Colonel Hussni Al-Zaim

From The Illustrated London News April 9, 1949, under the heading Personalities in the Public Eye:

Colonel Hussni Al-Zaim

C.-in-C. of the Syrian Army, who seized power in Syria by a coup d'etat on March 30. The revolution was bloodless, complete and remarkably efficiently organised. The police were disarmed and offered no effective resistance. Colonel Zaim later dissolved the Syrian Parliament and assumed executive power.

Al-Zaim was the instrument of the coup financed by Tapline carried out by the CIA. The coup was set up in order to overturn the Syrian parliament's refusal to allow Tapline right of way for an oil pipeline through the country. It was that pipeline, running from the Saudi Arabian oil fields to the Mediterranean coast south of Sidon in Lebanon which was a major part of "American interests in the Middle East" during the 1950's and 60's.

See also: Notes from the Minefield: United States Intervention in lebanon and the Middle East, 1945 - 1958 by Irene L. Gendzier

- Børre Ludvigsen