Syria: Throwing Away the Script

Syrian army revolts usually resemble the ancient battles of Chinese warlords: there is a head count of men and material in the opposing armies and the larger wins a bloodless victory. The losers are then jailed or exiled to well-paying diplomatic posts abroad.

Not so last week, when Syria experienced its twelfth attempted coup d’état in 14 years and the only one to throw away the script. Led by ex-Colonel Jassem Alwan, who had already staged an unsuccessful coup last year, a band of army officers and civilians launched a morning attack in Damascus on the radio station and the Defense Ministry. Diplomats in Britain’s new green and yellow embassy got off a cable home: “Heavy fighting in the heart of the city.”

The gunfire lasted for four hours, and three Syrian MIG fighter planes—serving either the government, the rebels, or their own whim—knocked out the radio transmitter. When the radio limped back on the air, it was still in government hands. The strongman of Syria’s ruling Baath (Renaissance) Party, General Mohammed Hafez, who is both Defense Minister and army chief of staff, broadcast that the effort “to disturb the peace” had been crushed. Next day he announced the break in the rules of Syrian-style coups: eight rebel military men and twelve civilians had been executed. Hafez blamed the revolt on Syrian supporters of Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, who is feuding with Baath-ruled Syria over control of the proposed new Arab federation.

But Mideastern observers could not understand why Nasserites would begin a revolt on the very day that Syria’s President Louai Atassi was flying to Cairo to make concessions to Nasser.

Even Baath party newspapers conceded that Syria was at last ready to accept Nasser’s demand for a “national front” federation in which his supporters would have equal strength with Baath. After a ten-hour conference with Nasser, President Atassi flew home and rushed to the military hospital to kiss the soldiers wounded in defending his regime. At week’s end Damascus radio was still making brief, shrill broadcasts insisting that the revolt was crushed, but the country remained buttoned up against the outside world, with borders, airports and harbors sealed.