A death given its due

In 1995, Adel Beshara published Syrian Nationalism: An Inquiry into the Political Thought of Antun Sa'adeh, followed in 2004 by an impressive tome on The Politics of Frustration: The Failed Coup of 1961, which examined the attempt against the regime of General Fouad Shihab.

His Antun Sa'adeh: The Man, His Thought, an Anthology (2007) firmly established his expertise over the subject, now confirmed in this impressive and highly recommended new contribution.

Antun Sa'adeh opposed the Franco-British division of the region (determined in the infamous 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement), preferring unity. He migrated to Brazil to avoid jail terms but returned to Beirut in 1947, a few years after the country gained independence from France on November 22, 1943. A professor at the American University of Beirut, Sa'adeh founded the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) and, on July 4, 1949, became involved in a contentious gathering in Gemayzeh, which Beirut interpreted as a "revolution". In the event, the "revolt" was suppressed and Sa'adeh sought refuge in Damascus, where Hosni Al Za'im, then president following a coup d'état, betrayed him.

Sa'adeh was arrested and handed to Lebanese military authorities on July 8, 1949, speedily tried and executed, as he cried out "Tahiya Suria" [long live Syria] (page 118). In fact, because Lebanon prided itself on its freedoms and liberties, the secretive trial and hasty execution, which skirted due process, were so controversial that successive governments refused to come to terms with the political and moral consequences of his death.

To be sure, Bishara Al Khoury and Riad Al Sulh, the country's first president and prime minister, concluded that Sa'adeh was dangerous and that the SSNP threatened Lebanon's confessionally based National Charter by advocating union with Syria. But was this sufficient to condemn a citizen to death without due process?

Sa'adeh's "tone was furious and often brutal", writes Beshara, which confused many. "His critique of religious and sectarian ‘nationalism'," the author continues, "was particularly scathing. Sharp, lucid, mordant, realistic, and astonishingly modern in tone, it poured ridicule on what he [Sa'adeh] considered to be naively personal and communal interpretations of nationalism" (page 14).

This is truly the heart of the hugely controversial legacy that Sa'adeh bequeathed Lebanon. As a firm believer in "Syrian nationalism", he emphasised social nationalism as a tool to change traditional society into a polity that opposed colonial interferences in the internal affairs of small states.

Likewise, he rejected French attempts to break up Greater Syria into sub-nations and upheld the notion that secularisation was better than confessionalism. Still, the SSNP argued for the creation of a Hyper Syria that encompassed the Fertile Crescent (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Palestine), along with the lands that stretched from the Taurus to the Zagros mountains (which means parts of Turkey and Iran) in the north, and portions of the Arabian Desert, including the Sinai Peninsula. This was a bold vision that went beyond language and religion since these would not be sufficient attributes to define a nation. Instead, Sa'adeh believed that the common development of the peoples within "Greater Syria" ought to empower them. Naturally, in the context of post-Westphalia and, especially, post-Second World War, "statism" stood as an anomaly. Such a vision clearly threatened the Al Khoury-Al Sulh tandem.

Beshara addresses several complex issues in a methodical fashion and raises questions on secrecy and haste. The author's sharp eye for detail, mixed with encyclopaedic knowledge of Lebanese affairs, reveal how the political offence was blown out of proportion. Thrown to a kangaroo court, which violated the Lebanese Constitution and legal system, the author wonders if the Al Khoury regime hoped to achieve a local breakthrough by sacrificing Sa'adeh on the altar of the state. The only problem was the subject's character, an atypical leader who obeyed the law, even if the latter was conveniently sidelined.

Beshara focuses on the "mechanism of the case, the stage machinery of its enactment, the parts played by those who serviced that machinery, and the politics that triggered it".

He reconsiders the confrontation, the trial (with extensive quotations from personal memoirs since no transcripts or court records are available), the execution (with witness testimonies, including the hastily arranged religious confession), and the private and public reactions before deciphering various scenarios that motivated Sa'adeh's killing.

Needless to say that the author does not mince words as far as Al Za'im's treachery is concerned. He closes by examining the repercussions of the execution.

In his conclusion, Beshara hopes that Sa'adeh could eventually be exonerated even as he readily admits that removing the country's confessional cloak will be difficult.

Still, the author pleads for a "recognition that an injustice [was] committed", to ensure that such a travesty does not occur again (page 299) and to uphold the law above all else.

 Dr Joseph A. Kéchichian is the author of the forthcoming Legal and Political Reforms in Saudi Arabia (2011).

Outright Assassination: The Trial and Execution of Antun Sa'adeh, 1949By Adel Beshara, Ithaca Press, 332 pages, $69.95