Out from Behind the Throne

In the past two years, through coups and crises and a succession of Premiers, the strong man of Syria has been a small, thin, professional soldier named Colonel Adib Shishekly. Shishekly, 44, now Syria's chief of staff, came to power through a coup in December 1949, and has been living dangerously ever since. Last year a would-be assassin took a pot shot at him; today, Shishekly maintains three houses, sleeps in a different one each night. A morose, short-tempered man who shuns publicity, he has been content to run the show from the background. Last week, for the first time, he came out into the open.

At 7:30 one evening, a 47-year-old, silken-mouthed Syrian politician named Marouf Dawalibi announced that he had formed a cabinet, Syria's first in three weeks. Dawalibi, a bearded law professor with a French wife, is a man of accumulated hates. He is anti-British, anti-Israeli, anti-American. He once said that "the Arabs would prefer a thousandfold to become a Soviet republic rather than a prey to world Jewry."

But it was not such demagogic nonsense that bothered Colonel Shishekly, who, in a very practical way, is probably more pro-West than most Syrian politicians. The trouble was that Dawalibi wanted to take over the Defense Ministry--the power spot in the cabinet--controlling army, police and gendarmerie. That was a post usually reserved for a Shishekly stooge.

Nine hours after Dawalibi named his cabinet, Shishekly's soldiers and tanks appeared in the streets of Damascus; Dawalibi and his ministers were arrested and imprisoned in an officers' club. Shishekly issued something called "Communique No. 1," announcing that Dawalibi and his entire cabinet had quit.

At week's end, Shishekly, still worried, decided to make a clean sweep of all remaining potential resistance to his power. The single most respected name in Syrian politics is 85-year-old Hashem Bey Attassi, former Syrian nationalist leader who was unanimously elected president by Parliament in Sept. 1950. This week, murmuring appropriate thanks to Attassi for his integrity, Shishekly issued "Communique No. 2," tossing Attassi out of the presidency, and dissolving parliament. Then he reached into his vest pocket for a Colonel Fawzi Silo, whom he installed as chief of state, Premier and defense minister, pending "restoration of normal parliamentary life."

Having bloodlessly disposed of Premier, cabinet, president and Parliament, Shishekly called in Arab editors and announced: "I don't want to become a dictator. I am a simple colonel, and my duty is as chief of staff. All of the country's responsibilities are in the hands of Silo."

Even behind this subterfuge, it was doubtful whether Shishekly felt completely safe yet. Vital statistics: the last two chiefs of staff before him had also pulled coups, ruled briefly, were deposed and killed.

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