Since finally winning its independence in 1946 after a quarter of a century of French rule, Syria had proved notoriously unstable, even by the standards of the region. By November 1949 there had already been two coups d’état that year. Shukri al-Quwatli, who had steered the country to independence, was overthrown in March by an army officer, Husni Zaim, who in turn was murdered when the then current president Sami al-Hinnawi seized power in August. Seeking to draw a line under his brutal removal of his predecessor, al-Hinnawi – ‘a fat, slug-like creature with no brain’, according to one
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