302 • 17 ISRAEL'S REBIRTH AND THE RISE OF ARAB NATIONALISMwas ousted by an army coup in 1949. Two more coups ensued that year.
The leader who emerged from the pile was Colonel Adib Shishakli, whose
populist dictatorship became the prototype for that of Egypt's Nasir and
those of other Arab officers in the 1950s.
Deeply split by religious and local differences, Syria became notorious
for instability and disunity; yet its leaders hoped to unite all Arabs against
Zionism and imperialism. Shishakli's overthrow in 1954 led to another at¬
tempt at civilian government, but the system was unresponsive to the
country's need for economic and social reforms. Syria became the birth¬
place of the first popular Arab socialist movement, the Ba'th (Renaissance)
Party, which appealed to young people, army officers, workers, and Pales¬
tinians not just in Syria but also in many other Arab states. It demanded
land reform, nationalization of basic industries, unification of the whole
Arab world, and militant resistance to Israel and all vestiges of imperial¬
ism in the area. In such an atmosphere, no patriotic Syrian wanted peace
with Israel or the absorption of the Palestinian refugees. Indeed, Syria's
own ethnic and religious minorities, such as the Armenians, other Chris¬
tian sects, Shi'i Muslims, Alawis (an offshoot of Shi'i Islam), Druze (see
Chapter 6), and of course the Jews, generally fared badly in this era of ris¬
ing Arab nationalism.Iraq
Of all the Arab states in southwest Asia, the most populous is Iraq. With its
two great rivers and its rising oil revenues, it might have become the
strongest Arab country. There are several reasons why it did not. First, it
was pasted together from parts of three different Ottoman provinces by the
British, who had taken the area from the Turks during World War I. Al¬
though its rivers may seem to unite these parts, remember that the Eu¬
phrates and the Tigris both start in Turkey and that the former also flows
through Syria. In addition, most of Iraq's arable land came under the con¬
trol of the shaykhs of various quasi-independent bedouin tribes. The Mus¬
lim population was divided between Sunnis and Shi'is, the latter having ties
with neighboring Iran. Religious minorities included Jews and Assyrians
(or Nestorians, discussed in Chapter 2). Almost one-fifth of Iraq's popula¬
tion was Kurdish. A smaller share was Turkish. What these disparate groups
had in common were four centuries of Ottoman rule, followed by a British
military occupation in 1917. Shaken by a nationwide revolt in Iraq in 1920,
the British sought a ruler who would serve their interests and unite its
people. Faysal, driven by the French from Syria, fit the role admirably. The
British made him king of Iraq and quickly handed local power over to his