Mysteries in Syrian Political History

There are many unresolved mysteries in Syrian political history. Even what has been revealed in Douglas Little’s documents or in Ambassador Hare’s correspondence warrants further research or should be compared with documents that can be found elsewhere. History possesses complexities and layers akin to mines, with the surface offering little indication of what lies beneath.

From the way Syrian Prime Minister Khaled al-Azm recounted the events of 30 March 1949—when Hosni al-Zaim’s coup occurred, and soldiers took him from his bed barefoot, causing him to fall down the stairs, without allowing him to retrieve his glasses—it can be inferred that this event left significant psychological scars on him. It is likely that, having served as Syrian Prime Minister multiple times after al-Zaim’s execution in August 1949, he searched for the secrets behind al-Zaim’s coup, given his extensive international and regional connections. However, when we read the memoirs he left in manuscript form when he died in exile in Beirut in 1965, which were published in 1971, we find only vague and unclear references regarding what transpired on that day. He states: “I do not rule out the existence of foreign hands that sought to overturn the situation in Syria. Although it is difficult to prove this with tangible evidence, the development of prior and subsequent events warrants skepticism regarding this” (Khaled al-Azm’s memoirs, p. 186). This general skepticism does not point to any specific entity, whether international or regional.

When Miles Copeland, the director of the CIA station in Damascus in 1949—who was serving under the cover of cultural attaché at the embassy—published his book The Game of Nations in New York in 1969, revealing the American role in the leader’s coup, it garnered significant attention, especially after the release of the Arabic edition the following year in Beirut. However, at the time, the book was primarily utilized by critics of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, and this remains true more than half a century later, as it serves as material to demonstrate the U.S., connections to the 1952 coup in Egypt, which the U.S. sought—according to Copeland’s book—as a means to begin uprooting British influence in the region. The book notes that this uprooting had its second act in 1953 in Tehran, through the coup planned by Washington against Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, an ally of the Tudeh Communist Party, as a preventive measure to ensure that Iran did not fall into the hands of the Kremlin.

Copeland’s role in revealing U.S. secrets concerning Syria was less significant than that of Douglas Little, a professor of history at Clark University in Worcester, Maine. Little published a paper in the Middle East Journal in the winter of 1990 (pp. 51-75) entitled “The Cold War and Covert Action: The United States and Syria 1945-1958,” in which he drew upon classified U.S. documents from the administrations of Presidents Harry Truman (1945-1953) and Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1961) that the U.S. Information Act allowed to be released in the late 1980s. These documents include hundreds of boxes of confidential correspondence and cables of a diplomatic nature pertaining to the State Department as well as those of an intelligence nature. The former is classified under the code “NARG59,” while the latter is classified as “NARG84.” According to the documents presented by Little, CIA operations officer Stephen Meade, who was serving in the capacity of assistant military attaché at the U.S. embassy in Damascus, initiated contacts with Hosni al-Zaim without the knowledge of Ambassador James Kelly, from November 1948 up until the day of the coup. The aim was to “study the possibility of establishing a military-backed dictatorship” (p. 55). He noted that the leader “resembled the model of banana republic dictators” (p. 55) in Latin America, with a “strong hostility to the Soviets” (p. 55).

On the same page, Little outlines the context for Meade’s initial contact with al-Zaim, specifically the concern expressed by U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall in August 1948 regarding “serious signs of Soviet-Syrian rapprochement, President al-Qutli’s rejection of the truce offer with Israel, and the Syrian parliament’s obstruction of the project to extend the Tapline oil line from Saudi Arabia through Jordan to Syria and Lebanon.” The Syrian parliamentarians demanded that the line end at the Syrian coast rather than in Lebanon, and they intensified their position following the 1948 war with Israel and the pro-Israeli stance of the U.S.

Interestingly, Hosni al-Zaim confided to U.S. Ambassador Kelly in April that “Syria is considering settling 250,000 Palestinian refugees in the Jazira region near the border with Iraq.”

Al-Zaim signed the Tapline Agreement in May 1949 and the Armistice Agreement with Israel in July. Syria was one of the last countries to do so, following Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon. Notably, al-Zaim confided to U.S. Ambassador Kelly in April that “Syria is considering settling 250,000 Palestinian refugees in the Jazira region near the border with Iraq” (Little, p. 57). This suggests that al-Zaim sought more than just an armistice agreement with Israel—something not disclosed in Little’s documents. However, a 2015 book published by the University of Texas by scholar Eli Bodie, titled Opportunities for Peace, reveals this issue. In chapter five, entitled “Hosni al-Zaim’s Initiative,” Bodie notes that al-Zaim proposed an initiative to the Israelis for establishing peace between Syria and Israel based on two points: resettling Palestinian refugees in Syria and demarcating the border from the midpoints of Lakes Hula and Tiberias. This initiative was rejected by Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion.

To date, there are no documents or testimonies indicating any practical direction through discussions or contacts aimed at initiating bilateral talks for a peace agreement between the al-Zaim regime and the Israelis. In Little’s documents, he unravels the mystery of Adib Shishakli’s second coup on 30 November 1951, linking Shishakli’s support for the Middle East Command (MEC) project, proposed the previous month by the United States, Britain, France, and Turkey. This project aimed to establish a Middle Eastern military-security system that would serve as a regional extension of NATO. “Shishakli showed his support for the MEC plan in a meeting at the U.S. Embassy in Damascus on 23 November 1951 with Miles Copeland and others” (Little, p. 60). The coup was carried out against the government of Ma’ruf al-Dawalibi, who had openly opposed the project.

Additionally, Little’s  documents reveal details surrounding the assassination of Colonel Adnan al-Maliki in April 1955. A cable from the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, specifically addressed to the U.S. Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, in October 1954, notes that “an official of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party visited the U.S. Embassy and reported that they intend to work quietly over the next two years to acquire the capability to overthrow the Syrian government if it shifts too far to the left, and that action must be taken regarding Colonel Adnan al-Maliki, who uses his position to place his friends in key positions” (p. 64).

Little also cites a note from April 1955 originating from the Operations Coordination Board (OCB) of the Eisenhower administration, a group of various agencies monitoring U.S. covert operations, indicating that “the growing influence of leftists and a few communists had hindered U.S. plans for a security system for the defense of the Middle East” (p. 63). This was during a time when Damascus, with military support, was opposing the Baghdad Pact announced in February between Turkey and Iraq, which Britain joined two months later, with backing from Washington. In an April cable to U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Waldemar Jackman, Secretary Dulles expressed concern that “the seizure of power by Adnan al-Maliki or leftist officers, along with a treaty with Abdel Nasser, could result in anti-Western policies in Syria that might provoke Iraqi military action or, even worse, trigger Israeli military action against one or more Arab states” (Little, pp. 63-64).

The Dulles cable may shed light on subsequent American plans to instigate coups in Syria, such as ‘Operation Struggle’, conducted in collaboration with the British in 1956, which was scheduled for 25 October 1956. There was also ‘Operation Waboon’, executed solely by the Americans, the details of which were revealed by Colonel Abdul Hamid al-Sarraj, the head of the Syrian Second Bureau, in August 1957. Sarraj’s disclosures contributed to the failure of ‘Operation Struggle.’ The details of both operations can be found in Little’s study and in Patrick Sell’s book, The Struggle for Syria.

Washington’s primary concern in Syria during the period from 1955 to 1957 was to prevent Damascus from falling under Moscow’s influence, particularly as the power of the Syrian Communist Party increased. The appointment of Colonel Afif al-Bizri as Chief of Staff in August 1957 marked what Washington perceived as the peak of the threat posed by the possibility of Syria coming under Soviet control. In response, the following month, the U.S. moved the Turks to position 50,000 troops along the Syrian border, which led to a crisis that drew the Kremlin into a series of warnings. Among these was a statement by Soviet Prime Minister Bulganin in September of that year: “The armed conflict in Syria will not be confined to that region only.” This situation prompted Washington to exert pressure on the Turks and their Iraqi allies to defuse the crisis.

Abdel Nasser supported Moscow during the crisis of the Turkish mobilization on the Syrian border, standing against Ankara and Baghdad, with London and Washington backing them. However, in the last month of 1957, he apparently shared Washington’s concern that Syria was on the verge of falling into communist hands. This is suggested by a confidential cable from US Ambassador to Cairo, Raymond Hare, in December 1957, which noted that “an Egyptian journalist informed him that Nasser had become convinced by information provided by the United States that Syrian Chief of Staff Afif al-Bizri was indeed a communist and that something needed to be done about it…. Nasser requested that we keep our hands off Syria for a maximum of three months and refrain from any actions during that time, fearing that American involvement would turn Bizri, Khaled Bekdash, and Khaled al-Azm into heroes against the Americans” (James Barr, Lords of the Desert, p. 284).

Here: Does the US ambassador’s cable shed light on the Syrian-Egyptian unity and the subsequent agreement between Washington and Cairo that lasted from 1958 to 1964?