Word: baathists
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Syria's radical Baathist regime sent its tanks southward to back up troops already massed along the Israeli border, mobilized its untrained "People's Army" to back up the tanks and ordered students to form 150-man "battalions" to back up the army. The armed forces of Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and tiny Kuwait were placed on combat alert. Egypt called up its 100,000-man reserves, drafted half a million students into a civil defense corps and warned all doctors, hospitals and pharmacies to be ready for emergency duties. Israeli cities were strangely empty, just as they...
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...
...weeks, the debate raged between the opposing Baathist cliques, and being Syrians, Jadid's men naturally began plotting a coup to topple Hafez from his position as head of the powerful Presidency Council, which serves as a sort of collective chief of state. Two days before the revolt was to come off last month, the garrison commander at Horns jumped the gun by arresting three pro-Hafez officers-counting on Syria's notoriously poor telephone and telegraph communications to keep the word from reaching the capital 90 miles away. The news got back anyway, and the conspiratorial commanders...
...delegates received this heresy in stunned silence. Said one: "If anyone else had said what Nasser said today, Arabs would have branded him a traitor to the cause. But Nasser says it, and we accept it." Not everyone agreed. The Baathist regime in Syria persisted in calling for mass action against Israel. At a Damascus rally, Syrian Strongman Amin Hafez sneered at Nasser as "the self-proclaimed pioneer of Arab nationalism." Cried Hafez: "What is he waiting for? I went to the first Arab summit 18 months ago under the impression that the conference would lay down plans to liberate...
...accused-with no fewer than 63 accomplices, including 17 women-of spying for Israel. In neighboring Lebanon, Beirut's violently anti-Baath newspaper Al Moharren reported that Cohn had passed himself off as a Syrian expatriate millionaire named Kamel Amin Tabet, and had become a close friend of Baathist President General Amin Hafez by bankrolling his party's activities. Cohn-Tabet became a member of Baath's top leadership and broadcast coded messages to Israel over Damascus radio during programs directed at Syrians living abroad...