Syria: In & Out

In Damascus last week, Nazem El-Koudsi, 56, was beginning to feel like a man trapped in a revolving door. As President of Syria, Koudsi was taken prisoner last month by army officers overthrowing his government, and hustled off to jail together with most of his Cabinet.

Then the soldiers began squabbling among themselves: the garrison at Aleppo briefly mutinied, demanding Syria’s reunion with Nasser’s Egypt; pro-Nasser mobs in Horns, Hama and Aleppo killed a score of army men; a handful of officers accused of political ambitions were shipped off to exile abroad. The army commander in chief. General Abdel Karim Zahreddin, tried vainly to put together a “government of technicians.”

Apparently at a loss for a better idea, the top military men last week sheepishly sprung Koudsi from jail and reinstalled him as President. In what sounded like obvious relief, General Zahreddin said that his army is ”determined to go back to its barracks after an honest, clean and free government has been established.”