As Dictator of Syria, Adib Shishekly always feared assassination and took infinite pains to avoid it. He carried one gun in a shoulder holster, kept another in his desk drawer. In Damascus he maintained four homes besides his official palace, slipped from one to the other for a meal or a night's sleep.
His enemies were legion, but none were so bitter as the tribesmen of the Djebel Druze, a rugged group of hills in southern Syria, where in 1954 revolt erupted after years of discontent. Shishekly, in a four-week campaign, crushed the Druzes, hammering their mountain strongholds with tanks,...
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