Try to Be Happy

Ever since Syria united with Egypt 21 months ago, the Syrian presidential palace in Damascus has been little more than a place where local politicians sip coffee while carrying out the long-distance orders of others. But last week the slouching sentries were snapping as never before. Egypt's Nasser had sent up his own commander in chief, Abdel Hakim Amer, on a special mission from Cairo--to make a restless partner happier with its lot. No longer was there any pretense that Syrians were running their own show.

Almost from the start, the Syrians had had second thoughts about their impulsive merger. The job of whipping Syria into line was given to Interior Minister Abdel Hamid Serraj a ruthless local strongman who had wholeheartedly committed himself to Nasser. Serraj clapped hundreds of Communists into jail, tortured "recantations" out of hundreds more. He helped to reduce the once-powerful Baath Party to impotence,* slashed the number of Damascus dailies from 24 to a docile seven. But for all his secret agents, Serraj was still unable to dissuade his own country from its conviction that the union meant only economic disaster. Last month President Nasser assigned that mission to Soldier Amer, one of the U.A.R.'s three Vice Presidents, and a devoted lieutenant of Nasser's for some 20 years.

Armed with powers second only to those of the President himself, Amer arrived secretly by destroyer--a security measure made necessary by the fact that the United Arab Republic is separated by Israel--and promptly went to work on the Syrian army. It was suffering from the familiar fear of Syria's 4,200,000 citizens that they are about to be reduced to a parity with Egypt's poorer 24,800,000. "My brethren," cried Amer, "be cautious of the intrigues of the opportunists and of destructive rumors." There was nothing, he added fervently, to the rumors that the Syrian army's pay scale would be cut to bring it in line with Egypt's.

Last week Amer turned his attention to the businessmen, assuring them too that Cairo had no intention of fusing Syria's currency with Egypt's softer one. Next day Amer appealed to the peasants. "Nasser," he said, as he doled out 200 land deeds under Syria's land-reform program, "knows your aspirations and your pains because he has lived your lives."

But in spite of all his efforts, one stubborn economic fact remained: two years of drought had turned Syria from a land that once exported 159 million Syrian pounds worth of grain a year to one that must now import 50 million pounds worth. Some Syrians, completely forgetting that Egypt itself is perennially one of the world's neediest cases, have begun to demand that Cairo do more to help. But the lack of rain in Nasser's northern province was one thing that even efficient Soldier Amer could do very little about.

*Its chief politician, Akram Hourani, who urged the merger with Nasser, is now exiled to a harmless desk job in Cairo.

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