Revolt in the Countryside

The small, hard-bitten dictator who had tried to bring order and unity to Syria gave up the fight at 9:30 one night last week. Bowing to a 24-hour ultimatum backed by rebel troops and artillery, he sat down in his marble and stucco presidential palace and wrote: "In order to avoid bloodshed among the Syrian people, whom I love ... I present my resignation." Then he climbed into a black, bulletproof Mercedes that once belonged to Adolf Hitler and, followed by two car loads of gendarmes, headed west from Damascus across the mountains through a swirling snowstorm and into Lebanon to exile. From Aleppo, Syria's biggest city, the rebel radio boomed: "You have been liberated from the dictatorship of the despot Shishekly, stepson of imperialism, who strangled our freedom."

Four years before, the same army had marched behind its Commander Adib Shishekly, and proclaimed that it was liberating Syria from another despot. When Shishekly came to power in 1949, it was in the year's third coup, and the 16th change of government since the French left Syria in 1946. At first, the soft-voiced, hard-eyed little man stayed behind the scenes, keeping only the vital Defense Ministry for himself. He left it to the politicians to run the country. They failed: government succeeded government, the Chamber bickered and split. At the end of two years, Adib Shishekly chased away the deputies, jailed the political leaders, scrapped the constitution, deposed old President Hashem Bey Atassi and installed his own man.

The Promises. And when he had finished tearing down, he began rebuilding. Out of his office came a blizzard of 350 decrees, transforming and reforming -on paper at least -every aspect of Syrian life: tribal chieftains curbed, stiff inheritance taxes imposed, income-tax evasions stopped. Shishekly booted sleepy bureaucrats into action, trained surveyors for land redistribution, and stormed, "Our reform needs to be done quickly."

Last July he gave Syria a new constitution which promised "government of the people, by the people and for the people," had himself elected President in a rigged election, convened a stooge Parliament and began feeding his people democracy in small doses. He had promised the people too much and given the politicians too little. Sixteen times in four years, fanatics tried to assassinate Shishekly; one night Tommy-gun slugs ripped his car and pinked his arm. He kept three homes, slept in a different bed each night; when he walked into a room his searching eyes never left the doorway, and he never sat with his back to a window.

Shishekly impressed visiting statesmen -among them U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles -as the Arab world's most realistic statesman. But all his decrees could not subdue Syria's passion for chaos. And he made enemies of all sorts, who had in common only the ancient Arab aphorism, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." Last month students surged through Damascus streets crying, "Down with Shishekly," and in the hills the Druze tribe revolted. Shishekly arrested twelve top opposition politicians, suppressed the Druze and Restored a precarious control (TIME, Feb. 8).

The end came for Shishekly when the army turned against him. In Aleppo last week, a captain seized the local pro-Shishekly commandant, ordered troops to storm the radio station and began the revolt by crying over the air: "Arms and comrades, join the sacred movement!"

Within a few hours the revolt spread south, east and west. Damascus lay surrounded, an ominously calm eye in the storm. Shishekly ordered help from the commander of Syria's biggest forces, on the Israeli border: the commander answered that he was staying neutral. Shishekly sent for his chief of staff, but the chief refused to fight the rebels. The dictator sent a call to his puppet Parliament to convene -and waited.

One by one the precincts of the revolution called in: Horns, Latakia, Hama, the Jebel Druze. That night Shishekly conceded. He abdicated his dictatorship crying "God Save Syria" and fled with six suitcases, under a guarantee of safe conduct. Two days later, at Beirut airport, the ex-strongman walked swiftly to a waiting Saudi Arabian DC-3 whose engines were already turning over. The door snapped shut and his plane, escorted by Lebanese fighters, flew him away to refuge in Riyadh.

The Factions. Shishekly was gone, but the struggle for power went on. The Aleppo rebels brought 89-year-old Hashem Bey Atassi, Syria's perennial President, out of mothballs, named him President for the third time. The pro-Shishekly Chamber in Damascus proclaimed its own President, Speaker Maahmoun el Kuzbari. Syria now had two Presidents and two armies: 12,000 to 16,000 anti-Shishekly rebels, mainly infantry and artillery in the north, v. 4,000 pro-Shishekly loyalists, mainly mechanized units in the south around Damascus.

The rebels sent planes swarming over the capital, raining down surrender leaflets. Students took over the Damascus streets screaming, "Down with Shishekly and his followers," tore into the Parliament and beat the Deputies until they ran, then went after Radio Damascus. Armored cars were waiting and rifles cracked. Twenty were injured, one killed.

The next morning rebel troops reached the environs of Damascus. A conference of the two factions was held at Horns, midway between Damascus and Aleppo. Shishekly's followers gave up, agreed to recognize ancient Hashem Bey Atassi as chief of state. Peace returned to Syria, the peace of the curfew. And once more were heard the voices of the old politicians, promising the people real democracy and genuine reform.

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