The role of the military in Syria: the Shishakli years (1949-1954)

In the sultry warmth of the Mediterranean afternoon a crowd of people slowly fills the small tables and more secluded booths of the Cafe La Dolce Vita. The city is Beirut, Lebanon: cosmopolitan in the midst of a region heavy with the past, the regional center of foreign business and the clearing house of the Arab world for everything from drugs to abstract ideas. The clientele of Cafe La Dolce Vita reflects, In microcosm, the diversity of the broader Beirut, and of its uncertain future. More importantly, the Cafe is the common watering hole of Syrian political refugees, those deposed or forced into exile by the vicissitudes of Syrian politics. Michael Aflaq, Salah al-Bitar, Amin al-Hafiz, Akram Hawrani sip thlck sweet Turkish coffee and while away their exile reading Al Ahram, A1 Ba’ath, or A1 Nahar, Conversation is political Conspiracies are planned, plots are hatched; and as often as not it remains only the idle talk of men who wait for the winds of Syrian political fortune to favor them once again.