Word: syria
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Though tanks still peered through the shrubbery in downtown Damascus, Syria was calm. After Gamal Abdel Nasser had resigned himself to Syria's breakaway from the United Arab Republic ("May Allah help beloved Syria"), the world's nations hastened to welcome the newly independent state. In a blaze of flashbulbs and official smiles, U.S. Consul General Ridgway B. Knight drove up to the rose-walled Foreign Office in Damascus last week and presented a note extending formal recognition. Three days earlier, the new regime, coolly and without publicity, accepted Soviet recognition. Said one longtime Western observer: "This...
...more serious than Suez. Any division in national unity is much more serious than foreign aggression." To "straighten out the situation," as he put it in his broadcast, Nasser ordered his fleet and 2,000 paratroops to take seaport Latakia, started commandeering merchantmen to haul ground troops to Syria, which is seperated from Egypt by Jordan, Lebanon and Israel. Suddenly, Nasser changed his mind. He called off the attack just after the first 120 Egyptian paratroops landed. (They surrendered.) Explaining his decision, Nasser asked sadly: "Does Arab fight Arab? For whose sake will blood be shed?" To the last...
...revolution was complete, ending in 48 hours the unequal union between little Syria (pop. 4,500,000) and 26 million Egyptians...
Syrian Twitch. It was Syria's President Shukri Kuwatly who had promoted the merger with Egypt, out of fear that his country might otherwise be taken over by a strong Communist clique in the army. While Nasser hailed the new state as "the first step on the path to complete Arab unity," it was soon apparent to Syrians that their wealth was being siphoned off to prop impoverished Egypt. Nasser's land reforms alienated landowners and hurt the economy. Businessmen, after long years of laissez faire, bitterly opposed Nasser's import restrictions, currency controls, a new income...
...also be badly bruised in the eyes of millions who idolized him as a crusader against colonialism. By its impassioned rejection of Egyptian "tyranny," the revolution could only deepen the suspicion that under the guise of pan-Arabism Nasser pursues a Pharaonic imperialism. After Nasser's fulminations against Syria's revolt last week, the Arab world may in the future treat Cairo radio exhortations to revolution with something less than reverence...