Ahmad Ammar Quotes

Jika engkau mahukan teman, cukuplah Allah sebagai teman. Jika engkau mahukan musuh, cukuplah nafsu sebagai seteru. Jika engkau mahukan hiburan, cukuplah al-Quran sebagai bacaan. Jika engkau mahukan nasihat, cukuplah mati sebagai nasihat.

Whether the army was capable of carrying out such an operation was a question never asked. The officer corps had been repeatedly purged, those ousted replaced by some 2,000 Ba’thist-indoctrinated ‘educators.’ “I worked as a teacher in the staff college,” remembered Ibrahim Isma’il Khahya who, in 1966, became commander of the 8th Infantry Brigade. “My officers were mostly teachers, too. They weren’t ready for war.” The head of intelligence for the Golan district, Col. Nash’at Habash, had been kicked out and replaced by a mere captain, brother of a high-ranking Ba’th official. Ahmad Suweidani, the former military attaché in Beijing, had been boosted from colonel to lieutenant general and chief of staff. Though Syria’s 250 tanks and 250 artillery pieces were generally of more recent vintage than Israel’s, their maintenance was minimal. Supply, too, could be erratic; deprived of food, front-line troops had been known to desert their posts. The air force was particularly substandard. An internal army report rated only 45 percent of Syria’s pilots as “good,” 32 percent as “average,”‘ and the remainder “below average.” Only thirty-four of the forty-two jets at the Dmair and Saiqal airfields were operational. Yet, within the ranks, morale had never been higher. Capt. Muhammad ‘Ammar, an infantry officer serving in the fortress of Tel Fakhr, recalled: “We thought we were stronger, that we could cling to our land, and that the Golan was impenetrable. We were especially heartened by the unity between Syria, Egypt, and Jordan.” Another captain, Marwan Hamdan al-Khuli, heard that “we were much stronger and would defeat the enemy easily.

Problems don't exist because people are religious; people are religious because problems exist.