Word: syria
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Through it all, Syria trumpeted a bitterly anti-Western line, even to the extent of spreading word that CIA agents were prowling the countryside, vampirelike, to extract Syrian blood for transfusions to wounded G.I.s in Viet...
...remarkably young group of radical leaders who belong to the far-left wing of the Baath Party, a mystical Arab brotherhood whose main aim is the nationalization of everything and everyone in the Middle East. Since they seized power from a more moderate group of Baathists last year, Syria's new leaders have turned the country onto a path of near-paranoid violence. Oddly enough, the three men who administer the government are all trained physicians: Premier Youssef Zayyen, 36; Chief of State Noureddin Attassi, 37; and Foreign Minister Ibrahim Makhous, 36. But the man with the real power...
...with the Baath: 1966 brought a crop failure that severely cut wheat and cotton production and drained Damascus of precious foreign exchange. Western banks have almost unanimously refused to lend further money. To try to recoup some cash, Jadid recently cut the Iraq Petroleum Co.'s pipeline through Syria and attempted to blackmail his Arab neighbor into giving him $100 million -a price that Iraq has refused...
...While Syria is not a Communist state, an increasing number of far-leftists are being brought into the regime, which already has one Communist minister. At the outset, Jadid and his colleagues felt spiritually more attuned to Red China than to Russia. But Peking's resources are severely limited; although China bought a third of Syria's 1966 cotton crop with convertible sterling, Moscow offered more pragmatic rewards for a longer term. The Soviets last month agreed to finance nearly half the cost of a $400 million high dam on the Euphrates-Syria's answer to Aswan...
Needed Propping. Though Jadid & Co. despise Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser for his "softness" and seek by their export of terror to take over his leadership, Syria has nonetheless been forced to cooperate with him. But even Egypt, long the revolutionary center of the Middle East, feels nervous about Damascus' rabid adventurism. In order to prevent a major war from growing out of Syria's madness, Nasser signed a mutual defense pact with Syria last November that demands consultation before any major attack on another country. The fact is that Syria's military is too weak...