Steel & Silk:
Men and Women who Shaped Syria 1900–2000
Sami Moubayed
© Sami Moubayed 2006
Published by Cune Press at Smashwords
Steel & Silk
Men and Women who Shaped Syria 1900–2000
By Sami Moubayed
Profiles of 341 Syrians who participated in the history of the last century.
Naziq al-Abid, a young woman of 22 who ripped off her veil,
picked up a rifle, and ran to join the battle of Maysaloun against
French invaders in July 1920.
Faris al-Khury, the Syrian statesman who participated in the
founding of the UN in 1945. Khury was the first and only Christian to
serve as prime minister of a Muslim country.
Shukri al-Quwatli, the esteemed father of Syrian independence
in 1946 - called by many the George Washington of Syria.
Husni Za’im, a military man who, with the backing of the
CIA, seized power in a coup d’etat in 1949-the first modern day
coup in the Arab world.
Hafez al-Asad, the son of a notable from an isolated mountain
town who became president. The government he founded is one of the
longest-lived in modern history.
Syria has been subjected to more trial since the armistice (in 1918) than any other Near Eastern country. All is not lost, however, there is room for hope. The territory we have been left with, greater than the area covered by Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland put together, is a vast playing field for our young people and for their entrepreneurial spirit. The Syrian soil is fertile, we produce cereals, cotton, fruit. We have oil. Our artisans are some of the most ingenious in the world. Our people are sober, tough, dutiful and hard-working. Syrians are found all over the world, and everywhere they occupy important positions. The spiritual forces of our country are intact. The past and the future are ours. We have every reason to believe that Syria will survive.
-Syrian Prime Minister Jamil Mardam Bey at independence in April 1946.
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To Abdul-Salam Haykal, with gratitude.
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Contents
Index of Profiles by Last Name
Index of Profiles by Chapter
For Students, Journalists & Researchers
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Definitions & Abbreviations
Listed below are translations of names that appear in Arabic throughout the text, along with phrases and terms that also appear repeatedly and for many readers will require explanation. (Other newspapers are given graphic representation in Journalists.)
Names of Periodicals
Al-Ahram: The Pyramid
Al-Akhbar: The News
Akher Daqiqa: The Last Minute
Alif Ba’e: A, B
Al-Arus: The Bride
Al-`Asi: The Orontes
Al-Asima: The Capital
Al-Ayyam: The Days
Al-Baath: The Revival
Barada: For the River Barada in Damascus.
Dimashq: Damascus
Ad-Domari: The Lamplighter
Al-Dunya: The World
Fata al-Arab: The Arab Youth
Al-Fayha: Damascus
Al-Hawadeth: The Events
Al-Inshaa: The Creation
Al-Islah: The Reform
Al-Iqtisad wa Annaqel: Economy and
Transport
Al-Kifah: The Struggle
Lisan al-Arab: The Arab Tongue
Al-Manar: The Light
Al-Manar al-Jadid: The New Light
Mir’at al-Sharq: Mirror of the East
Al-Mudhik al-Mubki: Laughing and Crying
Al-Nahhar: The Morning
Al-Naqid: The Critic
Al-Nas: The People
Al-Nasir: The Victory
Al-Nidal: The Struggle
Noor al-Fayha: The Light of Damascus
Al-Nuqqad: The Critics
Al-Qabas: The Firebrand
Al-Ra’e al-Am: Public Opinion
Al-Safir: The Ambassador
Al-Sha’b: The People
Al-Shahr: The Month
Al-Sham: Damascus
Al-Shati’ al-Souri: The Syrian Coast
As-Shira: The Sail
Al-Souri al-Jadid: The New Syrian
Souriyya al-Jadida: The New Syria
Tabibak: Your Doctor
Al-Tahrir al-Arabi: Arab Liberation
Al-Thawra: The Revolution
Tishreen: October
Al-Wihda al-Arabiyya: Arab Unity
Usbu’ al-Arabi: The Arab Week
Political Terms
Arab Mountain. Used in reference to the Druze Mountain in southern Syria. It is not used frequently in non-Arabic books and sources but is a common term in Syria.
Civil Rights.
Refers to the civil rights of Syrian politicians that were abolished by the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) in 1963. The terminated rights included: the right to vote, the right to hold public office, the right to receive a salary or pension from the state, and the right to work in a community (being religious or social), a syndicate (i.e. professional organization), or any academic institution. “Civil rights” also include the right to own property and work in the media, either as a publisher or a journalist, and the right to hold medals, ranks, titles, and decorations from the Syrian Republic.
Al-Fatat Society. Translated as “young and new.” Al-Fatat is the secret society founded by Arab nationalists in Ottoman Syria in 1911.
Al-Gharra Society. Translated as “glorious.”
Al-Gharra is the charity society founded by Sheikh Ali al-Daqr in 1924 to cater to the education of Muslim children in Damascus.
Intifada. Means “uprising” in reference to the two uprisings that took place in Palestine in 1987 and in 2000. Al-Tamaddun al-Islami Society The Society of Islamic Urbanization.
Acronyms
ALM: Arab Liberation Movement. The party created by General Adib al-Shishakli in 1953. It preached pan-Arabism, Arab unity, women’s. emancipation, and limited socialist reform. It lost all political weight when Shishakli was toppled in 1954.
AUB: American University of Beirut.
BCW: Beirut College for Women.
CUP: Committee for Union and Progress. Founded by young Ottoman officers who aimed to reform the Empire. They siezed power in 1908 and deposed Sultan Abdulhamid II in 1909. The CUP began as a reform movement but soon became a dictatorship, prompting the Arabs to declare a revolt against the CUP in 1916.
DCC: Damascus Chamber of Commerce.
DFLP: Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
IPS: Institute of Palestinian Studies. Established in Beirut in 1963. A pioneer in the translation of Israeli Hebrew sources. Established a school for the teaching of modern Hebrew, a Center for Hebrew Studies, and a monthly digest in Arabic of translations from the Hebrew press.
MAN: Movement of Arab Nationalists. Loyal to Gamal Abd al-Nasser of Egypt. In July 1963, tried and failed to sieze power in Syria with the help of Nasserist officers in the Syrian Army.
MBC: Middle East Broadcasting Channel. The pioneering Saudi Arabian satellite channel that achieved popularity in the Arab World during the early 1990s, long before the Doha-based Aljazeera Channel.
NPF: National Progressive Front. Founded by President Hafez al-Asad, after he came to power in 1970, as a coalition of socialist parties in parliament operating under the umbrella of the ruling Baath Party.
PLO: Palestinian Liberation Organization.
PFLP: Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
RCC: Revolutionary Command Council. Created after the Military Committee of the Baath Party siezed power in Syria in March 1963. It became the supreme authority in Syria in 1963-1970, and ceased to operate when Hafez al-Asad came to power in 1970.
SANA: Syrian Arab News Agency.
SSNP: Syrian Social Nationalist Party. A party pledging unification of Greater Syria created by the Lebanese philosopher Antune Sa’ada in 1932. UAR: United Arab Republic. The UAR was created by Syria and Egypt in 1958 and dissolved by Syria in 1961.
UN: United Nations.
UNDP: United Nations Development Program.
Note on Parties:
The name “People’s Party” can refer either to the 1925 Shahbandar People’s Party or to the 1950s party of the same name that was associated with Rushdi al-Kikhiya and Nazim al-Qudsi.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the institutions that helped me conduct my research in the Arab world and Europe. They are the Jaffett Library at the American University of Beirut (AUB), the Syrian Culture Club (SCC) at AUB, the Arab Language Assemblage in Syria, the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), the Asad National Library, the BBC World Service archives in London, the Arab Documentation Center at the University of Exeter, the London School of Economics (LSE), the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, the British Library in London, the Public Records Office (PRO) in London, the Damascus Chamber of Commerce (DCC), and the Historical Documentation Center in Damascus.
The list of people who have assisted this project from its inception and offered their suggestions, corrections, and encouragement, is a long one. To all those who helped me in the completion of this work, I am grateful. Mr Abdul-Salam Haykal, Ms Thuraya Ismail, Assistant Professor Joshua Landis, Mr Jamal Mansour, Dr Kevin Martin read the book at various stages of composition and edited some of the manuscripts, while Dr Nicolas Chahine, Mr Salahuddine Habal, Mr Ridwan al-Atasi, Mrs Colette Khury, Ms Alia Mansour, Mr Sahban Abd Rabbo, Dr Mahmud Nofal, Mr Nazir Sinan, and the late Dr Munir al-Ajlani, and Mr Abd al-Ghani al-Itri, were also generous with their time, helping me with my research and in gathering documents for the work. Vice-President Abd al-Halim Khaddam, former Defense Minister Mustapha Tlas, and former Prime Ministers Dr Abdel Raouf al-Kassem and General Abd al-Rahman Khlayfawi took the time to see me for interviews and offered their insight on the work and on Syria in the twentieth century.
I thank Scott C. Davis of Cune Press for his support. Thanks also to many in the US who helped: John Anderson, Lorna Burden, Barbara Bodden, Melissa Flesch, Professor Thomas Gage, Janet Holt, Richard F. Johnson, Peggy Strawhorn Kass, Annette Peizer, Christina Velasquez, Dan Watkins, Meghan Bush Whitmore, Richard Wood. Needless to say, any faults, misconceptions, or omissions in this book are strictly my own.
Most important, I would like to thank my mother and father who have encouraged my interest in Syrian history from my early days, and who have support my education and all of my book projects.
On Arabic
For lay readers, the representation of Arabic words in English is an inexact science-the source of unnecessary confusion. Words that have a consistent spelling in Arabic may be transliterated several different ways in English-which often leads the lay reader to think that two different Arabic words are involved. In years past, for example, adherents of the Prophet were "Moslems," even though today we refer to "Muslims." To put it rather simply, from the gentle tone of Victorian travel narratives compared to the more gritty attitude of contemporary Western news reporting, a reader might judge that Moslems are a fair-minded hospitable people whereas Muslims are unpredictable and dangerous. In truth, the Arabic word is the same. Only the transliteration varies.
Many sounds that are represented in Arabic by characters such as Aayn ع have no exact correspondence to the Latin characters used in English. In some texts, the Aayn will be represented as "aa," and in others as "a'a." In order to make our text less intimidating to lay readers, I have for the most part dropped the apostrophe. So I refer to the newspaper Inshaa, rather than Insha'a.
There are also different conventions for transliteration. For example, the English prefer to transliterate the letter Sheen ش using "sh" where, in French, a"ch" is preferred. Hence our use of "Inshaa" for the newspaper-even though it carries the French transliteration of "Inchaa" on its masthead. Also, this explains our last minute effort to correct the transliteration of the name of the esteemed Administrator Nicolas Shahine to Nicolas Chahine. Mr Chahine argued that most of his family speaks French as a second language and English only as a third language-so they prefer the French transliteration.
Perhaps the greatest source of confusion for lay readers is the use of the article in front of many names-and the varied spellings of the article. Most Arabic names that take an article use the proper "al-" or "el-" (as in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, The Pyramid). However, in actual speech the article is slurred when the word that follows begins with certain consonants (called "solar letters"), and so the article can be spelled differently in English. For example, the satirical newspaper that figured in Syria's Damascus Spring is transliterated "Ad-Domari" (the Lamplighter) and the small Lebanese newspaper that broke the Iran Contra scandal is spelled "As-Shira." Although the spoken transliteration is most often used, the "al-" is also correct. And often you will see a name represented both ways. I have used both forms, preferring the "al-" in bibliographic listings and the spoken version in the body of the book.
In many cases the transliterations used in this book will seem unfamiliar to non-specialists. For the most part, I have forsaken modern journalistic practice to use transliterations that are most common in historical works on the period such as Patrick Seale's Asad: the Struggle for the Middle East and Philip Khoury's Syria and the French Mandate.
Occasionally, I will transliterate the name of a post World War II figure in an old fashioned way (the way his father's and grandfather's names would have been spelled in their day) to show the continuity from one generation to the next. In the case of individuals who are extremely well known public figures, I have had to relent. I refer to King Hussein of Jordan, for example, and hope that the reader will still grasp the point that he is the descendant of Sharif Husayn of Mecca.
* * *
Author's Note
I took up this book project because no serious attempt since 1957 has been made to create a comprehensive biographical dictionary for Syria. The first "who's who" in Syria was written by the late journalist George Faris in 1946 to commemorate the end of the French Mandate. The book was released in 1949 with the idea that it would be updated periodically. When Syria and Egypt merged to form the United Arab Republic (UAR) in 1958, President Gamal Abd al-Nasser of Egypt put a stop to the project. In the late 1990s, a few biographical dictionaries appeared in Syria, but they were too subjective and weak in historical research to serve as proper reference sources on Syria.
The idea to write this book first came to mind in 1997, while I was doing research for my first book The Politics of Damascus 1920-1946. I realized that writers would benefit immensely from a reference to Syrian lives in the years 1900-2000. I began working on this book three years later. This is the first book in English to deal with Syria from the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II, whose final years in power were 1900-1909, to the era of President Bashar al-Asad, who came to power in 2000.
Few people today understand what Syria went through during these past 100 years. Most Westerners know little about Syria prior to the Arab-Israeli Conflict in 1948, whereas Arabs in general and Syrians in particular are interested mainly in the past 30 years under the late President Hafez al-Asad. I have written about the men and women who contributed to the country that exists today, in the first few years of the 21st century.
To make a project of this size feasible, I have excluded religious leaders and businessmen. I also excluded those who worked strictly in legal affairs and the sciences. Instead I have concentrated on the following fields: officers, administrators, national activists, politicians, academics or educators, journalists, diplomats, and men and women of arts and letters.
My objective in writing this book was to include a comprehensive list of men and women who I believed were influential in the shaping of Syria. Technically, Steel & Silk is not a who's who of modern Syria. In other words, it does not attempt to be complete. Neither does it cover everyone who reached a senior post in the past 100 years, nor does it include all those who became famous in their respective fields. It does not concentrate on the notables. Neither does it focus on the leaders of post-1963 Syria. The profiles in this work do not thoroughly represent everyone who passed through Syrian history in the past 100 years. I offer my apologies to the many distinguished Syrians not included. I also extend regrets for my narration of flaws, foibles, failures, and folly. I have avoided the impulse to white-wash my subjects because, in the end, to do so is no honor. Every human being has imperfections, and it's necessary to note these before a reader is willing to give full credit to an individual's virtues or accomplishments.
My method of research was to conduct face-to-face interviews. I supplemented information gleaned from interviews with earlier biographical dictionaries in Arabic, newspapers from the past century, and books in both Arabic and English. For some profiles, I also relied on official documents that I found at the Public Records Office in London, the American University of Beirut, and various institutions in Damascus. While I was writing Steel & Silk, some subjects (for example ex-President Nazim al-Qudsi and ex-Prime Minister Ma'mun al-Kuzbari) died before giving me a promised interview. Others died right after I met with them (Ambassador Rafic Jouejati, the politician Abd al-Wahab Homad, and the journalist Abd al-Ghani al-Itri). The contributions of the latter group were instrumental to the completion of this work, since they are central figures in Syrian life from the 1930s until 2003.
All of my subjects endured a barrage of communication from me, aside from direct interviews. They answered dozens of questions delivered by email, post mail, phone, and fax.
I have found that many of the existing Arabic biographical reference works are inconsistent and unreliable. I have attempted to verify information using other published sources and my own interviews whenever possible. Unfortunately, the memories of friends, colleagues, and family are not exact and often contradict one another, even on simple matters of fact. The current text of this book is far more accurate than its predecessors. Still, I am aware of its shortcomings, and ask readers to assist me in improving future editions by forwarding documentary proof of errors and inaccuracies to me or to the publisher.
Finally, I must add that I am an admirer of many of the personalities in this book, while I am a sharp critic of others. Some will forever be hailed for their deeds while others will forever be cursed. Collectively, however, the men and women in this book are responsible for the Syria that exists today. Steel & Silk is an effort to give them their due place in the history of Syria and the history of the Middle East as a whole.
-Sami Moubayed
Damascus, May 2005
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Preface
The Book, for Lay Readers
Steel & Silk was designed to be a reference work, an historical record, and part of the larger body of scholarly fact and analysis. Typically such works are dry and tedious to the lay reader.
But a funny thing happened. The small army of fact checkers and proof readers working on this book couldn't put it down. The text contained a human drama that was cinematic in its scope. Readers were reminded of a vast sprawling Dostoyevsky novel, with utterly black-hearted scoundrels, stooges, yes men-as well as feisty women who picked up rifles and fought for independence; wise leaders who were betrayed and murdered by their supposed protectors; and brave captains of underground revolt who were captured and hung on public scaffolds by stiff-uniformed foreign troops.
In fact, Steel & Silk has what Dostoyevsky novels are most known for: a plot that links a vast number of characters. The theme that runs through the 341 Syrian lives depicted here is the story of a people who yearned for independence under the Ottomans, achieved it after World War I, and then were keel-hauled by the French and British in Paris in 1919.
This is the story of a people who, when real independence arrived in 1946, quickly learned that a small state required a patron and protector to survive. Again and again they petitioned the United States to resume the role it had played during World War I, the role of an impartial broker and former colony that validated the aspirations of a people clawing their way out from under 400 years of foreign occupation.
This is the story of an innocent citizenry seeking to learn the lessons of the Enlightenment. Instead, France and the United States taught Syria that military might trumps democracy every time. In 1920, French artillery blasted away Syria's first national government. In 1945 Syrian diplomats participated in founding the United Nations in San Francisco and beseeched their fellow diplomats for help in creating an independent democracy. A month later, French warplanes responded by bombing the Parliament in Damascus and killing 600 civilians. In 1949, when Syria was once again independent and holding free elections, the CIA engineered the Arab world's first military coup in Syria and later participated in two other coups.
The story told by Steel & Silk takes the reader to the very edge of the cliff and then, at the moment when the hero is teetering on the brink-this book abruptly ends. Will Syria survive the violence in neighboring Iraq? Will Syria open its economy wide enough to unleash the entrepreneurial abilities of its people? Will Syria emerge as a native democracy that takes the best Western ideas and practices and gives them meaning within an Oriental context? Steel & Silk asks us to look to the next few years of unfolding history for the resolution of its themes.
Steel & Silk is an invaluable resource for scholars, journalists, and researchers. And this is a book for lay readers as well. The lives depicted in this volume-the aspiration, longing, and heartbreak-speak to us. The grit, the fact, the detail tell us of a specific past. Yet they also demonstrate the difficult science and the dark art of civic life-a science and an art that blesses and curses every human being on this planet.
The Syrian Nation
Syria is an ancient land that has been included in many different empires over the centuries. In "modern times," Syria was part of Alexander's Greek Empire, then the Roman-Byzantine Empire, then the Islamic Empire, and, finally, the Ottoman Empire. For three or four thousand years before World War I, Syria and neighboring lands were organized locally by their cities, tribes, and geographic enclaves-and organized broadly by the empire that held sway at the time. In 1914, if you asked a Syrian where he was from, it's likely that he would say, Beirut or Damascus or Alexandretta. Or he might say, Jebel Shouf, Jebel Druze, Jebel Nusayri. Syrians defined themselves by the nearest city, or by a nearby jebel (mountain). They also defined themselves by family or village or tribe-villages and tribes normally included people of similar race, religion, and language.
The governing system of empire, when transferred to an organizational chart, looks loose and sloppy to Western observers. At the turn of the last century, Western writers joked that the Ottoman Empire was the "sick man of Europe." But now scholars are beginning to appreciate the unparalleled ability of the Ottoman Empire to accommodate local differences and to mediate between competing groups.
Measured against the concept of empire, the nation is a highly organized political and economic entity. It requires local custom and culture to give way to a larger identity. The process of forging a nation is seldom pretty. Always, there is tension between the national concept and local allegiance, and frequently there is violence as the sharp edges of local culture and custom are ground off by the weight of national ambition. Yet the first nations that were successful in enticing or coercing their indigenous populations into cooperation in the national project were rewarded with enormous wealth. In the national system that emerged in the 1800s, just a few nations controlled 85% of the earth's surface area.
At the close of World War I, Britain and France imposed the concept of "nation" on Syria and other Arab lands. This concept aroused the aspirations of every tribal, ethnic, geographic, and religious group included within Syria's borders. Appeals to patriotism and the demonizing of a common Israeli enemy did little to induce voluntary consent for any one national government among people who, over the preceding 4,000 years, had sworn loyalty to family, to tribe, or to the city or mountain region of their birth. After independence in 1946, coups were frequent and, until the Baath took power in 1963, no government lasted longer than a year or two. Still, historians and Syrians themselves do not agree on the degree of centrifugal force present in Syria-then or now. Was the curtailment of human rights and democratic practices required to prevent fragmentation? Or was the threat of chaos merely a pretext invented or inflated by those who wished to assert the authority of the state? Either way this argument plays out, it's clear that the result of the European national system-as applied to Syria-was seventeen years of short-lived governments followed by a strict security regimen that has lasted for more than four decades.
Syria suffered the drawbacks of nationhood, yet the prime benefit of this status-the opportunity to dominate vast territories, to colonize them, to loot their resources-was not available to it. The best that a nation such as Syria could hope for was to efficiently cultivate the resources within its boundaries. Unfortunately, this opportunity was also taken from Syria, at least in part, when foreign powers stole jewels from the Syrian crown.
After the French seized power in 1920, they hoped to leverage their traditionally close relationship with Beirut's Christians into a permanent presence in the Levant. They quickly carved western territory out of Syria, labeled it "Lebanon," and put Christians from Beirut and nearby Mount Lebanon in charge-sowing the seeds of the Lebanese Civil war fifty years later. In 1939, the French gave away a choice portion of the Syrian coast to Turkey in exchange for Turkey's neutrality in World War II. Most recently, in 1967 Israel (viewed in Syria as a vehicle for the projection of Western power) seized the Golan Heights in southern Syria.
After an unbroken string of territorial losses, it's understandable that Syrians would look on nationhood as an instrument of Western control rather than as a vehicle for expanding their power and enabling their commercial interests.
After independence in 1946, many Syrians and other Arabs were attracted by the ideal of pan-Arabism-the notion of a broader Arab nation made more emotional sense than tight national borders and the definition of "nation" itself that had been imposed by Britain and France. The experiment of uniting Syria with Nasser's Egypt in 1958 followed a similar logic. After the failure of union with Egypt, the Baath Party devoted itself to implementing the pan-Arab ideal within Syria, while using the pan-Arab concept to guide their diplomacy.
It's true that the Baath military government that has dominated Syria since 1963 truncated the country's political culture and put an end to its vibrant free press. Certainly there were excesses, incompetence, and corruption during the last forty-plus years of one party rule. But these difficult years mirror comparable periods of development in the evolution of all other nations. Under Baath rule, roads, water, electricity, and public education were delivered to poor country districts for the first time. Land reform was made permanent. And the principle was established that Syrians, even those of humble origin, could aspire to the most important positions in society and government.
In three years, Syria's oil will run out. The only alternative source of wealth is the ingenuity, talent, and dedication of Syrians inside the country and the many who have left to establish lives abroad. The future will bring power sharing, free elections, and a market economy-or chaos. The recent Baath Party Congress put Pan-Arabism on the back burner. Syrians are now facing the proposition that their fate is tied to that of their nation-however arbitrary and illogical its boundaries.
It's my hope that Steel & Silk will do its part to assist Syrians from many different backgrounds who seek a national consensus that they can use to forge a new Syrian nation. I hope this volume will restore links to people, political parties, independent newspapers, and cultural traditions that have been forgotten over the years. I hope that this book will inspire the young-a third of the Syrian population is under the age of twenty-to forgo selfish interests on behalf of the common good. I'd like them to know about people such as General Yusuf al-Azma who gave a heart-rending speech as he prepared to meet the French army in July 1920 with Syrian independence hanging in the balance. Although conceding that his death and the deaths of many of his citizen-soldiers were a forgone conclusion, al-Azma nevertheless declared, "The Syrian people will not die!"
The Author
I first met Sami Moubayed in a pizza place in London's Bayswater district one night in February 2002. I knew him by reputation as a writer, political commentator, and scholar. Since that night, I have gotten to know Sami well. He is completely literate in Arabic and English. He has had a first rate education in arts and humanities at the American University of Beirut and at the University of Exeter in Britain. Yet he is also an astute businessman who places service and honor above sharp dealing. Certainly, he has his flaws. Sometimes, without thinking, he lapses into an overbearing manner that, to me, is pure Medieval nobility. Some of his public debates with other Syrian intellectuals are crazy-fierce-a breath-taking display of fact, logic, intuition, instinct, and rock-like loyalty to the names of men long dead: amazing, yet far too intense for my taste.
Still, Sami has an astonishing unself-conscious love of things intellectual. Such guileless wonderment at words, ideas, and repartee is in short supply in the West where thinkers feel the need to adopt a cynical pose and where intellectuality tends to be a fashion statement or a career move. Sami revels in the complexities of history and history-in-the-making. He exults in intellectual exchange as a pleasure in its own right. I've spent hours with Sami, putting the world together and then taking it apart again. We debate Syrian politics and economics. I can never win, but I keep trying anyway. His intellect and training are excellent. Still, what distinguishes Sami is something simple: his love of ideas.
Sami's intellectual style is good entertainment, yet it's also helped me, and it's helped Syria. Take, for example, the US smear attacks on Syria that began on May 13, 2003-following the US invasion of Iraq. My book on Syria, The Road from Damascus, was arousing some interest, and I ended up as a guest on Fox News. They asked me to debate a professional talk show guest from the Heritage Foundation who had appeared on every major talk show and was paid a salary from conservative interests just to stay available to the media and to think about the world from a conservative point of view.
I was definitely outgunned. And Fox had a reputation of using liberals to wipe the floor. Also, Syria is a deep subject. I had only studied this country for 16 years.
What did I really know about Syria, especially its politics and economics?
Then it struck me. I'd have no trouble talking about Syria if I were sitting in a Damascus coffee house with Sami Moubayed. Why do a talk show host and a conservative think-tanker have to be more intimidating than Sami? Now I understood: This was my opportunity to play Sami Moubayed while some other poor guy got to play the ignorant American. "I'm ready!" I told the producer. "I can do this!"
The interview went well. What worries me now is that the next time I'm on TV I may face an armed opponent. That's because Steel & Silk will make the personalities, the facts, and the broad themes of Syrian history readily available. This book will give Americans and all Westerners access to Syria.
Syrian Culture
I first visited Syria in 1987. I spent nearly three months traveling alone in the country, riding rickety country buses, drinking tea with the secret police, sleeping on concrete floors in the homes of hospitable Syrians who had spontaneously invited a stranger to stay the night.
In March 2003, in the run up to the Iraq War,the US embassy ordered Americans to leave, and nearly all Europeans left as well. I suppose that Damascus, as an international city, was the Syrian location that would be most understanding of an American under these strained circumstances. But I wanted to get beyond the Damascus bubble, to travel among ordinary Syrians, and to find out what they were thinking. So I headed out into the countryside, traveling at night to save time. I waited in the bus stations in dingy lounges filled with smoke and decorated with sullen Saudi travelers who, I guessed, were not members of the royal family. Every time I boarded a bus, I had to show my passport-so all the passengers learned that I was an American. On one ride, the secret policeman who checked our documents seemed personally insulted by the US invasion and offered some crude advice for President Bush. Others, however, spoke quietly about the need for change and the impossibility of ordinary men and women unseating a government such as Saddam's. The buses were small and the seats were hard-as they had been in 1987. Now, however, the buses had televisions mounted in front above the aisle. As we careened through the darkness, the TVs showed the bombing of Baghdad, the hunt for a downed American flyer in the reeds on the banks of the Euphrates, and the mangled bodies after a cruise missile landed on a Baghdad souk. The images were in living color.
Syrians were overtly anti-American. At least they disagreed with our foreign policy. Even though my countrymen were spilling Iraqi blood a few miles away, however, I was never challenged or threatened. Other than the one angry secret policeman, I was never treated rudely.
In my travels around Syria, I have met many Syrians who expressed incisive intellect and broad culture. Still, I'm won over by less dazzling qualities that are even more pervasive: nearly all Syrians express simple goodness, charm, allegiance, warmth, and courtesy.
The Syrians I admire have a whimsical medieval quality about them. Syria grew more slowly and over a longer period of time than America. A tradition of the "strong individual" emerged in the US. Certainly there were strong families as well. Yet America missed out on an essential intervening stage where village communities lived for centuries close to the earth, in balance with their surroundings, and pursued group strategies for coaxing a living from the soil.
Perhaps this is the reason that Syrian society is free of a whole range of problems that plague the US. Street crime in Syria is nearly non-existent, even though the Syrian criminal justice system is not extreme. No teen drugs, gangs, weapons. No school shootings. Little or no homelessness. Scarcely any old age homes. Syrian families and communities are large and enduring. They regulate society far more effectively than an impersonal legal system ever could. They create a stage and give a role to every member of every family. In Syria you may be loved or hated but beyond doubt you are known. You own a place in a family and a community and this gives you a reason to protect and enhance your reputation. In Syria, men and women participate in the common artistic endeavor of weaving and decorating a social fabric whose origins stretch far into the past.
You can accuse Syrian families of being too strong, too dominated by men. To a certain extent this is true of Syria and all other Mediterranean cultures. Yet those who read Steel & Silk will learn that a women's suffrage law was proposed in the independent Syrian parliament in 1918, two years before a similar measure passed into law in the United States. Today, Syria is changing and evolving. The aspirations of Syrian women who want to break free from the will of their male relatives is largely supported by government and by law. Syrian woman compose slightly more than fifty percent of the work force. Women's rights are equal to those in the United States and ahead of those in some European nations. Many Syrian women tell me that their families have reached the perfect balance of individual freedom and family closeness.
These days I visit Syria once or twice a year. I bring friends from America to travel among the villages, to see the monuments, and to meet the people. I'm writing another book. I can't stay away from this place where camaraderie, innocence, rich artistic temperament, an embracing family and community life, and pure intellectual exchange are found on every street corner.
American Readers
Steel & Silk gives Americans the opportunity to penetrate the stereotypes that prevail in the American media, to remove the haze of false accusation, and to see Syrian society in one sharply defined perspective. This book can prevent us from inadvertently harming a nation that has long sought our friendship. But there is more. Syria is a traditional society that is emerging into the modern world in an idiosyncratic way. Syrians are far from perfect. Yet they have something to teach us about the value of balancing individual careers and quick-paced free-flowing society with the restful and stable presence of family and community. Syrians have developed techniques for defending the best traditions of the past against the worst excesses of the present. And Steel & Silk provides a distinct point of access. It's my hope that American readers will have the wisdom to use this book well.
-Scott C. Davis,
Cune Press, Seattle
* * *
Steel & Silk
The first graduating class of the Syrian Air Force, 1947.
Fawzi al-Quawiqji, commander of the Army of Deliverance, during the Arab-Israeli War of 1948.
A group of Syrian officers at the warfront in Palestine in May 1948. To the far left of the photo is General Jamil Ramadan, who became director of military police and deputy chief-of-staff in the post-1948 era.
General Wadih al-Muqabari, who became commander of the Syrian Air Force in 1956-1963, pictured with an American airplane, Harvard AT-6. This airplane was originally used for training, but transferred into a war plane for emergency use in the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. During the war, 16 training planes were transformed into war planes and used in combat.
OFFICERS
The people listed in this chapter are Syrian military officers who held senior posts in three official armies: The Ottoman Army 1916-1918, the French Army (Army of the Levant) in 1920-1946, and the Syrian Army, created after Syria gained independence from France in 1946. This chapter also includes coup d'etat leaders, along with officers who became ministers and directors of the air force, the army, and political intelligence.
The National Bloc was a coalition of Syrian urban notables who comprised the leading anti-French movement in Syria. They sought to terminate the French Mandate (1920-1946) through diplomatic rather than military means.
Six wars punctuate the biographies of Syrian officers: World War I in 1914-1918, the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, the Six Day War against Israel in 1967, the Arab-Israeli War of 1973, known as the October War, and the war against Israel during its invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Most recently, in 1991 the Syrian army fought alongside the United States in Operation Desert Storm to liberate Kuwait from the Iraqi Army of Saddam Hussein.
In addition, Syrian officers joined in two rebellions, one against the Ottoman Army in 1916-1918, and the other against the French Mandate in 1920-1927. They were victorious against the Ottomans, but were defeated by the French in what is regarded as the greatest battle in modern Syrian history. The battle of Maysaloun took place on July 24, 1920, when Syrian forces met and engaged the invading French Army. The Syrians were defeated, and Syria's minister of war, Yusuf al-Azma, was killed in combat.
Alwan, Jassem
(1928-)
Jassem Alwan studied at the Homs Military Academy and joined the Syrian Army in 1946. In the 1950s, he joined the movement of Arab nationalism headed by President Gamal Abd al-Nasser of Egypt. During the union years with Egypt (1958-1961), Alwan established himself as one of the most prominent Nasserists in the Syrian Army. He served as commander of the Qatana military base on the outskirts of Damascus.
When a military coup dissolved the union in 1961, Alwan opposed the post-Nasser government of President Nazim al-Qudsi. He felt guilty that on the night of the coup (September 28) he had not been at his base, but rather on a military mission in Damascus. Had he not been away, Alwan believed he could have prevented the overthrow of the Nasser government in Syria. In 1962, Alwan tried to launch a coup against the Qudsi government, but it failed. In collaboration with the Military Committee of the Baath Party, Alwan succeeded in ousting the Qudsi administration in March 1963 and pledged to restore the United Arab Republic (UAR). To his dismay, however, he discovered that the Military Committee had no intention of sharing power with him, nor did it intend to restore Nasser as president of Syria.
In April 1963, Alwan began plotting for another coup with members of the Movement of Arab Nationalists (MAN), a radical Nasserist organization headed by Jihad Dahi and Hani al-Hindi. On July 18, 1963, Alwan launched his coup, but it was crushed by Interior Minister Amin al-Hafez. With submachine gun in hand, Hafez opened fire on a group of Alwan's best men, who had laid siege to the Damascus radio station. In the stampede, many civilians were killed. Nasser made a radio announcement, condemning the suppression of Alwan's coup and saying, "No union with the Baathists!"
Alwan was arrested, brought to court, and sentenced to death for treason. He remained in jail for one year, but was then released through the intervention of Nasser, President Tito of Yugoslavia, President Houarie Boumedienne of Algeria, and President Abd al-Salam Aref of Iraq. Nasser gave Alwan asylum in Egypt, but twenty-four rebels who had taken part in the failed coup were hauled before military courts in Syria, declared guilty of treason, and executed. Alwan continued to oppose the Baathist regime from abroad and eventually joined a coalition of Syrian dissidents funded by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The coalition included none other than his former archenemy, General Amin al-Hafez, who had been overthrown in 1966 and sentenced to execution in 1967, though he escaped before the sentence could be carried out.
Alwan's status in Egypt was shaken when, in 1991, Egypt's President Husni Mubarak went to war against Saddam Hussein. Iraqi money stopped reaching the Syrian dissidents in exile, and Alwan's diplomatic passport and honored status in Egypt were repealed. Jassem Alwan remained in Cairo, however, until General Mustapha Tlas, Syria's ex-minister of defense, intervened on his behalf and permitted his return to Syria in April 2005.
Sources:
Seale, Patrick. Asad: Struggle for the Middle East (1988).
Van Dam, Nicolas. The Struggle for Power in Syria (1996).
Al-Hayat (April 22, 2005).
al-Asad, Hafez (1930-2000): see “Politicians”
al-Ashi, Suhayl
(1918-)
A product of Damascus, Suhayl al-Ashi studied at the Homs Military Academy and graduated in 1939. That same year he joined the French-created Army of the Levant. After Syrian independence in 1946, he moved into the Syrian Army. On February 20, 1946, he became military assistant to President Shukri al-Quwatli. Ashi became very close to the Syrian president and served as his confidant, advisor, and aide-de-camp during the 1940s.
On March 29, 1949, General Husni al-Za'im seized power in Syria and arrested both Quwatli and Ashi. Shortly thereafter, Quwatli was released and exiled to Egypt, though Ashi remained in prison for twenty days. Za'im then released Ashi and appointed him director of police. He accepted the post but supported the coup that ousted Za'im on August 14, 1949.
Adib al-Shishakli, the new strongman of Syria, sent Ashi to France for advanced military training at the Ecole Superieure de Guerre. When Ashi returned in 1951, he became commander of the Syrian Air Force. In February 1954, Shishakli was overthrown by military coup, and Ashi became director of the Homs Military Academy. He then became commander of the 3rd Armored Division and allied himself once again with Quwatli, who had returned from exile in Cairo to be reelected president in September 1955. During the Suez Canal War of 1956, Quwatli delegated Ashi to meet with King Hussein of Jordan, and to plan for a joint Syrian-Jordanian offensive on Israel during the British-French-Israeli attack on Egypt. President Gamal Abd al-Nasser of Egypt called off the plan, however, when US President Dwight Eisenhower intervened on Egypt's behalf and secured a cease-fire.
In 1957, Suhayl al-Ashi joined a group of fellow officers opposed to Quwatli's alliance with the USSR and its socialist allies in the Eastern Bloc. Chief of Staff Afif al-Bizreh, who was closely allied to the Communist Party, accused Ashi and his colleagues of being CIA agents and dismissed them from the Syrian Army. Intelligence reports claimed that Kermit Roosevelt, the CIA officer responsible for intelligence gathering in the Middle East, and Howard Stone, his representative in Damascus, met with Ashi sometime in 1957 and discussed the possibility of a coup. It is believed that Ashi refused to join the conspiracy due to his personal friendship with President Quwatli.
For the remainder of the 1950s, Ashi engaged in commercial activity. In 1958, Syria and Egypt merged to form the United Arab Republic (UAR). Ashi voiced his disapproval of the UAR as it followed a hard-line, pro-USSR foreign policy. He supported the coup that overthrew the UAR in September 1961 and allied himself with Syria's new president, Nazim al-Qudsi, who appointed Ashi ambassador to Morocco in February 1962 and ambassador to Tunisia in July 1962. When the Baath Party came to power in March 1963, Ashi was forced out of the diplomatic service.
In 1999, Suhayl al-Ashi published his memoirs entitled, Fajr al-Istiqlal fi Souriyya (Dawn of Independence in Syria). The autobiography included a detailed account of his political career, including his relationship with President Quwatli.
Sources:
Rathmell, Andrew. Secret War in the Middle East, London 1995. Ashi, Suhayl. Fajr al-Istiqlal fi Souriyya, Beirut 1999. Interview with General Suhayl al-Ashi (June 14, 2002).
Aslan, Ali
(1933-)
General Ali Aslan studied at the Homs Military Academy. He allied himself with General Hafez al-Asad, an air force pilot, who became commander of the Syrian Air Force in 1963. While rivalries over leadership rocked Syria in the 1960s, Aslan remained loyal to Asad and continued to support him when he became president of the republic in 1971.
As a reward for his loyalty, Asad appointed Aslan commander of the 5th Infantry Division and commissioned him to fight in the Arab-Israeli War of 1973. In the early war hours, Aslan's troops broke through the Israeli's three-columned defensive line and drove the Israeli forces out of southern and central Golan. In 1975, Asad noted Aslan's courage and appointed him deputy to Chief of Staff Hikmat al-Shihabi.
When Shihabi retired from office in 1998, Ali Aslan replaced him as chief of staff. He negotiated military treaties with Japan and several countries in Eastern Europe, constantly calling for an arms buildup. After Ariel Sharon became Israeli prime minister in 2001, Aslan also warned against a sudden outbreak of war with Israel. Thus, Aslan established himself as a hard-liner, enforcing military conscription on Syrian youth, and canceling military exemptions that had been freely granted by his predecessor.
In June 2000, Aslan was promoted to the Central Committee of the Baath Party and developed a close relationship with Syria's new president, Bashar al-Asad. Two years later, however, in January 2002, Asad retired Ali Aslan from the Syrian Army and appointed him military advisor at the Presidential Palace.
Sources:
Al-Ahram (February 7, 2002).
Batatu, Hanna. Syria's Peasantry: The Descendants of Its Lesser Rural Notables and Their Politics (2000).
Seale, Patrick. Asad: Struggle for the Middle East (1988).
al-Atasi, Faysal
(1916-1999)
Faysal al-Atasi was born into a prominent political family in Homs and studied at the Homs Military Academy. He pursued a military career and rose in rank to become director of Syrian Army affairs in August 1949. The following year, Deputy Chief of Staff Adib al-Shishakli appointed him commander of the Lattakia garrison.
When Shishakli became president in June 1953, he moved Atasi to the garrison of Aleppo, giving him military control over the Syrian heartland. Aleppo, Syria's second largest city, was boiling with anti-Shishakli sentiment at the time, so Shishakli charged Atasi with controlling political activity in Aleppo.
In December 1953, however, Atasi clashed with his former mentor and, along with the officers Mustapha Hamdun and Amin Abu Assaf, began plotting for a military coup d'etat. Atasi declared his opposition to Shishakli's dictatorship and criticized the one-party state he had created. He also criticized Shishakli's arrest of leading politicians and his closure of newspapers and political parties.
In February 1954, Atasi, Hamdun, and Assaf launched a military insurrection aimed at restoring civilian rule to Syria. Under Atasi's orders, armed men occupied the city of Aleppo, arrested the governor, took over the broadcasting station, and declared autonomy from Shishakli's central government in Damascus. Several hundred of Shishakli's best men were rounded up and imprisoned in Aleppo. Adib al-Shishakli resigned from office on February 23, 1954, and Atasi's uncle, Hashim al-Atasi, who had been in the presidential office prior to Shishakli's assumption in 1951, was restored to the presidency. From here, however, Faysal al-Atasi's role came to a rapid end. He quarreled with his fellow officers on ideological matters and retired from the Syrian Army in 1955.
Sources:
Seale, Patrick. Struggle for Syria (1961).
Atfeh, Abdullah
(1897-1976)
Abdullah Atfeh studied at the Ottoman Military Academy in Istanbul and received advanced military training in France. He served as an officer in the Ottoman Army, but in 1916 joined the rebel army of Sharif Husayn, who was leading a military uprising from the Arabian Desert against the Ottoman Turks.
Until the Ottoman Empire was defeated in October 1918, Atfeh served as a commander in the Arab Army. He then allied himself with King Faysal I, the new ruler of Syria, and became an officer in the newly created Syrian Army. He took part in the battle of Maysaloun on July 24, 1920, when France defeated the army and occupied Syria. After the French proclaimed their mandate over Syria in July 1920, they dethroned Faysal, dissolved the Syrian Army, and arrested or exiled all officers who had been loyal to the ex-king. Atfeh went to Jordan for one year but returned when the French issued a general amnesty in 1921.
After his return to Syria, Atfeh joined the French-created Army of the Levant and advanced steadily in military rank. During World War II, the French appointed him commander of their troops on the Syrian coast. In May 1945, when the French Army advanced on Damascus, Atfeh mutinied and ordered his troops to take up arms against their French superiors. When Syria achieved independence from the French in April 1946, Atfeh rallied around President Shukri al-Quwatli and became chief of staff of the new Syrian Army in 1947. Quwatli charged him with transferring the allegiance of the Army of the Levant from France to the Syrian Republic. This was not an easy task. Many of the men had spent the better part of their lives working with the French, living under their protection, and receiving military training from them.
On May 14, 1948, the British Mandate in Palestine ended-an event that determined the timing of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. On their first foray into Palestine, Syrian forces were driven back by the Jews-an event that caused an uproar in Syria. It is often thought that, in 1948, Abdullah Atfeh became minister of defense in the cabinet of Prime Minister Jamil Mardam Bey, commanded the Syrian Army in the Arab-Israeli War, and was responsible for their poor showing on the battlefield. In actuality, Atfeh never became minister of defense under President Quwatli. Jamil Mardam assumed the position himself after he fired Ahmed al-Sharabati from the post at the beginning of the war. For his part, Atfeh was relieved of his duties as chief of staff in favor of Husni al-Za'im. Thus, there were only a few days at the onset of the war that Atfeh commanded the Syrian Army and Sharabati served as minister of defense.
Politicians in Syria accused Atfeh and al-Sharabati of mismanaging the war and of profiteering at the army's expense by purchasing outdated weapons. Politicians demanded that they be brought to court on corruption charges. Seven months after the war began, Atfeh shouldered the blame for the defeat when he stepped down from office in disgrace and retired (temporarily) from public life.
On March 29, 1949, the Quwatli regime was overthrown by General Husni al-Za'im, and the new president revived Atfeh's career by using him as a military advisor. When Za'im was toppled and killed in August 1949, Atfeh allied himself with the politicians that replaced him and became director of state affairs (with duties similar to those of a military governor) for an interim period of one week. In November 1949, Syria's new president, Hashim al-Atasi, appointed Atfeh minister of defense for three months. Afterward, Abdullah Atfeh retired completely from public life.
Sources:
Babil, Nasuh. Sahafa wa Siyasa fi Souriyya (1988).
Hawrani, Akram. Muzakarat Akram al-Hawrani (2000).
Moubayed, Sami. Damascus Between Democracy and Dictatorship (2000). Seale, Patrick. Struggle for Syria (1961).
al-Ayyubi, Shukri
(1851-1922)
Shukri al-Ayyubi studied at the Ottoman Military Academy in Istanbul and graduated with high honors in 1870. He taught at the same academy, befriended leading Ottoman officers in Istanbul, and rose to become one of the most prominent officers in the Military Academy. Sultan Abdulhamid II rewarded Ayyubi's services by giving him the princely title of pasha.
In 1905, Ayyubi joined other Arab loyalists in the Empire and founded the Ottoman-Arab Brotherhood Society in Istanbul. In 1908, however, a coup took place in Istanbul, bringing to power a group of radical young officers named the Committee for Union and Progress (CUP). Some of them had been Ayyubi's students, but once firmly in power, they dismissed many Arab officials (including Ayyubi) and replaced them with Ottoman Turks. Turkish became the official language of the courts, schools, and civil service of the Arab provinces in the Empire. Ayyubi joined the political underground, devoted himself to toppling the CUP, and was arrested for his views in 1916.
In 1917, Ayyubi became an officer in the rebel Arab Army of Sharif Husayn, who was leading a military uprising against the Ottoman Empire from the Arabian Desert. The CUP accused Ayyubi of treason, confiscated his property, and sentenced him to death in absentia. Later that year, while on a secret mission to Damascus to raise funds for the Arab warriors in Mecca, Ayyubi was arrested and sentenced to life in prison. He served for one year at the notorious Khan Pasha prison in Damascus, but Husayn's Arab army released him when they liberated Syria in October 1918.
Syria's new ruler, King Faysal I, appointed Ayyubi royal envoy to Beirut and gave him authority to govern in the name of the newly created Syrian throne. Faysal declared that the jurisdiction of the Arab government reached as far as Beirut, the coast, and Mount Lebanon. He also gave Ayyubi authority over the Maronite district of Baabda and asked him to administer it along with its governor, Habib Pasha al-Sa'ad. This infuriated the Maronites of Lebanon and the French who had their eyes on a French Mandate in the Middle East. The Maronites refused to recognize Ayyubi's authority over their territory.
For their part, the French declared that Beirut and Mount Lebanon were destined to become parts of their mandate in the region and could not be governed by Ayyubi or Faysal. Faysal recalled Ayyubi to Syria shortly afterward and appointed him governor of Aleppo. Ayyubi kept this post even after the French occupied Syria in July 1920 and deposed Faysal. Later Shukri al-Ayyubi became a friend of French High Commissioner Henri Gouraud.
Sources:
Commins, David. Historical Dictionary of Modern Syria (1996). Khury, Colette. Awrak Faris al-Khury (1989).
Zamir, Meir. The Formation of Modern Lebanon (1985).
al-Azma, Yusuf
(1883-1920)
Of notable Damascene heritage, Yusuf al-Azma studied at the Ottoman Military Academy in Istanbul and graduated with high honors in 1906. He pursued advanced military training in Germany for two years, returning to Istanbul in 1909 to join the Ottoman Army and was immediately appointed Ottoman military delegate in Cairo.
When World War I broke out in 1914, Azma was commissioned to the front and appointed commander of the 25th Ottoman Brigade in Bulgaria. He was transferred back to Istanbul after a short time to serve as military assistant to the Ottoman general, Anwar Pasha. When the war ended in 1918, Azma returned to his native Damascus and became private chamberlain to King Faysal I, the new leader of Syria.
In January 1919, Faysal appointed him military delegate to Beirut, then minister of war in the cabinet of Prime Minister Rida al-Rikabi. General Azma created the Syrian Army from almost nothing. Within only six months, Azma had gathered the remains of Ottoman ammunition, mobilized an active defense force, raised funds for an arms build-up, and laid the infrastructure and hierarchy of the modern Syrian Army. On January 26, 1920, King Faysal appointed him commander-in-chief of the Syrian Army. By mid-1920, his army was estimated at ten thousand men, mostly volunteers from Bedouin tribes. At the time, there was no forced military conscription in Syria and no official school for military training.
On July 14, 1920, the French government issued an ultimatum to King Faysal, ordering him to dissolve the Syrian Army and prepare for the implementation of the French Mandate over Syria and Lebanon. The French demanded that Faysal arrest anti-French politicians and reshuffle the Rikabi cabinet to include French allies. The French troops occupied the Syrian coast, took over Beirut and Lattakia, and began advancing toward Damascus. Azma refused to surrender, pleading with King Faysal for a chance to prove that his army could fight and survive.