ABSTRACT
The revolution of September 28, 1961, broke over Damascus like a sudden storm. The resistance to Abdel Nasser’s policy had grown continuously during the spring and summer of 1961; after the Egyptian dictator’s return to Cairo from his ‘spring offensive’ conducted from Damascus against the Lebanon. But Syrian resistance against Nasser’s policy of unification could not become effective while Abdel Hamid Sarraj was in control of the administration, and particularly of the police, in Damascus. Nasser, who had stubbornly refused to listen to advice that federation was more suited to Arab conditions than a unified centralized state, was in the end forced to bury the Syrian-Egyptian union. Nasser’s supporters, whose stronghold was in Aleppo, fought for control with his opponents. In the end the leading military commanders met in Homs and agreed there on the lowest common denominator for their future proceedings.
