Syria, 1963 — military coup conspiracy
Event Summary
This entry is coded 13 January 1963, in the two month window during which the secret Military Committee of the Syrian Ba'ath Party plotted the coup that would seize power on 8 March 1963. Since the September 1961 secession from the United Arab Republic, the fragile civilian government of President Nazim al-Qudsi had presided over an officer corps split into Damascus loyalists, Hawranists, Nasserists, Ba'athists and independents. The Ba'athist Military Committee, whose leading figures included Muhammad Umran, Salah Jadid and Hafez al-Assad, had spent 1962 planning a conventional military coup, cultivating allies among Nasserist and independent officers such as Rashid al-Qutayni and Ziad al-Hariri.
The state of emergency imposed after the 1962 turmoil was lifted on 22 December 1962, and the machinations in the army continued into early 1963. The successful Ba'athist coup in neighbouring Iraq on 8 February 1963 then accelerated the Syrian plotters' timeline. The January coding sits inside this pre-coup conspiratorial phase.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
Editorial Note
Cross-Reference
Only one dataset carries it. One of the three reference datasets we check against carries this event; the others do not list it. That is not a contradiction — the datasets cover different periods and use different thresholds — but it means the record has had less outside corroboration.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
- Cline Center id
65201131963
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: President al-Qudsi's government was overthrown weeks later by the Ba'athist coup of 8 March 1963.
Baseline coding: Plot discovered and disrupted before execution. Recorded leader fate: remained in office; not physically harmed. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
New York Times
The Sun
The Washington Post, Times Herald
This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →