To the Left, March

Far more than most of its neighbors, Syria is a fertile land that since Biblical times has usually prospered by exporting grain and other foodstuffs. Today, Syria's chief domestic crop is trouble, its chief exports terror and sedition.

Held in the grip of a fanatical socialist party that seeks to wrest from Egypt's Nasser the leadership of the Arab left, Syria has become the epicenter on the seismographic chart of Middle Eastern turmoil. From the Sea of Galilee to the Gulf of Aden, its mortars and machine guns, tanks and terrorists ply their disruptive trade not only against Israel but against the nations of the Arab center and right.

Last week Syrian planes and guns several times traded fire with Israeli border outposts over the no man's land dividing the countries, just as they have on almost every day of the new year.

Syrian-trained saboteurs exploded a mine in the midst of a soccer crowd at the Israeli village of Dishon. A 100-man gang of terrorists from the

Syrian-based "Palestine Liberation Army" infiltrated Jordan to join the struggle to overthrow King Hussein; other terrorists were attempting similar moves against Saudi Arabia's King Feisal. With the tacit approval of Damascus, a school for saboteurs was in full swing in the arid hills above the Sea of Galilee. Syria's leaders were even attempting to topple the neighboring socialist regime of Iraq, whose petroleum riches Syria would like to turn over to "the Arab masses."

Through it all, Syria trumpeted a bitterly anti-Western line, even to the extent of spreading word that CIA agents were prowling the countryside, vampirelike, to extract Syrian blood for transfusions to wounded G.I.s in Viet Nam.

Paranoid Violence. The men responsible for all of this comprise a remarkably young group of radical leaders who belong to the far-left wing of the Baath Party, a mystical Arab brotherhood whose main aim is the nationalization of everything and everyone in the Middle East. Since they seized power from a more moderate group of Baathists last year, Syria's new leaders have turned the country onto a path of near-paranoid violence. Oddly enough, the three men who administer the government are all trained physicians: Premier Youssef Zayyen, 36; Chief of State Noureddin Attassi, 37; and Foreign Minister Ibrahim Makhous, 36. But the man with the real power is Major General Salah Jadid, 40, a career officer who was sacked from his chief-of-staff job by former Chief of State Amin Hafez late in 1965, then led the Feb. 23, 1966 coup that threw Hafez into Damascus' dank Mazza Prison.

Reclusive and ramrod-rigid, Jadid has yet to make a major public pronouncement since taking power; indeed, he ranks on the Baathist books as a mere deputy secretary-general of the party. Jadid belongs to the minority Alawite sect of Syrian Mohammedanism, which represents only 10% of the population, and fears that the Sunnite majority--a more orthodox sect--might rebel if he became too publicly outspoken. Actually, he need not say much: the statements of his peers are sufficiently intemperate to embrace his views. Says Premier Zayyen in tones ominously Pekingese: "We are crushing all parasite and opportunist elements that stand between the Arab revolution and the Arab masses."

Apathetic Drabness. In the process, Jadid & Co. have reduced a once-vibrant land to apathetic drabness.

Builders and small shopkeepers are the only significant urban groups that have not been nationalized. In Damascus and Aleppo, dozens of half-completed grey buildings stand forlornly in their wooden scaffolds, abandoned by builders who stopped construction because unrealistic rent controls would deny them profit. Though 90% of all "feudalist" land has been confiscated, the government so far has allocated only 20% to farmers.

Fully 200,000 skilled managers and technicians have fled the country; hundreds more are in jail for political crimes. Wheat, usually harvested Dakota-style with giant combines, will henceforth be grown on uneconomical 40-acre plots by government decree. Not even the weather has cooperated with the Baath: 1966 brought a crop failure that severely cut wheat and cotton production and drained Damascus of precious foreign exchange. Western banks have almost unanimously refused to lend further money. To try to recoup some cash, Jadid recently cut the Iraq Petroleum Co.'s pipeline through Syria and attempted to blackmail his Arab neighbor into giving him $100 million --a price that Iraq has refused to pay.

While Syria is not a Communist state, an increasing number of far-leftists are being brought into the regime, which already has one Communist minister. At the outset, Jadid and his colleagues felt spiritually more attuned to Red China than to Russia. But Peking's resources are severely limited; although China bought a third of Syria's 1966 cotton crop with convertible sterling, Moscow offered more pragmatic rewards for a longer term. The Soviets last month agreed to finance nearly half the cost of a $400 million high dam on the Euphrates--Syria's answer to Aswan--that by 1972 will double the nation's irrigated acreage and electrical output, treble its $60 million cotton crop. The Russians will also string power lines from Aleppo to the dam, build oil storage tanks at the Horms refinery, and lay 500 miles of pipeline. Moscow's Eastern European allies have chipped in $200 million in aid. It all serves a historical Russian end: an opening on the Mediterranean.

Needed Propping. Though Jadid & Co. despise Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser for his "softness" and seek by their export of terror to take over his leadership, Syria has nonetheless been forced to cooperate with him. But even Egypt, long the revolutionary center of the Middle East, feels nervous about Damascus' rabid adventurism. In order to prevent a major war from growing out of Syria's madness, Nasser signed a mutual defense pact with Syria last November that demands consultation before any major attack on another country. The fact is that Syria's military is too weak to carry off a war on its own against Israel or anyone else.

Militarily, Syria's extremists have fared poorly in their dealings with the Communists. For all the Baathists' burning desire to conquer Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia by force of Arab arms, neither Russia nor China is willing to supply sophisticated weapons. The Syrian army (bearing obsolescent Soviet rifles) numbers only 60,000 v. Israel's 250,000. The militia, a home guard called the People's Liberation Army, and the Futtuwa (Youth) movement add another 100,000 half-trained troops. With fewer than 500 tanks and 126 aircraft (including a mere 26 first-line MIG-21s), Syria's military is woefully underequipped for its ambitions. The purges have cost the army more than half its officers; today's generals were captains three years ago.

Moreover, fully a third of the army is kept in Damascus to prop Jadid up. He needs propping, for Syria not only is a hotbed of external subversion but is seething with domestic plots and counterplots as well. Though Hafez is in jail, his colleagues in the Baath moderate wing are at large and fully capable of stirring up a countercoup. Already they are pumping money into the army ranks, trying to buy key officers to turn against Jadid. Sooner or later, they will make their move.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.