Symbols and Flags of the State in Syria (13) Adib Shishakli

• He was born in 1909 in Hama, from a large and well-known Hamawi family of Turkish origin.
• He graduated from the agricultural school in Salamiyah, then from the military school in Damascus.
• He volunteered for the French Levant Army, then transferred with other officers to the Syrian Army.
• He participated in the battle for the liberation of Syria from the French in 1945, then he was at the head of the Second Yarmouk Brigade in the Salvation Army in Palestine in 1948.
• He participated with Hosni al-Zaim in the first coup on March 30, 1949, but they disagreed and al-Zaim dismissed him.
• He soon returned as commander of the First Brigade with the rank of colonel under Sami al-Hinnawi.
• He participated with al-Hinnawi in the second coup on May 14, 1949.
• The coups did not fulfill his personal ambition.
• He has a brother, Captain Salah Shishakli, who is a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP).
• This fact brought him into close contact with Colonel Amin Abu Assaf and Captain Fadlallah Abu Mansour, who were instrumental in the arrest of Sami al-Hinnawi.
• He rebelled against al-Hinnawi in late 1949 and seized power.
• He became Chief of General Staff in 1951.
• On the morning of December 19, 1949, Shishakli issued a communiqué with his signature, confirming the removal of Sami al-Hanawi and Asaad Talas from the command, for conspiring against the safety of the army, the country’s entity, and its republican system.
• The era of the third coup was known as the era of dual rule (Adib al-Shishakli and Hashem al-Atassi).
• Shishakli was a member of and controlled the Council of Colonels, which he dissolved and replaced with a council called the Supreme Military Council.
• During his reign, the country entered its fourth coup. On the night of November 31, 1951, Shishakli took the decisive step on his way to power by arresting Prime Minister Ma’ruf al-Dawalibi and throwing him and most of his cabinet members in prison, and arresting the Speaker of the House of Representatives and some parliamentarians.
• President Hashim al-Atassi has tendered his resignation.
• After that, Military Communiqué No. 1, dated December 2, 1951, was broadcast.
• Shishakli focused on consolidating the roots of the fourth coup in the country through direct military rule, which was faced by leader Fawzi al-Salou after he was appointed head of state and Colonel Adib al-Shishakli, chief of staff.
• He issued a decree dissolving parliament and another ordering the secretaries general of ministries to assume the powers of ministers, pending the formation of a new government.
• On January 15, 1952, he issued a decree dissolving most of the political parties in Syria (Al-Shaab, Al-Nawati, Muslim Brotherhood, Socialist Cooperative), leaving only Baath and Arab Socialist (all parties were dissolved without exception on April 6), and another decree to unify newspapers and make them four newspapers issued in Damascus, Homs, Aleppo, and Al-Jazeera.
• Direct military rule under Colonel Adib Shishakli lasted for six months, during which time Shishakli wanted to respond to the Arab campaigns and opposition to his coup with political, economic, and social reforms.
• These decrees began with the law on the abolition of parties, the law on the collection of newspapers, and the law prohibiting students, teachers, employees and workers from belonging to political parties or engaging in politics. A law was issued to regulate financial affairs based on the principle of progressive taxation and minimizing indirect taxes that fall on the shoulders of low-income people.
• The Land Reform Law was issued to regulate the relationship between landlord and tenant, and the Agrarian Reform Law was issued to distribute state property to landless peasants, and the state began distributing 5 million hectares to 50,000 peasant families with the aim of settling a quarter of a million people.
• During his reign, the state began plans to implement large irrigation projects in the country, most notably the Ghab Drying Project and the Yarmouk Project, and began negotiations with the US-controlled International Bank for Reconstruction and Development to finance the state’s plan to irrigate 120,000 dunams and settle 25,000 families, and the state made progress in implementing the Latakia port project to unload 800,000 tons of goods annually and developed a five-year plan for its completion, in addition to electricity and rural lighting projects.
• During his reign, the state paid special attention to the army to increase its capabilities and provide it with modern weapons. It bought three French warships, made a deal to buy British fighter jets, made contacts with the United States to obtain tanks and artillery, and encouraged media outlets calling for the recruitment of women into the ranks of the armed forces.
• On the security front, the country witnessed a state of calm and tranquility. Crime, theft and burglary incidents have decreased, while the affairs of state ministries under the supervision of the secretaries-general have been going well.
• Shishakli told Arab and foreign delegates that there was no need for his coup to gain new recognition and that he was content with existing recognition.
• He issued a decree forming a ministry on June 6, 1952, and announced after the formation of the ministry that the army would support the government’s projects without interfering in its affairs, and stressed that this is a temporary government whose mission is to lead the country to parliamentary elections within the framework of a new electoral law that opens the way for real representation of the people.
• He relied on his supporters from the Syrian Nationalist Party and called for the establishment of a new party called the Arab Liberation Movement to be the only party in the country in preparation for the elections.
• He turned to organizing the apparatus of repression, and began a campaign of arrests and torture against anyone who opposed him.
• When Shishakli felt that the field was clear for him and his party, he called for parliamentary elections on July 10, 1953, and the Arab Liberation Party won 83 seats.
• He monopolized political action with a central political body (the Arab Liberation Movement) and was concerned with land reform, expanding taxes on the bourgeoisie, recruiting women into the army, and other ideas not far from those of the Syrian Nationalist Party.
• He arrested many people who opposed him from all parties and put them in prisons. He used airplanes to bomb targets in the Suwayda region, killing many civilians.
• He sent the army to the mountain to abuse its inhabitants. His justification for this was the discovery of large quantities of weapons that Nuri al-Saeed and British intelligence agents were supervising in the region in preparation for the Anglo-American alliance known as the Baghdad Pact.
• His violence stood out in the suppression of the Mountain Revolution (1954). Shishakli’s bloody measures against the opposition, especially against the revolutionaries, caused a broad coalition against him, after which he preferred to resign rather than continue the confrontation.
• He famously said, “My enemies are like a snake whose head is in the mountain and its belly is in Homs and extends to Aleppo.
• On September 5, 1950, a new constitution was published, which was applied until the date of Adib Shishakli’s second coup on December 29, 1951, but this constitution was reinstated from February 25, 1954 until the establishment of the United Arab Republic on February 22, 1958.
• This constitution entrenched the Arab character of the state, stipulating that “the people are part of the Arab nation with its history, present and future” and that “the religion of the president is Islam.”
• Due to an internal political crisis, the head of state (Atassi) resigned on December 2, 1951.
• On the second day, Adib Shishakli appointed Fawzi Salo as head of state, and he remained nominally president until Shishakli himself became president on August 10, 1953, in a “referendum” and published a new constitution.
• She formed a popular opposition front that confronted Shishakli’s policy through student, labor, and peasant demonstrations. The opposition’s battle in Damascus began with the throwing of explosives, and an insurrection was declared in the Druze Mountains, which Shishakli resisted with tanks and planes, increasing the resentment against the regime.
• Politicians called for a conference in Homs at Hashim al-Atassi’s house to adopt a national charter that called for democracy and public freedoms, denounced individual rule and the police system, and issued an ultimatum to Shishakli to restore the constitutional situation, release political prisoners, and stop the civil war in Jabal al-Arab.
• On January 24, 1953, he responded to the ultimatum by arresting all those who signed it. The arrests included Rushdi al-Kikhia, Sabri al-Asli, Faidhi al-Atassi, Adnan al-Atassi, Hassan al-Atrash, Mansour al-Atrash, Ali Bouzou, Abdulwahab Hammad, Munir al-Ajlani, Akram al-Hourani, Michel Aflaq, Salah al-Bitar, Shaker al-Aas, and Rizqallah al-Antaki.
• The country witnessed a state of unrest and student demonstrations, which the security forces resisted with violence and tear gas, and schools were disrupted, and demonstrations spread across Syrian cities calling for the fall of the dictatorship, the abolition of the parliament, and the return of constitutional life to the country, which was the popular prelude to the overthrow of Shishakli.
• General Faisal al-Atassi and military divisions in Aleppo arrested General Muhammad Tamer Khan, the military commander of the northern region. The army also took control of important buildings such as the communications building, the town hall, and Aleppo Radio, from which a statement was broadcast under the name “Radio Free Syria,” calling on all military divisions in the army to “join the revolution.”
• By mid-afternoon, military units in Latakia, Deir ez-Zor, Homs, and Daraa had joined the coup, leaving only the military divisions in Damascus and its countryside in Shishakli’s possession.
• As a result of the intensive consultations held by Shishakli, and despite his ability to hold out and defend the capital, on the evening of February 26, 1954, he submitted his resignation in order to preserve “the Syrian blood, the unity of the Syrian army, and to prevent the country from entering a civil war,” as he stated.
• He left Damascus overland to Beirut under the cover of the coup leaders, from where he went into exile, first in Riyadh and then in Brazil.
• He was assassinated in Brazil in 1964 by a young Druze man, Nawaf Ghazaleh. He surprised him on a street in the town of Ceres, Brazil, and shot and killed him in retaliation for Shishakli’s military practices against the Druze in the Jabal al-Arab region.

We at Syrian Future Movement, as we recall the memory of the founding statesmen of Syria, we recall one of Syria’s influential men, and one of the symbols of the first Syrian state flags who contributed to influencing its structure, Colonel Adib Shishakli, in a sequential file that we present to you to include the symbols and flags of the Syrian state, in order to link our contemporary revolutionary present to a solid past and historical stations, in the hope that we revive in our people the need to build and create statesmen par excellence, learn from their experiences, overcome their negatives, and build on their history We hope to revive in our people the need to build and create statesmen par excellence, learn from their experiences, overcome their negatives, build on their history, preserve the homeland, safeguard the gains, and restore the Syrian state to its glory after years of injustice, tyranny, and corruption.