Adnan al-Malki

Lieutenant Colonel Adnan al-Malki

Lieutenant Colonel Adnan al-Malki, ( Arabic عدنان المالكي, DMG ʿAdnān al-Mālikī ; born 1918 or 1919 in Damascus , died April 22, 1955 there), was a Syrian politician and Deputy Chief of Staff of the Syrian Army . He is considered to be one of the most important figures in the Syrian Baath movement before it came to power on March 8, 1963 in Syria . A quarter in Damascus and a street where the Goethe Institute resided before the outbreak of the Syrian civil war are named after Malki.

life and career

During the French mandate , Malki, who came from a Sunni family, grew up in Damascus. In 1935 he graduated from the Homs Military Academy . In addition to Baathism, Malki was influenced by Arab ideologies such as Pan-Arabism and Nasserism . His influence on the Ba'ath Party was considered significant, although it is unclear to what extent he himself became a member of the party. Malki is said to have contributed significantly to the fact that the Arab Socialist Party of Akram al-Haurani united with the Ba'ath in 1953.

In 1953 Malki received President Adib al-Shishakli on the tarmac at Damascus airport and presented him with a document, signed by several personalities, calling for his resignation. Shishakli had Malki released from the army and arrested. Only after Shishakli's fall in 1954 was Malki, who was already very popular at the time, free again. He was rehabilitated under President Hashim Al-Atassi and appointed deputy to Chief of Staff Shawkat Shuqair.

Malki got into conflict with the radical Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), which, unlike Malki, rejected rapprochement or even unification with Egypt under a Nassist leadership. In addition, candidate officers from the Alawite community in Syria apparently felt discriminated against by Malki's personnel policy.

Assassination and Consequences

On April 22, 1955, Malki was shot with two bullets in the Damascus stadium, where he had attended a football game by army teams. The perpetrator who subsequently killed himself was a supporter of the SSNP , a 33-year-old Alawit named Yunis Abd al-Rahim. Yunis was a sergeant in the military police. Abd al-Rahim is said to have had different motives for the act: on the one hand personal, since Malki had denied him access to the military academy, on the other hand political, because Abd al-Rahim is said to have acted at the behest of the then SSNP party leader George Abd al-Masih.

According to the biographer of the later President Hafiz al-Assad , Patrick Seale, theories were also circulating about a possible involvement of the Egyptian secret service in the attack. According to them, Cairo had created an occasion and wanted to use the death of the popular Malki to eliminate the party that was hostile to unification between Syria and Egypt.

The murder of Malki led to a purge in which numerous supporters and functionaries of the SSNP were arrested or driven into exile. Numerous Alawites who were not necessarily connected to the SSNP were also subjected to reprisals as a result. The dismantling of much of the SSNP's networks encouraged the rise of the rival Ba'ath party.

In the opinion of some scientists, the investigation into Malki's murder also marked the beginning of Syria's transformation into a secret service state. During the interrogation of the alleged SSNP supporters, they complained of systematic torture by the Deuxième Bureau , a forerunner of military intelligence in Syria.

Badi 'Makhluf, a cousin of Hafiz al-Assad's future wife and mother of current President Bashar al-Assad , Anisa Makhluf , was also convicted and executed as an alleged co-conspirator of the assassin. The Makhluf family is still considered a strong supporter of the SSNP.

Individual evidence

↑ Sonja Vogel: Making the voices audible even in exile . In: The daily newspaper: taz . October 21, 2016, ISSN 0931-9085 , p. 24 ( taz.de [accessed on February 23, 2020]).
^ ^A ^b Revisiting the Malki Affair - By Christopher Solomon. In: Syria Comment. April 23, 2017, accessed February 23, 2020 .
↑ ^a ^b Sami Moubayed: Damascus Between Democracy and Dictatorship. University Press of America, Lanham, Maryland 2000, ISBN 978-0-7618-1744-4 , pp. 136-140 .
^ ^A ^b Patrick Seale: Assad of Syria. The Struggle for the Middle East . IB Tauris, London 1988, p. 50 .
↑ Near East, Jordan, Yemen . In: Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers 1955-1957 . tape XIII , no. 47 . Washington DC 1988, p. 295 .
↑ Kevin W. Martin: Syria's Democratic Years: Citizens, Experts, and Media in the 1950s . Indiana University Press, Bloomington 2015, ISBN 978-0-253-01879-3 , pp. 79 (English).

personal data
SURNAME	Adnan al-Malki
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	عدنان المالكي (Arabic)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Syrian politician and Deputy Chief of Staff of the Syrian Army
DATE OF BIRTH	1918 or 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH	Damascus
DATE OF DEATH	April 22, 1955
Place of death	Damascus

[1] Sonja Vogel: Making the voices audible even in exile . In: The daily newspaper: taz . October 21, 2016, ISSN 0931-9085 , p. 24 ( taz.de [accessed on February 23, 2020]).

[:2-2] A ^b Revisiting the Malki Affair - By Christopher Solomon. In: Syria Comment. April 23, 2017, accessed February 23, 2020 .

[:0-3] Sami Moubayed: Damascus Between Democracy and Dictatorship. University Press of America, Lanham, Maryland 2000, ISBN 978-0-7618-1744-4 , pp. 136-140 .

[:1-4] A ^b Patrick Seale: Assad of Syria. The Struggle for the Middle East . IB Tauris, London 1988, p. 50 .

[5] Near East, Jordan, Yemen . In: Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers 1955-1957 . tape XIII , no. 47 . Washington DC 1988, p. 295 .

[6] Kevin W. Martin: Syria's Democratic Years: Citizens, Experts, and Media in the 1950s . Indiana University Press, Bloomington 2015, ISBN 978-0-253-01879-3 , pp. 79 (English).