Foreign News: Hot Winds & Frail Borders

The harsh winds of crisis shifted north from Suez to the sandy reaches that in a lusher day were known as the Fertile Crescent (see map). There sit three nations—Syria, Iraq and Jordan—whose borders were drawn largely by the British, largely on sand. Last week, with Britain's last shreds of authority being blown away, these three Arab states were exposed in all their perishability to the full blast of nationalist bent and Soviet propaganda.

Headline writers and TV commentators acted as if war might break out any moment there, but the likelier consequence was chaos, which is one of the Middle East's leading exports.

Syria (pop. 3,800,000) became the new headline favorite. A flimsy agrarian republic about the size of North Dakota, Syria tries hard to sound like Nasser's most ferocious ally, though in fact it is about the weakest sister of the Arab world. The glory of the caliph's Damascus has been gone for 1,200 years. Modern Syria as a nation dates only from the World War I collapse of Turkey's Ottoman Empire. For almost 25 years the French ruled Syria as mandated territory, leaving behind some culture and much hatred. The young Republic of Syria, independent after World War II, joined the invasion of Israel in 1948 and suffered resounding defeat. Its army then seized power, has remained in the foreground through five coups and some 20 Cabinets. Out of this turmoil of political weakness has sprung the most active native Communist movement in the Arab world.

Last summer, making common cause with Communists and crypto-Communists, Lieut. Colonel Abdel Hamid Serraj, 31, gained the upper hand in the army, placed Syria's 25,000 troops under joint command with Nasser's, and pushed deals with the Soviet bloc that by last week brought the bulk of some 100 T-34 tanks, 200 armored personnel carriers and 20 MIG jets into the country. After the invasion of Egypt, Serraj blew up the Iraq Petroleum Co.'s pipeline that carries 80% of Iraq's oil across Syria to the Mediterranean, and sent a brigade of troops into Jordan. Syria's inept little army cannot make good use of Russia's modern arms; the arms were obviously being stockpiled for eventual use by Moscow "volunteers." In this uneasy circumstance, Syria's anti-Communist neighbors in the Baghdad Pact—particularly Turkey and Iraq—met and agreed to fight "subversion" from Syria. The Turks announced "routine" army maneuvers near the Syrian border and flew their Acting Foreign Minister to London to discuss "the Syrian situation" with Britain's Foreign Minister Selwyn Lloyd. Did they intend to put Syria out of its misery?

Ever ready to stoke up Arab rivalries and suspicions, Russia's Foreign Minister Dmitry Shepilov accused Britain, France and Israel of planning "new aggression" against Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, and Radio Moscow bristled against Turkey and Iraq. Just in case Syria's anti-Communist neighbors were genuinely worried about a foray from Syria, the U.S. State Department announced that it would view "with the utmost gravity" any threat to "the territorial integrity or political independence" of any member of the Baghdad Pact. This was also meant to remove from Turkey and Iraq any pretext for moving into Syria.