Iraq and Syria: A New Axis for Unity

Their merger moves ahead "like a rocket to the moon "

"Unity between Syria and Iraq will become the axis for a strong, unified-Arab policy," declares Syria's Information Minister Ahmed Iskander, 35. "We have gone far beyond a first step." The Iraqis clearly agree. "By the will of God," says Iraq's Vice Chairman Saddam Hussein Takriti, "the unity between our two countries will be made permanent." The negotiations are proceeding, adds an excited Foreign Ministry official in Baghdad, "like a rocket to the moon!"

Syria and Iraq have been enemies for years, ruled by feuding wings of the Baathist Party. So they surprised just about everybody in the Middle East when they announced that they were seriously thinking of merging into one unified state.

Under the plan, Syria and Iraq would share their oil and water, and would unite their military establishments into a force of 440,000 troops, 4,500 tanks and more than 730 combat aircraft. The Defense, Foreign and Information ministries of the two governments would also be united, and the presidency would rotate every six months between Damascus and Baghdad.

There is a certain political logic to the merger. The militant Arab states, and even many of the more moderate ones, were badly shaken by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's peace initiative. With Egypt neutralized, they would have a hard time presenting a credible threat to Israel. But a united Syria and Iraq, acting with the cooperation of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, would constitute what one Jerusalem official calls "a serious military defense problem along our northern borders." Moreover, the governments of Syria and Iraq are worried about the current upheaval in Iran and the rising militancy of Iran's Shi'ite Muslim majority. Iraq is particularly worried because it too has a large Shi'ite population.

Some Middle East experts wonder whether the merger will last any longer than the ill-fated 1958-61 union of Syria and Egypt. Nonetheless, there are already signs of a basic change in relations between the two countries. Troops have been reduced along the common border. After years of vilifying each other's countries, radio stations in Damascus and Baghdad are broadcasting messages of homage and brotherhood. Soon pipelines will again carry Iraqi oil across Syria to the Mediterranean.

The merger plan represents more of a turnaround for Iraq, a country that for 20 years has been a kind of odd-man-out in the Arab world.

Since 1974, Iraqi President Ahmed Hassan Bakr, 64, has been quietly moderating his government's foreign policy even as he modernized his country's landscape. Last week TIME's Cairo bureau chief, Dean Brelis, visited Iraq, a California-size country of 12 million people, with 34,500 bbl. in proven oil reserves. His report:

Today's Baghdad positively throbs with progress. The streets are clean, the traffic surprisingly orderly, the shops filled with consumer goods from Western Europe and the U.S. The city, built along the banks of the sluggish Tigris River, was one of the principal locales of The Thousand and One Nights. Today, with 20-story buildings rising above its graceful mosques, it looks every bit the citadel of Baath power that may soon stretch from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean.

Last year, Iraq's oil earned the country $9.6 billion, and hardly a week passes without bringing rumors of new discoveries. The force of the latest strike, it is said in the bars and bazaars, was so great that a 30-ton bulldozer was hurled 50 feet into the air. This year the Iraqis are importing $1 billion worth of Western goods. In less than a decade, the country's per capita income has jumped from $200 to $1,500. Yet the Iraqis have managed to hold their inflation rate to 8%. They have also held foreign influence over their oil industry to a minimum. Says an Iraqi Petroleum Company official: "We are the only Arab country that can make this claim: we run our oilfields without the help of a single foreigner."

Iraqis remain distrustful of the U.S., largely because of its support for Israel. They also complain that Washington, until 1975, gave covert support to a now quiescent Kurdish rebellion in northern Iraq. Though the Iraqis have been politically close to the Soviet Union for the past decade, there are signs today that they are moving toward a more independent course. One Iraqi official recalls that in 1972 Baghdad sold the Soviets some oil at bargain prices and agreed to be paid in rubles. The Iraqis later discovered that the Russians had turned around and sold the same oil in Western Europe at top prices and for hard currency. "We learned a lesson," says the official. "We don't get burned twice."

Iraq is a tough socialist police state. Political troublemakers disappear routinely. Nobody knows how many political prisoners are behind bars, but last summer the Bakr regime celebrated its tenth anniversary by releasing 7,000 of them. The Baath Party's strongest opponents are the Communists, of whom at least 3,000 have been killed since 1963.

Despite its harshness in suppressing dissent, the Bakr government appears to be popular with most Iraqis. Education and medical care are free to all, and most of the population has shared in the present prosperity. Of all the recent social changes, none is more remarkable than the liberation of Iraqi women. Today they constitute one-third of the country's professional class and 26% of its industrial work force. Unlike their sisters in many other Arab states, they can own land, inherit property and, if divorced, receive alimony.

If the merger with Syria is consummated, Iraq's movement toward moderation is likely to accelerate. Until now, Iraq has been one of the most adamant opponents of negotiations between the Arabs and the Israelis. But when Bakr and Syrian President Hafez Assad met in Baghdad last October, they agreed to base their foreign policy toward Israel on two demands: a return of all Arab lands occupied by the Israelis since the 1967 war, and the creation of a Palestinian state. Though neither Bakr nor Assad believes that the Israelis are prepared to make such concessions, it is significant that the Iraqis now seem prepared to accept Israel's existence, at least in principle.

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