to Egypt in 1958 and condemned the dissolution of the Union in 1961. The new President of Syria was Louai al-Atassi (a compromise solution between Baathists and Nasserists ), while Baath founder Salah ad-Din al-Bitar became Syrian Prime Minister . President of Iraq became the Nasser supporter Abd al-Salam Arif and Iraqi prime minister became the Baathist Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr .
Egyptian-Iraqi-Syrian Federation
Atassi and Bitar traveled to Cairo in March 1963 and immediately took up unification talks, which were joined by Iraqi Baathists and the Baath founder Michel Aflaq in April . Talks began on March 14, but the first three rounds of negotiations were devoted to resolving the issue of which side was to blame for the collapse of the Syrian-Egyptian union. Aflaq only participated in the first two rounds of negotiations. These first two rounds of negotiations (March 14th to 16th and March 19th to 30th) ended with no results in mutual accusations. On March 22nd, however, the breakthrough came and after a third round of tough negotiations (April 6th to 14th), a federation (federal union) of Egypt, Iraq and Syria was agreed on April 17th, 1963, the Syrian national holiday, under the name United Arab Republic and should come into force on September 1, 1963. The connection of North Yemen was planned after the end of the civil war that had broken out there. In Kuwait’s parliament , twelve of the 50 MPs also voted for membership. When Nasser invited Algeria to join the republic during an Egyptian-Syrian-Algerian summit meeting in Cairo in April 1963 , its head of government Ahmed Ben Bella declined, but Nasser expressed his congratulations.
The planned capital was Cairo and the president of the new state was to be Gamal Abdel Nasser. With the union, the three states strove for a common foreign and defense policy in the spirit of pan-Arabism . A common army should have comprised 325,000 soldiers, but the question of whether a common army should be formed at all was left open. Leading politicians of the planned alliance described the intended destruction of Israel, alleged by some authors, as the “liberation of Palestine” or as efforts to return the Arab refugees from Palestine. Left-wing critics, in turn, insinuated that Nasser had de facto accepted Israel's existence in secret agreements with the United States. Instead of an alleged obliteration of Israel, Nasser formulated his position as follows:
"That is why I believe that we should build the economy of the Arab world and raise the standard of living of the people until we have reached a stage of development that allows us to put such pressure on the Israelis that they understand the full legitimacy of our position"
Nasser had prevailed with the demand for the gradual dissolution of all political parties in the three countries in favor of the Arab Socialist Union , but the immediate dissolution of the political organizations was not agreed. Instead, the formation of common "political fronts" as a coalition of all unionist, socialist and democratic forces was initially planned in all three states.
By September 15, 1963, referendums in the three member states were to pass the federal constitution. Nasser's election as joint president and the official proclamation of the Federal Republic were planned for September 27, 1963. The President of the VAR should be elected for four years by a two-thirds majority of the Federal Assembly and appoint the ministers. Due to the agreed proportion of the population, Egyptians had a majority of the MPs, but not a two-thirds majority. Nevertheless, Nasser's choice was considered certain. The Federal National Assembly should consist of the Chamber of Deputies and a Federal Council. As aimed at (and never achieved) in Egypt, at least 50 percent of the MPs should be workers and peasants. A presidential council made up of representatives from all three parts of the country should appoint the vice-presidents and the presidents of the three parts of the country. Each part of the country would continue to have its own national assembly, regional government and prime minister. Foreign trade, foreign policy and common finances should be handled by the federal government, while the states should keep control of their economies.
There was disagreement over the powers of the president, the composition of the government and the structure of the state. It was also unclear whether and how Syria and Iraq should take over the “socialist gains” of Egypt. The economic foundations of the republic were to be Egyptian industry, Syrian agriculture and Iraqi oil. The Union would have had an area of 1,620,757 km² and around 43 million inhabitants.
Failure of the project
After the union negotiations in Cairo had stalled, in May 1963 the Nasserist and pro-Nasserist ministers of the Syrian government resigned (including Jamal al-Atassi ). Sami al-Jundi , waving between the Nasserists and Baathists, failed to form a new government. The coalition of Baathists and Nasserists broke up, and al-Bitar formed a new government without Nasserists. Syria's armed forces and the state apparatus have been "purged" of Nasserists. After a new Ba'ath government without Nasserists had been formed in Iraq on May 13, 1963, the Syrian Ba'ath leadership declared on May 16, 1963 that they would initially prefer a union with Iraq. The new edition of the VAR had in fact failed.
When the unsuccessful unification talks in Cairo were broken off by Syrians, Nasser gave the go-ahead for Colonel Yassem Alvan's attempted coup . The coup of July 18, 1963 was put down by Interior Minister Amin al-Hafiz , who also forced President Louai al-Atassi to resign and himself became head of state. 27 of the 30 Nassist officers involved in Alwan's coup attempt were executed. On July 22, 1963, Nasser then castigated the new “right-wing” Ba'ath regime as “ fascist ” and finally declared Egypt's formal withdrawal from the federation, saying that Egypt felt obliged to suspend the federation project. On August 11, 1963, Nasser called for the overthrow of the Baath regimes in Syria and Iraq.
“So, before the end of 1963, efforts to create a center of political power that could have challenged Nasser's Egyptian leadership role - based on a political organization that at the same time had an autonomous ideology (that of the Baath party) and the Iraqi oil fields ... Even more than in October 1961, Nasser was able to rely on the deep-rooted and overt resentment that Egyptian public opinion harbored towards the tactics of the Baath ... "
epilogue
Until August 1963, Nasser had held ten-day bilateral Egyptian-Iraqi unification talks with Aref; from August 1963, the Ba'ath regimes continued the bilateral Syrian-Iraqi unification talks instead.
Syrian-Iraqi Union
On September 2, 1963, both sides announced the formation of an economic community and on September 30, Iraq and Syria announced the agreement on a bilateral federation, but in fact only a military alliance was formed on October 8. A joint high command under the Iraqi Defense Minister Salih Mahdi Ammash was established in Damascus. On October 20, Damascus confirmed the use of Syrian troops on the Iraqi side against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq.
However , the Iraqi Ba'ath regime was overthrown again by the military coup of November 18, 1963 , Aflaq and Hafiz had tried in vain to avert the overthrow of the Ba'ath government there by traveling to Baghdad. On April 27, 1964, Syria finally canceled the military agreement with Iraq. Only the three-star flag, which was used in Syria ( until 1972 ) and Iraq ( until 1991 ), remained from the Federation.
Egyptian-Iraqi Union
In the meantime, however, there had been an Egyptian-Iraqi rapprochement. Nasserist officers had played a key role in the overthrow of the Ba'ath government and were promoted to the new Revolutionary Council. A government composed of nationalists, unionists, ex-Baathists and Nasserists was formed. In December 1963, the Iraqi President Abd al-Salam Arif had declared that he would continue to strive for the agreed unity, at least with Egypt. While Nasser, during his visit to the Yemeni Arab Republic at the end of April 1964 , had rejected the Yemeni wish to join the UAR, he agreed with Arif in May 1964 to form a joint Presidential Council and in October 1964 to form a United Political Leadership , which It was finally constituted in December 1964 and was to merge Egypt and Iraq into a single state within two years.
See also
- League of Arab Republics (Iraqi plan for a new edition of the VAR in 1972)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Second attempt . In: Der Spiegel . No. 17 , 1963, pp. 70 ( online ).
- ↑ a b c "United Arab Republic" decided . ( Memento from July 28, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: Hamburger Abendblatt , April 11, 1963
- ↑ April 17, 1963. In: Chronicle of the 20th Century . Bertelsmann, 1993
- ^ A b c d e Anouar Abdel-Malik: Egypt - Military Society, the Army Regime, the Left and Social Change under Nasser . Pages 340-346. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt / Main 1971
- ^ A b Bidwell, 432
- ^ John Haywood, Jobst-Christian Rojahn: The new atlas of world history: From antiquity to the present , Chronik Verlag, Munich 2002, p. 282
- ↑ At least that is what Al-Ahram reported
literature
- Lothar Rathmann (ed.): History of the Arabs - From the beginnings to the present , Volume 6. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin (GDR) 1983
- Günther Barthel and Günther Nötzold (eds.): The Arab countries - an economic geographic representation . Haack, Gotha 1987
- Gustav Fochler-Hauke (Ed.): Der Fischer Weltalmanach 1964 . Frankfurt am Main 1964, pages 138f, 345, 352f and 359ff.
- Robin Leonard Bidwell : Dictionary of Modern Arab History , p. 432. London / New York 1998
